The joys of learning Chinese.

This is a story – we learned this on my Chinese course, lo, these many moons ago – it impresses Chinese people no end when you can relate it.


Why does it impress Chinese people? Well, this is how it’s said – each character also has a tone, of course, rising, falling, low or even.

And, believe it or not, it actually means something:

A poet named Shi lived in a stone house and liked to eat lion flesh. He vowed to eat ten of them. He would go o the market in search of lions. One day, at ten o’clock, he happened to see ten of them there. Shi killed the lions with arrows. Picking up their bodies, he carried them back to his stone house. His house was dripping with water, so he asked his servants to dry it off. The he bagan to eat the bodies of the ten lions. It was only then that he realised that these were really ten stone lions. Try to explain the riddle. (I have no idea about the riddle 🙂

10 thoughts on “The joys of learning Chinese.”

  5. Ah so, it an extended Chinese metaphor, Bravo. Poets use them to great effect. It means whatever it means. 😉 It would probably take a lifetime to work it out!

  8. Bravo, good evening.

    Boy, did this bring back memories?

    In 1960, Dad had just been civilianised and we had come home to Caledonia (stern and wild). The intention was to live in Perth and I had gone into First Year at Perth Academy but my parents had not yet found the right property in the Fair City. So, we were staying with relatives in Fife and Dad was driving me the 28 miles to and from school every day.

    The Home Service with the ‘Today’ programme, presented by Jack de Manio, was our listening of choice every morning. One glorious day, Jack told the ‘shi’ story and then they played it in the original Chinese.

    In those days, it took a while to build a head of steam but I remember that the letters flooded in demanding a repeat. They played it again every week or so for about a month.

    Different world!

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