One Hundred, 100 and Bai

Today, April turns to 100 days old. See how fast she grows


Here is the Chinese words for 100 days

First one is the same as Baidu's first character; the second means day, Pronunciation: /tian/

July 7th, Valentine's day

Tomorrow, Aug 11 2005, the 7th day of the 7th month in the Chinese lunar calendar, is the Chinese Valentine's Day or Girl's Day.

Once upon a time, there is a poor cow boy living on a farm. Though this cow boy is poor, but he is hard-working, warm-hearted and always ready to help others. One day he met a beautiful girl, and they fell in love with each other at the first sight. Soon they got married and lived happy lives since then. But what the cow boy did not know was that his wife was a maid of the Queen of the Sky Palace (who we called in Chinese "Wang Mu Nian Nian"). And the Queen was very angry when she found out about this. So she took the girl back to the Sky Palace. When the cow boy found his wife was gone, he ran after them and tried to get his wife back.

As he got closer and closer to the Queen and his wife, the Queen cast a spell and made The Milky Way Galaxy between them so that the cow boy couldn't get closer any more. Even though they were separated by the Galaxy, they still loved each other very much. Finally, the Queen was moved by their love, so she allowed them to meet each other on the night of 7/7 every year. On that day, thousands of magpies (in Chinese, magpie is the lucky bird) flew to the sky. A pie-bridge accross the Galaxy was made for them.

And 7/7 is called

in Chinese.
First one is seven, the second one means night (pronunciation: /shee/)

Four, Five, ... Ten and Baidu

As I promised a couple of days ago, I am going to put number four to number ten on my blog. So here you go:



From left to right:
1. Pronunciation: /si/ Meaning: Four
2. Pronunciation: /wu/ Meaning: Five
3. Pronunciation: /lyou/ Meaning: Six
4. Pronunciation: /chi/ Meaning: Seven
5. Pronunciation: /ba:/ Meaning: Eight
6. Pronunciation: /jeo/ Meaning: Nine
7. Pronunciation: /shi/ Meaning: Ten

And the biggest news this week in search engine area (or even IT area) would be Baidu went public and its stock price doubled (or tripled) at the end of the first day. Baidu's name is picked from a very famous sentence of a Chinese poem by a great poet - Xin Qiji(1140 A.D.—1207 A.D.) (辛弃疾) who lived in Song dynasty. The name has two characters: Bai and Du.

Bai means hundred; Du means times
A hundred times? What does that mean? I said it was picked from a sentence in a poem. That sentence is saying that a guy has been searching for a girl thousands of hundreds of times, still can't find her; but when he turns his head, her dream girl is standing right there. Make sense?

An old joke

Once upon a time, there is a rich guy living in a village. Though he is rich, he does not know any word at all (i.e., illiteral). He does not want his son to be like him, so he hires a tutor, who can teach his son to read and write.

The first day, the tutor teaches the kid "one"; the second day, the tutor teaches him "two", the third day, the tutor teaches "three". At the end of the third day, the rich guy asks his son what he learned from the tutor. The kid tells his father he learned "one", "two", and "three" in school and writes them down on a piece of paper. As the rich guy sees the three characters, he laughs "Haha, so easy! You don't need the tutor any more." So he fires the tutor.

One month after that, the rich guy wants to invite a friend to his house. So he asks his son to write an invitation. His friend is called Mr. Wan (万, meaning ten thousand). The poor kid starts writing 6 a.m. in the morning and couldn't finish it after 6 hours. When his father checks back at noon. The poor kid complains "Why does your friends have such a HUGE surname? I have written only 500 lines till now".

Okay, this the HUGE word


Pronunciation: /wan/
Meaning: ten thousand

Pat, your feeling is right. You actually foresee change of the trend before it happens. ;-) I am going reveal "four" to "ten" in my next post.

Mom's instinct

April, here is Mom's first post on your blog. I have so many feelings from the day you were born, but really don't know where to start. Hmm... let's talk about instinct first.

When I was discharged from hospital, an old lady told me "you are a mom now, you can use your instinct to take care of your baby!" I was so moved at that time, but not sure what instinct was. But gradually, I felt it more clearly from many small things, especially when I fed you at night. Sometimes, you are fussy at night, if it's not caused by hunger, I'll put your hand in my hand, and after a while you'll calm down and sleep again. At that moment, I feel really pround of myself and excited to expect more with you in the future.

It's so great to be a mom :-)

Three days from three months old, lesson three

On Aug 4, Apil is going to be three months old. In Chinese, three not only means three, sometimes it means many also. A lot of Chinese idioms has the character "three". Like "one" and "two", "three" in Chinese has a very simple and straight forward form

Pronunciation: /san/
Meaning: number three

Three straight lines: the middle one is the shortest, the top one is longer, and the bottom one is the longest. Three is no rules or requirements that the top line must be how much longer than the middle one or the bottom one must be how much longer than the top one. As long as it's balanced and looks beautiful, then it's fine.

Chinese is not that hard, right? One straight line is "one", "two" is two lines, and "three" is three lines. So what about "four", "five", ... "thousand", and "ten thousand"? ;-)