Mao Mao: The incredible story of a time thief and a little girl

"Mao Mao" is a cute little fairy tale book, it has won 12 literary awards since its release, translated into as many as 39 languages, is a classic that can move children and the public at the same time. Since its publication, Mao Mao has been a bestseller, selling 1,000,000 copies in Japan alone.

Mitchell Ender, the author of Mao Mao, was born into a very culturally rich intellectual family in Germany. His father, Edgar Ender, was a well-known surrealist painter, and even after being persecuted during the dark years of the Nazis, the great painter did not give up hope of giving up his life, but instead created more excellent works full of fantasy. Mitchell grew up in his father's whimsical paintings and fantasy stories, and although material life was scarce, his boyhood was filled with the joys and fantasies of abundance.

Growing up as an actor and screenwriter, Mitchell Ender began writing for children in the late 1950s, became world-famous in the 1970s, and in 1974 he published his little philosophical storybook, Mao Mao.

The protagonist of "Mao Mao" is a little girl named "Mao Mao". She lives in a blurred border between ancient and modern, an abandoned amphitheater. Her appearance looks a little strange with modern eyes:

She was so short and thin that it was impossible to tell if she had just turned eight or twelve. Her unkempt, asphalt-like black mane looked as if she had never combed or cut it in her life. Her eyes were big and beautiful, and her eyes were dark and dark. Her feet were also black, as she almost always ran around barefoot. Only in the winter did she occasionally wear shoes. But the shoes on the two feet are not the same size, not the same pair of shoes, and they are too big and too big for her. Because except for the rags she picked up and the things that people gave her, Mao Mao had nothing at all. The skirt on her body was sewn up with a colorful rag head and dragged all the way down to her ankles. He wore a loose, worn-out men's jacket with cuffs rolled up to his wrists. Mao Mao was reluctant to cut her sleeves short, and she looked to the future, believing that she would grow up anyway. ”

Mao Mao didn't know how old she was, and when people asked her how old she was, she hesitantly replied, "A hundred years old." People thought she was joking, and asked again, only to get an even more bottomless answer from her: "One hundred and two years old."

But this does not affect MaoMao's happy life. With the help of friendly people nearby, she soon settled down in the amphitheater. Everyone will give her her the food she has spare, will help her decorate the house and prepare daily necessities, and more importantly, she has many good friends.

When Mao Mao feels his luck, the people around him are also feeling the luck of having Mao Mao. Mao Mao is a great listener, and when people have troubles or feel bored, they will go to Mao Mao. Under her quiet listening, the helpless and indecisive will suddenly understand what they should do; the cringe will suddenly feel unrestrained and courageous; the unfortunate and depressed will become confident and happy...

Slowly, "Go find Mao Mao!" "It became the mantra of the people in that area." The quarrelsome person went to Mao Mao to judge, and the two slowly reconciled under Mao Mao's listening; bored children would go to Mao Mao to play games, and in the process of playing they would find new fun; even if someone's canary stopped barking, he would also go to Mao Mao to help, and Mao Mao patiently listened to the little bird for a whole week, and the bird finally sang happily and gently.

Mao Mao listened to people talking, she also listened to cats and dogs called crickets, she even listened to the wind and rain in the woods, everything in the world, in different languages, told her their own stories, and these stories will become cute happiness in her brain.

Of course, Xiao Maomao also has his best friends - the taciturn scavenger Old Bebo and the little tour guide Gigi who can speak the Tao. Old Bebo did the work of cleaning the streets, but he did not feel hard and tired, he always did the cleaning work with a happy mood, and always found something different in his work. He spoke very slowly, because he had to think carefully before he spoke each sentence. People always had no patience to listen to him finish his speech, and only Mao Mao was willing to listen to him tell his story, because she knew that old Bebo had spent so long thinking in order to never tell a lie, because he knew that all the misfortunes in the world were due to too many lies. And some of these lies were told intentionally, and some were only inadvertently told because they were in a hurry or out of a rough eye.

The tour guide, Gigi, is a completely different person from old Bebo. Gigi is lively and cheerful, his favorite thing is to tell stories, he does not have a proper job, rather than calling him a "tour guide", in fact, calling him "the person who sells stories" may be more appropriate. When tourists from other places come to their small place, Gigi will make up a few small stories that are in line with the local attractions to please them, and after telling the story, they will take off their baseball cap and stretch it out, and they will pay him some coins.

But only Ji Ji himself knows in his heart that before meeting Mao Mao, the stories he told were sometimes quite cold, and even because he couldn't think of anything good to tell, he had to repeatedly fry cold rice, or repeat a movie he had watched, it can be said that his stories were all on foot, but after knowing Mao Mao, his stories suddenly grew wings.

As long as Mao Mao sat by his side and listened to him tell stories, his imagination was like a grassland full of flowers in the spring. Adults and children are crowded around him, and he can tell the story continuously, even for days or even weeks. But he prefers to tell stories to Little Mao Mao alone without anyone else.

Gigi often told Stories to Mao Mao on beautiful and warm nights, and they would sit side by side on the top stand of the ruins. A few stars twinkle in the night sky and a large silver moon reflect the dark silhouette of Tasong below. Gigi put one arm around Mao Mao's shoulder and began to tell her stories. The stories that Ji Ji told to Mao Mao alone were almost always about the two of them, and they were specifically told to them, which was completely different from what Ji Ji usually told.

Mao Mao listened and listened, and would snuggle up to Ji Ji and fall asleep quietly...

