Dear Mary, Chinese people always get very busy before and during and after the Spring Festival, so do I. Busy with what? You might ask. Well, usually busy with buying a lot of things, foods, clothes, shoes, and with meeting a lot of friends and relatives and teachers and so on. Spring Festival is an opportunity that Chinese expect to come together, to have fun, to have get-togethers, to reunite the whole family. It’s something like Westerners’ thanksgiving and Christmas, but maybe more than that. During such a hustle and bustle of the period, reading, no less than answering, (is the comma needed here?) your essays has become one of my favorite activities. It takes time, but I enjoy it. Let me try them one by one.1, About what the census reveals, I believe that that the census shows is true. It’s a fact that in most cases only those who’re well-educated and are of privileged background can afford to emigrate into other countries, which are usually of better living conditions and better environment. I guess Canada is one of the countries that people around the world have been dreaming of getting in, and it’s not easy for Canada government to balance all these different people with different cultures. The government, though, has done a good job. By what it has done, Canada has won the respect from others. I believe that.
I am not quite sure about whether the story of houseflies and fly swatters is true or not, but I can tell without a doubt that in Chinese history there was such things happening. It’s also during the period that I have been mentioning every now and then. At that time, people thought flies, rat, mosquitoes, and another—maybe cockroach—Four Nuisance. A country wild campaign was launched. Things like this often happened during the Great Man’s reign. I have little idea about what happened later or what was the result of the campaign, though, people today still are suffering with the flies, mosquitoes, rat and roaches.
Young men often get lost about what really make them look more masculine or mature or tough. They sometimes mistake bad things like smoking, spitting wildly, hitting the bottle as the thing that makes them tougher, that makes them more attractive to opposite sex, they are dead wrong. Whatever, whenever, whoever, and wherever, only those who have character can have class. Young men will sooner or later realize this. You have my word, dear auntie.
I bet the old man we have been talking about must have once been stinged by those whom he thought are Chinese, and then he mistakes all that kind of people for Chinese. That’s really a pity.
Here’s a question for you, Mary. Why did you add a “the” before “Philippines”? Is that a fixed word of English?
2, About your correction on mine, No word can express my gratitude. I can imagine how it took your time and energy to correct it so carefully. You’ve made all the “i’s” dotted and all the “t’s” crossed. I don’t really know exactly how to use the semi-colon. I was just following my instinct. I am glad that I didn’t mistake. To tell you the truth, Mary, my face turned red after reading your correction carefully. Some of the mistakes were made with great carelessness and some has been confusing me for quite a time. Let me show you some of the confusions.I always get mad at the problem about “countable and uncountable words of English”. I didn’t expect “noise” to be counted, so I mistook the sentence everywhere as “it makes louder noise” instead of “it makes a louder noise”. :P Sometimes I even think English an unreasonable language, actually I still believe it is. For example, how come “equipment” is not countable while you can make “facility” “facilities” everywhere? How come “baggage” is not supposed to be counted whereas you can certainly tell how many bags one carries? How come one raises ten goats but just some sheep? Of course sheep resembles goats a lot. What about fish then? Why can’t I buy one fish but I must buy some fish? When it comes to “accident” and “disaster”, at the moment I was writing, I was confused about if I should add an “s” to both of them, now they are kept in my mind. Hehe, I know, they’ve been fixed, been generally accepted, and what I need to do is not to ask whys and just to obey the rules. What I wrote above is not to contradict your correction, not at all. Instead, I see them as spice in English. (Should I add an “s” to “spice” here?) After reading your corrections, I can tell you are one of the real knowledgeable and logical and sensible ladies I could ever meet. I do feel happy and lucky about this. Well, talking of what I said, “stupidity and superstition”, I am sure you wouldn’t be lost if you were a Chinese. That you guessed was right, but not complete…well, let me explain. What I wanted to say is, “Chinese people paid a high price for his (the leader’s) “stupidity and superstition” and for their “stupidity and superstition”, for their blind idolism toward the great man. Often, people who are superstish pay a price for their superstition, but what Chinese people have paid was likely the highest one in humans’ history.Thank you again for your kind and careful correction. I should’ve checked it over before making it on the forum, though, I learned a lot. Let me try to remember them all and not to make the old stupid mistakes again.
3, About the possible result of the firecrackers’ noise. I didn’t misunderstand you, Mary. Actually, I agree with your point of view about the motive to set off firecrackers from the distant past. We have the same story, isn’t that interesting? The story has been handed down from generation to another--- In the distant past there was a ghost named “Year”, very often, it appeared at the end of each year, especially at the midnight on New Year’s Eve. It showed up not for fun but for catching people and eating them. It was afraid of nothing but lights and loud sound, so the only way to chase it away from hurting people was to set off something that made lights and loud sound. That was how firecrackers were created. Sounds similar, huh? Things become different now. The ghost, “Year”, was scared so much that he dared not show up again from then on. However, people found setting off firecrackers fun! The noise the firecrackers make not only scares the fierce ghost away, but other people as well. What I see at the scene that firecrackers are blowing up is like this: people run away with scream, or with swear. “Gosh, how loud!”, they say, and they run away. I wouldn’t call that enjoyable, anyway. Well said, Mary! “Maybe they want them louder and louder because of damaged hearing!” See, it has been a vicious circle! I don’t know if they do cause hearing damage or even deaf problem, but it really happens. It’s been a luxurious dream that I had a quiet Spring Festival. I like meeting with friends and relatives; I like joining in get-togethers; I like having fun with others…but with enough sound, not deafening banging.It doesn’t matter that you seem to have digressed a little long way, that so have I. What you described sounds interesting except that a little bit difficult to imagine. :P By the way, as for the word “abreacted”, its root form is “abreact” and I used it as a past participle form in my response. It means “let off steam” of something like this. I am not sure if I used it in a right way, I just picked it up from my dictionary. Poor pan.
4, About the period that China was closed off from the whole world. It seems to me that you do know what I was exactly pointing to about the period. Certainly it was not about the book 1471. No relationship with the book. Unluckily, I know nothing about the book and I suppose it will take a lot of time to try to understand that kind of book, so, I give up. :P Time, you know, which is the thing that I have been hard-pressed for, I really can’t afford to look into the book you mentioned. I have to say so, your attitude towards writing about recent politics is quite sensible. So just let me follow you and stop talking my nonsensical ideas here. ^-^
Well, let me get to the last and the hardest question, what’s real greatness. A real great country is like a man, a man of sense and knowledge and good shape. Respectable, knowledgeable and does everything in a healthy way. Never stresses his ideas upon others; never tries threatening others; knows how to win respect from others; knows how to make himself stronger; in a sense, knows who he really is. Those who look like a tough guy, with a rod in his hand, force others to follow him, are not great at all but only a rough hooligan.
I am glad people are all busy with getting ready for things of the Festival, that enables me to think and write quietly. I didn’t mean to make the response so long. I just couldn’t help. Hope it wouldn’t only make you feel tired.
As the moment is around the New Year, I’d like to post it as a root essay. Or I would rather call it a composition for the year.
Wish you a happy New Year! Faithfully yours, Panpanpan.
