Today I went out with my roommate to attend a community dinner held by a family in Davis. The host was a couple whose name was Woody and Susan. This was my second time being in a welcome dinner for visiting scholars and friends.
The hosts were very friendly and talkative. And a friend whose name is Ann impressed me most! She looks like Asian and actually her parents are Japanese maybe.
Carisa seems a little anxious during the dinner because she has a Chinese class tomorrow. And according to her father, my friend Simon, she is taught by some Chinese who will be angry if she cannot finish her homework today. Her homework was handwriting. So I showed to her some interesting features about Chinese characters, like how Chinese characters are formed typically. She was very interested at these features. I was long being losing my Chinese character stories. I learned about this when I was a kid. However, the very limited few of them could make little Carisa interested. That was the real power of Chinese.
Now I’m back home. But I still remember what I’ve told to Carisa. Chinese characters have a long history, they are being developed and changed for centuries. From the very beginning, they are describing shapes in people’s daily life. And the characters evolved, deformed, changed and became more abstract or more simpler along the path of history. Telling the stories of every character takes time! But every Chinese kids will learned about that in school. Because our language carries the very information about culture and history. I’m so excited when I think of it. So, we are lucky being a Chinese in this respect.
If you are also interested in how single characters could change along time, please see the following web page I’ve found just now:
How Chinese character evolves (汉字的演变过程).
That is one exciting thing I’ve experienced today. Hope you will like this story!
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From http://pipi275.blog.sohu.com/101889641.html[/caption]