A very long time ago, in a city in China, there lived a poor tailor with his wife and his only son, who was named Aladdin.

Aladdin was a very brave, intelligent boy, but he was also headstrong and disobedient. His father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and become a tailor. But Aladdin wasn’t interested. “Someday I’m going to be rich and powerful,” he would say. “And then I won’t have to earn my living with a needle and thread. Just wait and see.” His mother and father would shake their heads and tell him that he was a dreamer. “You won’t be able to support yourself if you don’t learn a trade. Be a good boy and forget these foolish thoughts.” But Aladdin could never be convinced.

Instead of spending his days in his father’s shop, he spent them in the streets with a gang of unruly boys. Aladdin was the ringleader. They would play games all day long: games with balls and sticks and stones, team games and games for two players, games of running and jumping and crawling and rolling and climbing, games in which you had to balance things on your head or your big toe or on the end of your nose, games in which you had to remember long lists of things or invent new names for the most everyday objects or insult your friends just enough to make them laugh and not get angry, games of hide-and-seek, games with pebbles as pieces that they played on an old chessboard someone had found leaning against the wall in an alley. Aladdin was usually the winner in these games, because he was smarter and faster than the rest of the boys.

When they got tired of the games, they would make up little dramas and act them out. Actually, it was Aladdin who would make up the dramas and assign all the roles. He would always assign the leading role to himself. He would be the king or the emperor, and the other boys would be his servants or his enemies.

When they got tired of the dramas, Aladdin would come up with a scheme for a great adventure that usually got them into trouble. He would dare someone to steal a peach from the grocer’s stand (it had to be while the grocer was watching) and then to run around the block and put the peach back onto the peach pile before the grocer or his dog could catch up. Or he would lead them to some rich man’s door, and they would all stand in front of it, singing and screaming at the top of their lungs, and when the rich man’s butler opened the door, they would laugh and run away. One time they found a sheet of heavy gray paper and made a pair of ear flaps out of it, then stuck the flaps over the ears of the mayor’s horse when no one was watching. The horse looked like a huge, long-nosed rabbit. They laughed so hard that they could barely remain standing.