Tuesday, March 31, 2009

How to Spoil a Holiday


It could be that our Frith Street 'Lao Shi' sees us chewing our pencils and decides we're wondering how to spend our holiday free time. Or maybe he thinks we'll forget everything if we don't attend a twice-weekly Mandarin class for a whole month. So he doles out these two sheets of characters for us to translate. No sign of a glossary

Zao Gao! It's printed on on recycled paper so the lines run together, especially when the characters have about fifteen strokes. Even worse, it's in traditional 'fanti zi' style characters instead of the simplified 'jianti zi'. It's the kind that's designed to be read from top to bottom instead of left to right.

Oh well- at least one page has a picture to clue me about the story. Something to do with a big vase on a boat.


I'm off to Cornwall for four days next week, regardless.

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