For those who are not familiar with the Chinese zodiac signs, I wrote about it in this post. This year being the Year of the Monkey, I decided to introduce Tiger to one of the Chinese classics, Journey to the West ( 《西游记》）
As with many Chinese children, Tiger's first introduction to this Chinese classic is through animation:
After seeing him become enamoured with the cartoon above, I told Tiger that the cartoon shows only a very selection of the monkey's journey, and that it is part of a very long Chinese novel. He immedidately asked me get him the story. I got him the abridged, single-book version of the classic to see how he got on with the story. At 528 pages, the abridged version gives a good overview of the actual novel but when I asked Tiger whether he read about the characters' encounters with certain demons, Tiger realised that there are many juicy and interesting adventures that are being left out, so he asked me to get him the unabridged, four-volume version:
Seeing Tiger read this Chinese classic novel in English translation (I read the original Chinese version) brings back memory of my own experience of reading Pride and Prejudice in Chinese translation at about 12 years old. Obviously it is always preferable to read a story in its original language as certain linguist nuances and subtleties are often lost in in the translation process, but where one's language skills are not up to the required standard to allow one to read the original text, then finding a good translated version is the next best thing to do.
When Tiger has read the four books through twice (it took him about a week), I showed him a TV series based on the book. While this classic has been adapted into movies and other performances many times over the years (the latest one being a new movie based on one of the major adventures from the book):
the 1986 TV version is the one that I think stays closest to the original novel, and the actor who played the monkey is acknowledged as unsurpassed in his interpretation of the character:
Journey to the Westis the most popular, accessible of the four major Chinese classics. Even those who have not read the book would know about a number of the fantastical adventures of the main characters in the story. However, although the story is written in the form of a historical fantasy/myth, the story has a much deeper, spiritual meaning to it, in a very similar way that The Lord of the Rings is so much more than a fantasy story.
The following video is rather appropriate as a new year wish from me to you: may your year be full of wonderful adventures! I know mine will be!
(I know those are apes in the video but they belong to the same
primate family as monkeys. Besides, they make me laugh, so that'll do
for Chinese New Year. I'm sure Sun Wukong would approve!)
*Disclosure: some links are affiliate links, which means I earn a commission if you click
through and buy something.
The Year of the Monkey started last Monday. The celebration usually lasts 15 days so we have two weeks to mark this significant Chinese festival.
As with last year, Tiger and I found an Chinese New Year-related activity to do in London. This time, the National Gallery had a short workshop on decorating the Peking Opera mask, so we went along and did that.
Although the workshop emphasised creativity, which Tiger exercised plenty of, his mask doesn't look particularly Chinese in colour or design, so I asked him to read the Origins of Chinese Art and Craftas well as Lianpu in order to look into the significance of the design and colours of the various traditional Peking opera masks to understand that they are not chosen randomly. We also found the following clip useful to give us a better understanding of this art form:
From the National Gallery, we walked to Chinatown to buy a few special items in preparation for the Chinese New Year as well as to eat a hearty meal. It is interesting to see that we have chosen exactly the same food as last year.
Once we got home, we started decorating the house by putting up various decorative items around the house, much like what people would do to decorate their homes for Christmas.
Many of the Chinese decorations have symbolic meanings that usually mean well-wishes and the ushering in of good fortune and prosperity for the family. Unlike a child who grows up in the East who will understand the symbolism behind the various Chinese decorations through sheer exposure to the culture in his environment, Tiger does not have such luxury so he has to find out about the symbolic meaning of the various decorations through reading books.
This year's New Year's Eve dinner was quite special in that I bought the 'Yu Sheng' (鱼生) from Chinatown.
This dish is like a raw salmon salad that is only eaten during the Chinese New Year period, and is a tradition of Chinese living in Southeast Asia. It is a dish to be eaten with family and friends as a way to welcome prosperity for everyone in the new year:
*Disclosure: some links are affiliate links, which means I earn a commission if you click
through and buy something.
The above clip is a very famous verse, 《醉花阴》，written by the Song dynasty female poet, Li Qingzhao (李清照）, about how badly she missed her husband who was away on official business on the Chongyang Festival (重阳节).
