For the balance of this year: Uttarakhand (India) and Laos are the biggies, and then a number of shorter, closer, and more impromptu stops.
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BOOKS: “The Story of Chinese Characters” by Fang Zeng
Languages – The Story Of Chinese Characters: 汉字的故事 (Bilingual Chinese with Pinyin and English – Simplified Chinese Version) – Preschool, Kindergarten by Elite Panda bookMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s YouTube Channel
This story book is apparently perfect for preschoolers and definitely is for someone newly learning Chinese. It is the tale of a man who goes hunting and his mild trials and successes. It’s not a gripping tale, but that’s perfect for those new to the language as it allows simple language and concepts. The language is grammatically and semantically straightforward. This bilingual book presents Chinese characters, pinyin with tone markers, and the English translation all on the same page.
The story teaches a few rudimentary Chinese characters (person, mountain, boat, bird, etc.,) particularly ones that are either pictographic or lend themselves to pictographic memory tricks. (For those unfamiliar with Chinese, it is a common misconception that all the characters are pictographic. In fact, about eighty percent of characters appear as they do because of their spoken sound quality [i.e. they appear similar to another character with the same sound, but often with an entirely unrelated meaning.]) The illustrations not only tell the story but invokes the shape of the character that is under study.
I found this book useful for learning to read in Chinese. A little more separation of the pinyin and characters might be nice so one could cover it up to focus on reading characters, but I was clearly not the intended demographic. I don’t see any reason why the book couldn’t work either way, i.e. for English learning Chinese speakers as well as English speaking Chinese learners.
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DAILY PHOTO: Hari-Hara Betta
Drowned Dry [Haiku]
“A Glimpse” by Walt Whitman [w/ Audio]
A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-
room around the stove late of a winter night,
and I unremark'd seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love,
silently approaching and seating himself near,
that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and
going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together,
speaking little, perhaps not a word.
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The Gray [Haiku]
on a hilltop,
neighboring hill in clouds:
its dwellers in gray.
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DAILY PHOTO: Chikkaballapur Adiyogi
Pond Waves [Haiku]
“Cicada’s Cry” by Matsuo Bashō [w/ Audio]
the stillness --
soaking into stones
cicada's cry
Translation from: Higginson, William J. 1985. The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku. Tokyo: Kodansha Int. p. 11
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Ancient Mountains [Haiku]
ancient mountain:
now a pile of worn boulders,
under monsoon clouds.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 