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.