Chongyang Festival falls on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar, hence it is also called the Double Ninth Festival.
The festival took place a week ago on Wednesday. As is customary with traditional Chinese festivals, there are special food to go with it, so I spent a whole day in the kitchen making the various desserts from scratch, as these specific festive food cannot be bought in the UK.
These are by no means the only type of dessert to be had in the traditional sense. I only made what I can manage to do with the ingredients I could find:
Besides eating specific food, there are so specific customs associated with the Chongyang Festival.
Usually the Chinese people will go for a hike on the hills or mountains on this day to be in touch with nature. Since we don't have hills or mountains near us, Tiger and I got our nature fix by doing some gardening.
You might have noticed that the chrysanthemum flower features very prominently at the Chongyang Festival -- hence Tiger's gardening task was to pot a bunch of chrysanthemum. To the Chinese people, the chrysanthemum flower symbolises elegance and courage. It is therefore a significant symbol of autumn for us.
Tiger asked whether there is a poem that goes with the Chongyang Festival, to which I replied that there are many but the most beautiful is the verse by Li Qingzhao, which is shown in the clip at the beginning of this post. He is not ready to learn it yet though, as the depth of emotions described in the verse and the masterful use of language are beyond his comprehension at present.
The Sunday that has just gone by was the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节）. For the Chinese, it was a time for contemplation and family togetherness. I cannot find any better clips about the festival than the ones I found last year, so Tiger and I watched those for review. After all, a tradition is such because it has been observed and practised consistently for over a millenia, so there is no need to watch a new video every year because the legends and practices associated with the festival are the same.
I found myself panicking in the middle of last week, having realised that I did not have sufficient traditional paper lanterns and mooncakes for the occasion. Luckily, I was able to order them on the internet and receive them just in time!
I wanted us to make a simple craft to mark the occasion. Since we have made paper lanterns before, we decided to paint appropriate motifs onto glass jars and turn them into glass lanterns by putting a tealight in each. While the motifs turned out well, the effect was not as good in the evenings with the tealights in them. I am going to add more colours to the glass paintings to see whether that helps to transform the glass jars into votive candles.
In addition, Tiger is learning a new classical Chinese poem for the occasion. Last year he learnt the poem，Contemplation on a Quiet Night 《静夜思》, by the Tang dynasty poet, Li Bai (李白）. This year I have chosen another poem related to the festival, again by the same poet. This year's poem is titled The Ancient Moon Recital 《古朗月行》.
The original poem has eight lines but Tiger is only learning the first half of it, i.e. the first four lines. The reasons for that are: (1) the use of language in the second half of the poem is more complicated, and (2) the tone of the second half of the poem is infused with sadness as the poet alludes to the political instability of his time.
Tomorrow is Mother's Day in the UK, so I thought it to be very appropriate to teach Tiger yet another classical Chinese poem from the Tang dynasty that relates to this theme, <<游子吟>> (Hymn of the Traveller) by Meng Jiao (孟郊).
The best interpretation (in my personal opinion) of this poem can be found here, with the poem being sung in the traditional style accompanied by a wonderful dramatisation.
Mothers are traditionally revered in the Chinese culture for the love they give and sacrifices they make to bring up children.
While all this learning about mothers and the wonderful things they do and represent was going on, I also managed to persuade Tiger that it would be a very nice gesture to make a card of some sort for Mother's Day, so we sat down to draw a pretty flower.
We followed the instructions from this video, with mixed results. Tiger is not entirely happy with how his flower has turned out, even though it looks fine to me.
I am guessing that perhaps having to memorise, recite, and translate the new Tang
poem has fried his brain for the day, so compelling him to draw a flower when he did not initiate the project himself has proven to be a bad idea.
Fortunately, I was drawing alongside Tiger so at least between us we have one drawing that is more satisfactory, and that we are happy to dedicate to all the mothers we know, especially to my own mother and my mother-in-law.
