Easy Chinese Dream Reading Start Tonight Using These Ways

In the far corner of the bookshelf, there is a small Chinese book covered in dust. I bought it last year. It’s called “A Collection of Chinese Dream Stories.” It’s a collection of short stories about people who dream about something and then their lives change. It sounds interesting, but I’ve tried reading it a few times before, and each time I gave up after reading two lines.

It’s not that I don’t want to learn, it’s that I really can’t understand it. The characters are too small, the sentences are too long, and there are words I don’t recognize popping up all the time. Every time I get stuck, I immediately take out my phone to look up the translation, but the more I look, the more confused I get, and in the end, I just give up.

But recently, I heard about a new method: you don’t have to understand every word to understand the story. I thought, I’m just sitting around anyway, so I’ll give it a try tonight.

How did I drive myself crazy before?

To be honest, I used to read very “seriously,” but also very foolishly.

For example, I would open a page, see the first word I didn’t know, and immediately look it up in the dictionary; then I wouldn’t understand the second word, so I would look that up too; I would look up five words in a sentence and flip through my phone five times. And what was the result? By the time I got to the last sentence, I had forgotten everything that came before.

I forced myself to “learn it,” but as I read, I started to feel nervous, my heart racing, like I was taking an exam. In the end, I wasn’t reading the book, I was torturing myself.

What’s worse, after reading a page, I would ask myself, “What was that story about?” and I couldn’t answer. I felt stupid, so I just threw it aside and never touched it again.

I tried this method many times, and each time it was the same: I started out full of enthusiasm, but ended up feeling very discouraged.

This time, I tried a “lazy” method

This time, I didn’t force myself. I just flipped through it casually, as if I were reading a comic book.

I chose the shortest story, which was only half a page long.
I told myself, “I don’t need to learn every word, I just need to get a general idea of what’s going on.”

Then I did four things:

1. Read through it quickly from beginning to end

I didn’t look up any words or stop. When I saw a word I recognized, I nodded to myself, “Oh, I’ve seen this before.” If I didn’t understand a word at all, it didn’t matter, I just treated it as gibberish and skipped over it.

It’s like watching a movie. You don’t see some scenes clearly, but it doesn’t affect your understanding of the main character running away.

2. Circle the “roadblocks,” but don’t fight them

While reading, I lightly circled three particularly difficult words that I didn’t understand at all with a pencil. For example, “dream,” “shadow,” and “repay a debt” — these words are obviously not used in everyday language.

But I didn’t look them up right away. I just circled them and said to myself, “Wait there, I’ll deal with you later.” Then I continued reading.

It feels like when you encounter a monster you can’t defeat in a video game, you go around it first instead of fighting it head-on.

3. Close the book and guess the story

After reading, I closed the book and asked myself, “What did that person just go through?”

I remember that he went to sleep at night and dreamed that an old man spoke to him; the next day, he went to a temple to burn incense; and later, things went smoothly at home.

Although I didn’t understand many of the details, I could guess that this person had a dream, took it seriously, and then did what he did in the dream, and as a result, good luck came his way.

The process was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. I only had a few pieces, but I could roughly piece together the shape.

4. Finally, look up the difficult words

After I finished guessing the story, I picked up my phone and looked up the three words I had circled earlier.

“Dream message”: It turns out that it is a dead person who conveys information through dreams.
‘Yincha’: In folk tales, it refers to ghosts who are responsible for taking people away.
“Repaying a vow”: When you have done something you promised to a god, you must go and thank them.

After looking them up, I found that my guesses were mostly correct! Although the words were different, the meanings were similar. Even if I guessed wrong, I wouldn’t be upset because I know I’m making progress.

Why did it feel different this time?

The biggest change is that I’m no longer nervous.

In the past, I was always afraid that I wouldn’t be able to learn it, but now I know that it’s normal not to understand everything, and it’s okay to skip over it.

It’s like listening to someone tell a story. Even if you miss a sentence or two, you can still understand the ending.

I also found that even if I didn’t look up some words, I could still guess their meaning from the context. For example, when I saw “burn incense,” “kneel and worship,” and “pray for peace,” I knew that the person was worshipping a god.

What surprised me even more was that I actually laughed. There was a story about a man who dreamed that he turned into a chicken and was stewed by his wife. When he woke up, he was so scared that he didn’t dare to eat dinner. Although I didn’t understand all the words, the image was so vivid that I laughed out loud.

This shows that I am no longer just “learning a language,” but “reading stories.”

Summary: Four tips for reading dream stories with ease

Choose short stories: Is a page too long? Then read half a page. The important thing is to feel a sense of accomplishment after reading.
Don’t look up every word: Just circle the most important ones you don’t understand and skip the rest.
Guess first, then look it up: After reading, try to summarize the story yourself to practice your comprehension skills.
Allow yourself to not understand everything: You don’t have to learn every word right away. Take your time.