禾口

In the book Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert's friend mentioned that every city has a word. Rome's is "sex," the Vatican's is "power", and New York's is "achieve".

How about countries? A recent article in Wall Street Journal discussed what Chinese character reflected China the most.

It's 和.

If 和 is separated into two parts, they are 禾and口. 禾and 口 mean crop and mouth respectively. Every "mouth" is fed by "crop"-no one is starving. It seems match with the communist ideas quite well. (but is China still a communist country?)

和hé means "peace" , "harmony" and many others. 家和万事兴,和气生财and以和为贵are both Chinese sayings emphasising how important 和is. It brings you good luck and wealth. It is a virtue. Interestingly enough, these sayings tell us the promises of 和, but not many sayings out there show us how we can maintain it.

Maybe it's not about HOW, maybe it's all about the MUST to maintain it. One of the ways to maintain 和 is to punish any "act disturbing the peace of the society".

In some contexts, 和 is also pronounced as huò, it means "mix" and "blend". There are 56 ethnic groups and more than 6 religions in China, the meanings "mix" and "blend", to some extent, seems to reflect the reality quite well.

Though, I think it would be nice to have some "mixed VOICES" in China.

A poem that makes no sense, but...

makes you laugh! (hopefully)

One Saturday in September, Jun Wen got fed up with his school work, so we decided to do something more interesting:

(The poem is in Mandarin, and is rhyme with '-a')




我家有一个爸爸，
我家有一个妈妈。
我爸喜欢喝茶，
我妈喜欢吹喇叭。
妈吹喇叭，
爸就在地上乱爬，
爸吹喇叭，
感到尴尬。
因为他一吹，
妈就大骂，
妈大骂，
连鸟儿也乱爬。
对他们俩，
我简直没办法，
使弟弟想自杀，
妹妹很怕。
凡是我们在吵架，
奶奶就会说停一下。
妈妈感到尴尬，
低头坐下，
爸爸脸火辣辣，
开门离家。
弟弟感到内疚，
便去吃麻辣。
好好的一家，
到底在干吗？

Hope to read your (silly) poems in the future.
Think you are not creative enough?
Maybe all you need is an opportunity!

Language Style

In the summer of 2008, my friends and I went to Los Angeles to attend a friend's graduation ceremony. After staying in the same house for more than ten days, we acted, and talked each other. I remembered one of my favourite questions at that time was "really?", soon it became everyone's favourite question too.

It was a happy summer.

According to new research from psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin, mimicking other's language style shows a happy relationship. A psychology professor and a psychology graduate student teamed up to find out how people's language styles could affect each other, and how the language styles tell us about the relationship between two people. The happier the two people are in their relationship, the closer their language styles are. The researchers are now trying to analyse whether language style matching can be used to predict the beginning and end of romantic relationships.

Do you think a relationship stage can be truly revealed through analysing the language styles of the two people?

十卜十卜 Sahpbūk Sahpbūk Support Support

"十卜十卜 ^_^ "

I was lost for a bit before I got the meaning.

I got this message from Alan, one of my students in Three Dogs, after I sent him the link of this blog.

Cantonese is indeed a very interesting dialect, let me know if you can get the following right!

Mītsìh, ngóhdeih hóu ngāamkī, ngóh yātdihng sahpbūk néih!

Bilingual Babies

What do you do before your baby is born?

Apart from attending childbirth classes, shopping for baby-care basics, getting plenty of rest and eating right, have you thought about letting your unborn child listen to a second language? According to Science Daily, infants hear two languages in mothers' stomachs show interest in both languages after they are born. If you are thinking of raising a bilingual child, it's never too early to start doing it once you find out you are pregnant!

孩子出生以前，你会做什么?
想要培养一个双语孩子，怀孕时可开始对未出生的宝宝说第二语言。

孩子出生以前，你會做什麼?
想要培養一個雙語孩子，懷孕時可開始對未出生的寶寶說第二語言。

This post is dedicated to Eric and Christy. :-)