The Chinese New Year ended on Thursday with the Lantern Festival (元宵节). Compared to last year, my effort at this year's Chinese New Year celebration is somewhat lacklustre. However, I console myself that we have at least managed to focus on having Chinese dishes this past week.
The recipes have been adjusted for our dietary requirements:
We also pulled out our copy of The Warlord's Puzzle to have a play with tangrams, a 7-piece puzzle from ancient China that Tiger had a go with nearly five years ago.
The appeal of the tangrams is its deceptive simplicity. There are only three shapes and seven pieces. However, as we have found, to solve the puzzles are not an easy task. Tiger has been working through a tangrams puzzle book last week just for the fun of it. At first, he was quite frustrated with hiimself for not being able to solve the puzzles immediately but after a few rounds, he started to be able to visualise how the different pieces can be combined together in numerous ways. From then on, he was able to solve a few puzzles on his own.
I used the study guide that accompanies the book for activity ideas and the one that caught Tiger's interest most was that of writing a cinquain, which is a 5-line patterned poetry form that bears some resemblance to the nature poems written by ancient Chinese poets.
It appears that the patterned format of cinquains has a strong appeal to Tiger, so not only did he enthusiastically write three of them, he even went as far as editing and rewriting each one a few times before he was happy with the final result. In the process of editing his various drafts, Tiger happily highlighted to me that he was employing the write-in-the-margin lesson that he has learnt from Tolkien not so long ago.
We had time to have another poetry tea with a Chinese snack (sesame cookies) in the week, so I taught Tiger to recite another Tang poem about spring: "Early Spring" (早春) by Han Yu (韩俞)
This poem describes the beautiful scene of a street in Chang'an (长安), the capital city during the Tang dynasty, in the early spring drizzle. After having the meaning of the poem explained to him, Tiger was attracted to its sound and rhythm so he learnt the poem easily and quickily, and he even sang the poem alongside the clip above! Poetry, regardless of the language it is written in, portrays a sense of linguistic beauty and mastery to its reader/listener. I am very glad to see Tiger showing much joy and pride in reciting and translating classical Chinese poetry very well. After all, having an intimate relationship with classical Chinese poetry is part of identifying with the soul of the Chinese culture.
Since it is the Chinese New Year, we have a good excuse to do another Chinese-themed tea. As with the previous Chinese tea we had during the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节), our Chinese New Year tea was filled with traditional Chinese snacks:
Peanut butter mochi (花生米糬)
Sesame mochi (芝麻米糬)
Peanut dainties (花生酥)
Mung bean patties (绿豆酥)
Fuzhou cyrstal puffs (福洲水晶饼)
Pandan rice cake (香兰叶糕)
Alongside enjoying the snacks and drinking rose tea, Tiger learned a new poem -- <<春晓>> (Spring Dawn) by another Tang dynasty poet, Meng Haoran (孟浩然).
This poem depicts the poet's contemplation upon a dawn in springtime. Given that the Chinese New Year is also called the Spring Festival (春节) as it marks the beginning of spring in the Chinese calendar, learning this particular poem seems very appropriate.
Besides memorising and reciting the poem, Tiger also learnt how the poem can be depicted as a painting and a song,
as well as a piece of music that is popular during the Chinese New Year.
Monday was the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节), the fifteenth day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar.
There are many legends about this festival, the best known one being the legend of Chang'e:
As with many ancient Chinese legends that were originally orally transmitted, there are many different versions of the same story. The version that is depicted in the clip above differs slightly from the ones that Tiger learns from the books or from the ones I heard as a child:
I asked Tiger for a narration of the various legends about the festival and he rattled off three superb narrations of the various stories he has read. I was so amazed by his new-found willingness to provide a long narration that I forgot to type them out as he spoke, so unfortunately I have no record of them but at least I now know that Tiger is able to narrate beautifully when he can be bothered to.
After his narrations, I told him the different versions of the legends that I learnt as a child. Using these different versions, we discussed about the beauty and drawbacks of the ancient oral tradition to transmit knowledge and wisdom. I also told Tiger about the lesser known, related stories of:
(1) the only other human occupant on the moon (besides Chang'e), Wu Gang (吴刚), and his divine punishment of having to chop down a self-healing osmanthus tree, and
(2) the Jade Rabbit (玉兔).
