序言

文化是人类在社会历史发展过程中所创造的物质财富和精神财富的总和。文化是一种意识形态的存在，是民族化特征的积淀，其内容涵盖一个国家或民族的物质、规制和观念等诸多方面。

文化的传承需要借助教育，而教育又存在教育理念的引导、教育内容的取舍和教育方式的选择，等等。中国有句俗语：“读万卷书，行万里路。”前者是指理论学习，后者是指社会实践。可见读书是重要的教育方式之一。

在有几千年发展历史的中国，文化理念得以传承是凭借中国独特的教育方式——言传身教。言传是说教式的教育方式，是通过语言文字来教化人；身教是身体力行的教育方式，是通过行为的示范作用来感化人。在中国，教育所关注的是意识的培养，培养人们对事物内涵和寓意的独到理解和领悟。言传教育是中国教育的重要组成部分，人们从言传学习中获得某种启发，进而规范自身的言行，从而达到修身养性的效果。

讲成语故事是中国传统教育的一种重要形式。成语故事融通俗性、趣味性、教育性和有效性于一体。人们通过阅读故事内容，在阅读中领悟，在领悟后升华，逐渐规范自身的言行，培养和形成道德伦理意识、进取观念意识和行为规则意识，达到修身养性的目的。

本书精选了中国经典的成语故事，采用英汉对照的方式，用汉语讲述成语故事的出处和寓意，以帮助读者学习领会。英语译文采用通俗的语言表达，并配以插图，帮助读者理解故事内容，认识博大精深的中国文化。

在本书的编写和翻译过程中，浙江师范大学外语学院研究生祝天飞和杭州汽车高级技工学校讲师王瑾红共同参与，并承担了相应的编写和翻译工作，在此表示感谢。

由于时间仓促，水平有限，书中难免存在缺陷和不足，欢迎广大读者批评指正。

李建军

2018年7月于浙江金华鸿儒阁

Preface

Culture is the creative fruit of material and spiritual wealth in the process of social and historical development of mankind.It is an existing ideological fruit characterized by its national and ethical features，which covers many aspects such as the material forms and denotation，the social and ethic regulations and the ideological concepts of a nation.

The continuity of culture relies on education.And education should be under the guidance of educational philosophy to select the educational content and adopt the educational mode.The Chinese old saying goes，“To read quite a lot of books and to visit quite a lot of places.” The former refers to acquiring knowledge through reading，and the latter refers to acquiring experience from practice.That's to say，reading is one of the important ways of education.

In China，with a history of thousands of years of development，the continuity of the cultural philosophy contributes to the unique educational mode — the verbal and action instruction.The verbal instruction refers to the sententious educational ways of oral instruction or book reading to enlighten people.The action instruction refers to ways of setting examples by the individual actions to influence people.In China，the education is much concerned with awareness-nurturing，which is to foster the people's competence of digestion and apprehension to what they meet.The verbal instruction plays an important role in the Chinese educational system.People can get some inspiration or enlightenment through reading，then they can employ some norms learned from books to regulate their words and deeds and finally achieve the goal of selfcultivation.

Story-telling is an important form of Chinese conventional education.The idiomatic stories are popular，enjoyable，instructive and effective.People can be enlightened through digestion in reading the stories，and then they can obtain the sublimation through enlightenment，and further they can form the habit to regulate their words and deeds with what they have learned from the stories to achieve the goal of self-cultivation.

The classical Chinese idiomatic stories have been selected for this book.The book is compiled in a bilingual way of English and Chinese.The provenances and implied meanings of the idioms have been attached，which will do much help for the understanding to the readers.With the plain expression and painting illustration，the English version is easy to understand which will help the readers to get a picture of the profound and diversified Chinese culture.

Any comments and suggestions to me and to this book are welcomed.

By LI Jian-jun

In Scholars Study Zhejiang Normal University，Jinhua，China