21 mars 2007
back into the swing of things
I studied two texts from my textbook last night. The texts were fairly short and the questions not overly detailed, so it didn't take too much time. The textbook is Core Chinese Reading- Intermediate/核心阅读-中级本 edited by 刘颂浩 and 林欢, published by 华语教学出版社 in 北京.
Last night I started with Unit 7, Text 2/第七单元课文二：
身高与态度
晏婴是齐国的丞相，个子很矮。有一次他坐着马车外出，赶车人的妻子从门缝里偷偷的看自己的丈夫。只见他坐在车上，鞭打着四匹马，洋洋自得，非常骄傲。晚上，丈夫回到家中时，他的妻子要求离婚。丈夫万万没想到妻子忽然会提出离婚，就问她原因。妻子说：”晏婴身高不过六尺，却能担任齐国的丞相，各个国家的人都知道他。今天我看他坐在车上，态度特别谦虚。现在再看看你，身高八尺，只不过是一个赶马车的，替别人服务罢了，可是你的态度呢？洋洋自得，满足得不得了。我因此请求离婚。“
丈夫设法留住了妻子。不过，从此以后，他的态度有了很大的改变。晏婴很奇怪，就问她。赶车人把实际情况告诉了晏婴。晏婴于是推荐他做了政府官员。
（译自司马迁《史记．管晏列传》。）
Alright, so it's surprisingly easy considering it's from the 史记 (by the way, I think I messed up the punctuation in there- can anybody help?), but then I just noticed the 译自- of course it's easy, it's translated from the classical. And it's a pretty simple story, no complicated plot twists or anything to throw the unsuspecting student off the trail. Very straightforward. Actually, the only question I have about this text is the measurement of people's height: My dictionary says 1 尺is a third of a metre. So that would make Yan Ying a little shorter than 2 metres, and the driver roughly 2.7 metres, right? Or is my maths mixed up? Or has the definition of 尺 changed over time?
Well, this text and its accompanying questions gave me a page full of new vocab, as per usual. Some of those words I'm supposed to know already, of course, but I'd forgotten. Nothing unusual there, especially considering how long it's been since I last opened the book. I answered the questions and got most of them right. Again, nothing unusual there. Then I moved on to 课文三：
天天必写
学习写作，最好的窍门就是“每天必写”，“天天拿笔”，哪怕是写几十个字也好。有人说工作多，事情多，我可也不比别人的少。就是那今天这个星期天来说吧，从早上出来，在外面转到现在还没有回家，可是，我今天就已经写了几十个字了。不要以为学了语文，一写就写出一篇博士论文，或者写出一部比《红楼梦》还好的小说，不要这样想。一般来说，写诗，写剧本，写小说，多少都有一些记录的性质，要打好基础，第一步就要学会“记”，每天记一件事。比如，昨天下了场小雪，你就把它记下来。诗当然不好写，把下雪记下来也不那么容易，不信，你试试看。现在布鞋，将来写小说时在想：“那天是怎么下雪来的？”那就麻烦了。写人就更难。《红楼梦》写了那么多姑娘，个个都那么好看，你来试试。你看到一个姑娘，把她写下来，寄给那个姑娘自己看看，他要不揍你才怪呢。“记”还挤不下来，就“创作”，那只能“闯祸”。
（选自老舍“从记事练起，天天练认真练“。《阅读与写作》，老舍，谢冰心等著，语文出版社，1992年。）
This was probably the easiest text of the book so far. I don't know if it's a sign of progress or what, but I only wrote down four new words. I discovered a fifth as I was typing it up, I thought I knew 怕, but I thought wrong, but as it turns out, I do know it, but in its basic meaning of 'fear', not in the context of 哪怕: 'even, even if, even though, no matter how', and now the text makes even more sense. I hate it when I get confused over a character, but at the same time I love it, because clearing up the confusion opens up a new aspect of the language that I hadn't known about before. Also, I really enjoyed reading the text. I guess it helps that I'm already a big fan of 老舍, but at the same time I found this passage to be a cool, down-to-earth introduction to a basic writing course. No bullshit, no pretence, just the basics of starting to write presented in good humour, one bloke to another. Cool.
So there you go, this is where my Chinese reading is at. I hope to improve this, both through this textbook and through real-world Chinese texts. I also hope that canalblog finds itself back on the right side of the firewall so I don't have to use a proxy to get here.