These two stories are beautifully depicted below:
As with all major Chinese festivals, the Mid-Autumn Festival is to celebrate family togetherness with specific symbolic foods.
The food that is specifically tied to the Mid-Autumn Festival is the mooncake (月饼), so called because of its traditional round shape that symbolises the moon, union, and togetherness.
Our double-yolk and walnut mooncakes with date paste. Yum!
There are many varieties of mooncakes, depending on the regions in which they originate. The type that is most widely available in the West is the Cantonese type. Other varieties of mooncakes are explained in the clip below.
Other than the traditional custom of consuming the mooncake as a symoblic festive food, there is also a more political association in medieval Chinese history. In the 14th century, the ethnic Chinese used the mooncake to conceal revolutionary messages that led to the toppling of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, and the subsequent establishment of the Ming dynasty.
Besides the mooncake, the other symbolic item of the Mid-Autumn festival is the lantern.
In a similar fashion to the Yuanxiao Festival (元宵节) that marks the end of the Chinese New Year, lanterns are lit and displayed at the Mid-Autumn Festival, with riddles to be solved. However, the difference is that the public display of lanterns at the Mid-Autumn Festival encompasses all kinds of shapes, sizes and colours. Moreover, Chinese children in the Southeast Asian countries also have the additional practice of carrying lanterns in a procession.
The traditional custom is to sit outside in the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival to admire the moon whilst enjoying tea and mooncake.
We stood outside for a short while to admire the full moon and the very bright moonlight.
It has been very chilly in the evenings here so we decided to alter the tradition slightly to suit our circumstance by having a Chinese version of poetry tea in the afternoon instead.
The format follows that of our usual English version of poetry tea, except that:
we ate mooncakes instead of scones or biscuits;
we drank rose tea instead of peppermint tea;
we used our traditional Chinese tea set instead of an English tea set;
we worked on Chinese classical poetry instead of English poetry.
I used this opportunity to show Tiger the proper procedures of using the Chinese tea set and to some of the Chinese tea etiquette:
An additional aspect of the Mid-Autumn Festival is the poetic connection, which lends itself very well to the format of poetry tea. There are many classical Chinese poetry about the moon and the feeling of home-sickness associated with not being able to be with one's family at this particular time of the year, the most basic of which is Contemplation on a Quiet Night (静夜思):
I taught Tiger to recite the poetry, followed by discussing about its structure, rhythm and rhyme, as well as the poet's choice of words. Naturally, we also worked on its meaning.
The final piece of work Tiger was to do was to write the pinyin (phonetic tones) for every character of the poem and to write below each verse its English translation in coherent sentences without losing the poetic meaning of the original verses. He was given the tasks prior to my showing him the clip above so he was pleased to see that he has completed the tasks correctly. After some practice (and a few pieces of mooncake), Tiger is able to recite this poem fluently in Mandarin as well as translate it instantly. This poem is now part of his daily memory work.
Since we have learned this poem, it makes sense to know a bit more about the poet, Li Bai (李白), the 'immortal poet' from the Tang dynasty.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is such a poetic time that this post will be incomplete without leaving you with another beautiful depiction in sand art:
The song that accompanies the clip above is set to verses from another classical Chinese poetry (水调歌头) by Su Shi (苏轼), a famous poet from the Song dynasty. These verses are more complex than Contemplation on a Quiet Night (静夜思) so we will only learn them in a few years' time, after Tiger has acquired sufficient knowledge of the Chinese language to meaningfully appreciate the sentiments described in the verses.
At Home with Chinese
We spent most of this week at home focusing on Chinese.
As the school year is coming to a close, Tiger has to
prepare for his end-of-year Chinese exam and to complete the end-of-term
projects set by his Chinese teacher.
There are six projects to complete, which contribute to 20% of his yearly assessment:
1. to draw and label various parts of the body;
2. to construct sentences using specific words;
3. to translate a Chinese nursery rhyme into English;
The nursery rhyme that we chose to translate is a traditional one to Chinese children, in much the same way as Jack and Jill is to a Western child.
