Chinese books

I just spent $70+ on Chinese books. Children's books to be precise.

Inspired by the presentation on Chinese books by the Chinese teachers at CHIJ Pri last Friday night, I visited Bras Basah Complex yesterday afternoon and spent the better part of the afternoon at a bookshop there, browsing.

With the help of the very friendly bookseller who took the time to understand my requirements, I managed to find several books which met my needs, namely:

1) easy to read - hey, if I can't read them, how to read them to the children?
2) good themes and storylines
3) eye-catching illustrations

The lady bookseller made lots of suggestions of books that might interest children of different ages, enthusiastically bringing out this book and that book and so on and this eventually grew to quite a high pile that I slowly sifted through.

As I browsed, I made a few discoveries:

1) Chinese is no longer such a fearsomely insurmountable language to me anymore. I used to be phobic about the language, possibly thanks to bad memories of being forced to memorise archaic idioms and sayings and having the culture, the stories thrust on me instead of being gently sold and explained to me. Since I got my D7 in Chinese in my 'A' levels, I have never touched another Chinese book. Apart from reading signs in hawker centres and learning to differentiate between Chai Tou Kao and Chow Guo Tiao, I've never voluntarily sat down to read anything chinese, let alone read a book for pleasure or enter a chinese bookstore. And yet, here I was, sitting down to browse at a Chinese bookstore, finding the experience not only non-threatening but actually very enjoyable. Best of all, I could actually read the books! I was thrilled to find out that my rusty skills were not as bad as I thought they were. I could actually understand the meaning, and even if I skipped over one or two words that I was unsure of, the general tone of the sentence and the radicals used in the words which puzzled me generally gave me a good clue about the meaning. So it came as a thrilling revelation that I was not as bad as I thought, and that I actually liked it.

2) I used to pooh-pooh Chinese books, thinking they were second-class handmaidens to their English counterparts. Let me put on record here that I am humbling myself to say I was wrong. Those Chinese books I saw yesterday are beautifully illustrated and printed. Some came in gorgeously textured paper, some had bright primary colours, others muted water colours but all were richly illustrated. And the stories - wow! They were actually great stuff. Some were funny, a few bordering on crass body-parts humour that always turned on the pre-schoolers, especially boys. I placed an order for one called 小象的大便 (The Elephant's Poo) which was out of stock - I think my kids would like it.

Others were poignant and meaningful - I bought a book in black and white that was titled 不是我的错 (Its Not My Fault). The pages showed more or less the same illustrations - very simple b/w drawings that showed a group of children and a small child crying in the foreground. On each page, one of the children from the group would be featured with a line, denying their responsibility or awareness, or trying to finger someone else, or laying blame etc. And then right at the end of the book, the writer asked: Whose fault is it then? And then the subsequent pages showed photographs of devastation, sadness and tragedy - famine, genocide, a traffic accident, pollution, war.

The bookseller was surprised that I wanted it because some parents did not want to show their children the disturbing scenes at the back of the book. But I think the book represents a good opportunity as a talking point about personal responsibility, about the need to stand up for what we believe, stand up for what is right. It's similar in concept to the book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein (my kids loved the English version but incidentally there was also one there in Chinese!)

Apart from those I also ended up buying a book on courage (勇气), a set of books on personal hygiene, friendship and social habits, a hilarious one about the skewed friendship between a mouse and a tiger and a very sweetly funny one about a cute rabbit bemoaning about how much he disliked his mother (always very mean, always in a hurry, liked to sleep late, didn't allow him his sweets and worst of all, could not marry him!) and how he decided to run away. It reminded me of Owain and how sometimes he would say: Mummy, you're the smartest, most beautiful girl in the whole earth and the whole universe and I will always love you very very very much! But then sometimes when he's cross, he would also say: Ugh! You're the meanest mummy in the whole world!

And then I also bought one for myself - my very first Chinese book! 向左走, 向右走 (Turn Left, Turn Right) is a very poignant love story written and illustrated by a Taiwanese artist simply known as Jimmy Liao. I think it was made into a movie starring the very dishy Kaneshi Takeshiro - yum - must get my hands on that too, but first, about the book! Very lyrical in the language, and very sweetly pretty water colour illustrations with a good use of space in the design and layout. Something about it really spoke to me. It was easy to read - one line a page! And while I understood most of the words, I do need the help of a dictionary occasionally. A friend said this was a real chore when I told her what I was doing, but surprisingly, I did not find it so. I enjoyed digging the word out from the depths of the dictionary, painstakingly by counting the number of strokes etc. The effort was rewarding because once I knew the meaning, the sentence became more whole and more alive and the lyricism of the words really took root.

I did not ever, in my life, think that I would one day read a Chinese book and enjoy it, or even enjoy poring over a dictionary counting strokes. But I do now. What a happy discovery.

I started this process warily, wanting only to help my children develop an interest in the language, but I myself had no real passion for it. But now the balance is shifted - I find myself actually enjoying these beautiful pieces of work, relishing the beauty, ideas and cadence of the words, marvelling at succinctly compact it can be.

I am taking baby steps and learning to see what is beautiful in this language that was oh-so baffling to me for so many years. I guess if I can do it, surely my kids can too. Surely, hopefully, some enthusiasm will rub off on them? Hopefully, with mummy also learning alongside them, together with them, they will not find the going so hard.