In this way, Mao Mao and her friends lived a happy and happy life every day, but this day was quietly covered with haze. Somehow, Mao Mao found that his old friends seemed to be getting fewer and fewer. Some of those who lived nearby and had helped her had not seen her in a long time.

And the children who play with her have also become a little strange. They don't look like they're here to play with Mao Mao, it's more like they're looking for a place to take refuge. With elaborate toys and technological tools, they hid in the amphitheater and played their own games somewhat dullly.

It didn't take long for them to get bored, so they begged Gigi to tell a story. But Gigi didn't want to tell a story at all, "Tell yourself, tell me what you're doing at home, tell me why you're here." Gigi said. thereupon

The children stopped making a sound, and their faces suddenly became sad and cold.

"We have a very nice little car at home." Finally, I heard a small child say, "On Saturday, my mom and dad will wipe the car whenever they have time." If I'm obedient, I can help them. I'm going to have a little car like that in the future. "But," said one of the little girls, "I can go to the movies every day now, if I so wish, because then I will be sent to safety." Unfortunately, this is because Mom and Dad didn't have time to take care of me. ”

"I already have eleven fairy tale records." A little boy announced, "I can listen whenever I want." In the past, my father always had to tell me something every night after work, how good it was then! Now, he didn't say anything, maybe he was too tired, maybe he wasn't interested. ”

……

At this time, the child with the portable radio suddenly turned around and said, "I am getting more pocket money than before!" ”

"Good value for money" Franco replied, "They are doing this to send us away!" They don't like us anymore, but they don't like themselves anymore. They're not interested in anything, that's my opinion. ”

"Wrong!" The new boy shouted angrily, "My parents like me very much, but they don't have time to play with me. The expensive portable radio they give me now is a testament to love—isn't it? ”

Everyone was silent.

Suddenly, the little boy who had been messing around all afternoon began to cry. He didn't want to let himself cry, and kept wiping his tears with that little dirty hand, but the tears still flowed down his smeared cheeks.

The other children, some looking at him sympathetically, some looking down at the ground. Now that they understood him, they were in exactly the same mood, and they all had a feeling of abandonment.

Adults became busy, and they found countless alternatives to accompanying their children. And the children, holding those expensive toys, have been deceiving themselves: "Mom and Dad still love me, they give me expensive things, they still love me." 」 ”

And the initiator of all these changes is Mr. Gray, who hides in the city and survives by absorbing people's time. Mr. Gray looked the same—a little car, a cigar, and a polished bald head. They don't look like individuals, but they really exist in this world.

They say to everyone, "Time is money, saving time is saving money, please save your time in our time bank." ”

Therefore, the originally funny barber is not wasting time chatting with guests when cutting hair; the builders who originally love life are busy building houses every day, and they don't even care about the safety of the house; the originally kind hotel owner, in order to increase turnover, drove away the homeless people who ordered one or two plates of peanuts and rice in the hotel for an afternoon...

It has become irrelevant whether a person loves their job or not, and people work busily for one purpose – not to delay time.

But no matter how much Mr. Grey cheats time from adults, they can't fool their children, because children will never give up looking for their own spiritual pleasure because of material sufficiency. So Mr. Gray began to attack the child's center hair.

Mao Mao, on the way to escape Mr. Gray's capture, was taken to his time palace by Master Hou La, who was in charge of time, and also saw his own life flower. The flower has a beautiful color that the hair has never seen before, and it slowly opens with the swing of time in the heart, and then slowly withers, and then blooms a more beautiful flower. And this also shows the meaning of time - it is only the passage of time itself, but with the passage of time, there will be countless beautiful flowers in people's lives, and these beautiful flowers are the beautiful things in life. If people blindly pursue materialism and save time in a hurry every day, they will miss a lot of life beauty and will slowly lose the meaning of life.

Mr. Gray exploited such a loophole, he encouraged people to save time, and then secretly took the flower of time that they ignored. They dried the flowers into cigars and used them for life, unaware of them.

But Mao Mao knew. Mao Mao knew how beautiful the Flower of Time was, and he also knew that Mr. Gray was slowly eroding the whole city. So the brave little girl Mao Mao, the little girl Mao Mao who loves her friends, holding her own white heart that never cared about materialism, decided to fight against Mr. Gray.

With the help of Master Houla, Mao Mao paused for a moment. Holding the only time flower in her hand that could last time, she closed the door of the warehouse where they stored time spent.

When the last Mr. Gray vanished, Mao Mao opened their time warehouse.

The cold had all receded, and none of the innumerable time flowers in the warehouse that were the same as another began to gather into clouds and drift past her.

Mao Mao sat on a huge flower cloud integrated by more and more pairs of flowers, flying over the city's rooftops and bell towers. The clouds of countless flowers fluttered, flying up and down, spinning, as if they were dancing with gorgeous music.

Then the colorful clouds of flowers slowly landed, and the flower of time fell like snowflakes on the frozen earth, melting silently, disappearing, and returning to the original place - back to people's hearts.

In the big city, there was a sight that had not been seen for a long time. The children played games on the street again, and the motorists who had to stop and wait smiled and watched the children play, and some even got out of the car to play with the children. Office workers have spare time to stand in front of the window to enjoy the flowers and feed the birds, doctors use plenty of time to carefully inquire about the patient's condition, hairdressers begin to chat with guests after shaving their heads...

And Mao Mao, her friends had been waiting for her in the ruins of the circular amphitheater. They celebrated together, singing and dancing until the sky was full of stars. They do what Mr. Gray calls "meaningless things," but they reap more important things than money.

As the story goes:

"Time is life, but life is in the heart."

The more people save it, the less they have. ”