4. to make a greeting card based on a traditional Chinese festival and write appropriate greetings inside the card;
5. to research and write about a traditional Chinese festival;
6. to research and write two sets of questions and answers about some geographical aspects of China.
Tiger wanted to make a Chinese New Year card because, being a typical boy who seeks the shortest way to get a job done, he finds that the illustrations of this year's (Year of the Horse) card can be easily done by a few brush strokes so that was what he did, using a reference photo from a google search and following along using gold paint. The result turns out alright, as seen in the red card above. The illustration shows a combination of the year 2014 with the word 'horse' in traditional Chinese character.
We decided to look into another traditional Chinese festival for our research project. There are so many festivals to choose from, but we decided to learn more about one that has just passed (the Dragon Boat festival) quietly in our household because I couldn't get all the ingredients together to make the rice dumplings...
Note to myself: please stay on top of the festivals!
Why the dragon boats and rice dumplings? Many traditional Chinese festive customs have to do with actual historical accounts. It is no different on this occasion:
Although we're not officially studying the Vikings at the moment, the flexibility of homeschooling has allowed us the opportunity to visit this rare exhibition -- the first Viking exhibition in England in 30 years -- and to see for ourselves the longest Viking warship that has ever been found!
Hence, even though Vikings are not on our current schedule, we feel it is certainly worth taking a little time out to refresh our memory about what we've learnt about the Vikings (we studied them two years ago) in addition to looking at real Viking artefacts that we hadn't seen before.
While we were at the exhibition, we were treated to additional interaction with the learning coordinators, both inside the exhibition and afterwards, who provided more directions and suggestions on looking at the exhibits to the children.
I wasn't sure whether Tiger remembers what he learnt from two years ago, but he apparently does, as shown by his enthusiastic and accurate responses to the quiz at the end of the visit.
This year is the Chinese Year of the Horse. What does that mean?
How did the idea of the 12 animals come about? Tiger attended a workshop at the British Museum that focused on the traditions of the Chinese New Year. The workshop took place in Room 33 where the children listened to stories about the Chinese zodiac and identified symbols of the zodiacs in the artefacts in the room.
Back at home, we learned more about the background and details of the artefacts we saw in the museum by exploring the Ancient China and the Early Imperial China websites.
Tiger also verified the story of the Chinese zodiac he heard at the museum by reading the following book:
and watching the following clip:
The Chinese zodiac is significant to the Chinese people in that not only is it a way of keeping track of the passing of each year, each animal is also believed to bear certain personality characteristics that are shared by those who are born under the same zodiac sign -- a similar concept to the Western astrology. Such characteristics featured strongly in the traditional Chinese society to determine one's compatibility with another in terms of business dealings and even marriage.
Tiger wants to remember the sequence of the 12 zodiac animals so I printed out the template found here so that he can refer to them as he recites a Chinese rhyme to help him remember the sequence.
The following clip is a very creative depiction of the story of the 12 zodiac animals using a combination of Chinese ink painting and the pictograph characters:
Since the clip above got us curious about the development of the Chinese characters from ancient pictographs to the present-day script, we found it useful to watch a few clips on the zodiac characters' developments, such as:
Following that, I made a sequencing and matching game for Tiger to match the 12 zodiac
animals in pictures to their corresponding forms of Chinese
characters in order of evolution from ancient pictographs to modern scripts, i.e.
The Oracle Bone script is one of the earliest form of Chinese writing. Its discovery is absolutely fascinating, as shown in the following 3-part documentary:
Looking at Oracle Bones inscriptions (where the bones are sometimes called "dragon bones") also inspired Tiger to investigate the differences between the Western dragon and the Chinese dragon in terms of:
different social perspectives between the Western and Chinese dragons
different depictions between the Western and Chinese dragons
different dwellings between the Western and Chinese dragons
different physical features between the Western and Chinese dragons
Being born in the year of the monkey, Tiger felt it would be highly appropriate for him to watch an animated film about his favourite character, Sun Wukong,as a finale to his study of the Chinese zodiac.
