The Country of the Blind: Mandarin Companion Graded Readers Level 1

“In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king” repeats in Chen Fangyuan’s mind after he finds himself trapped in a valley holding a community of people for whom a disease eliminated their vision many generations before and no longer have a concept of sight. Chen Fangyuan quickly finds that these people have developed their other senses to compensate for their lack of sight. His insistence that he can see causes the entire community to believe he is crazy. With no way out, Chen Fangyuan begins to accept his fate until one day the village doctors believe they now understand what is the cause of his insanity: those useless round objects in his eye sockets.

Adaptation Notes

This story is an adaptation of English sci-fi author H.G. Wells’ 1904 classic story, The Country of the Blind. This Mandarin Companion graded reader has been adapted into a fully localized Chinese version of the original story. The characters have been given authentic Chinese names as opposed to transliterations of English names, and the locations have been adapted to well-known places in China. Some details have been changed to better fit a Chinese setting.

The time period of this adaptation is left up to the reader’s imagination, but clearly modern technology does not play a role in the story. The original 1904 story and a revised version published in 1939 actually have different endings. We have made an unusual choice in this case and decided to follow neither original ending exactly, rather giving the story our own twist. We hope you enjoy it.

The following is a list of the characters from The Country of the Blind in Chinese followed by their corresponding English names from Wells’ original story. The names below aren’t translations; they’re new Chinese names used for the Chinese versions of the original characters. Think of them as all-new characters in a Chinese story.

• 陈方远 (Chén Fāngyuǎn) – Nuñez
• 江天雨 (Jiāng Tiānyǔ) – Yacob
• 江雪 (Jiāng Xuě) – Medina-Saroté