Penmanship lesson (or shall I say brushmanship?)

             We were given a lesson in writing Chinese.  Rather than representing speech sounds with letters, the system represents concepts using stylized symbols.

For instance, ren, is represented like this:

人

         Think of a person walking.

         This is the way the Chinese write ‘da,’ their word for big.

大

         To form the word for sky, ‘tian,’  we draw an extra line above the man figure:

天

         Tiananmen as in Tiananmen Square means ‘Gate of Heaven.’

天安门

         Notice that the third character in this place name looks a bit like a gate.

         Today, the Chinese use pens and pencils as we do.  But the system was designed for ink and a brush.  In some ways, it’s easier to write Chinese with this ancient equipment.