“Lesson 22: Reading”
“Gentlemen, what kind of tea would you like to drink?”
“Longjing, please.”
“Do you have chrysanthemum?”
“Chrysanthemum?”
“Yes, we do.”
“Longjing”
“And chrysanthemum”
My grandfather bought his first camera with his scholarship
And he carried a camera with him wherever he went
In his late years
He went out with a camera all the time
He took around three to four thousand pictures
Because he was always curious
He was interested in anything
As long as he was allowed to do that
In June, 1914
He and several other Chinese students at Cornell found an organization
Which was named Science Club
In 1915, Mr. Zhao Yuanren was studying at Harvard for a PhD
They wanted to start a magazine
To popularize scientific knowledge
They asked Zhu Shaoping to do the publication in Shanghai
My grandfather had diverse interests and extraordinary knowledge
Probably because he was an efficient translator
Yang Xinfo often assigned articles to him
In China, the music circle saw him as a musician
Later he was seen as a linguist
Liu Bannong and Hu Shi liked writing new-style poems
My grandfather liked the poems and he composed music for them
Hu Shi was close to him
When they were studying in the U.S.A
They worked together to write a paper on Chinese
And when he was translating Alice in Wonderland
The name of the Chinese version came from Hu Shi
“So they are similar in terms of ending”
“But they have different initial consonants and compound vowels”
“For example, in Cantonese”
“1、2、3、4、5、6”
“In Xiamen dialect”
“1、2、3、4、5、6”
“In Changsha dialect”
“1、2、3、4、5、6”
Later during the dialect survey
He was so happy
To visit those places
Such as the area of Wu dialect including Jiangsu and Zhejiang
Hubei, Hunan
Jiangxi and Anhui
He could master a dialect within a few days
Because he studied dialects with scientific methods
He got sick later in many places
But he liked such things
There was no piano
So he drew a keyboard to teach the children playing piano
He searched for interesting objects
He bought a set of toy windmill for my fourth aunt
He and my grandmother ended playing the toy themselves
It was until they had assembled it
That they realized it was for their daughter
So they asked her to stand in front of the windmill to take a picture with it
People usually avoid shadow on faces while photographing
But he intentionally let her face covered by shadow
To make her look funny
He enjoyed staying with his family
He wrote a chorus named Sing Sing Sing
Which had three parts at first
And after my third aunt was born
He added a new part
And when my fourth aunt was born, he again added a new part
On one occasion, my grandmother got pissed off
And argued with him for over two hours
After that
He suddenly said
“I finally know how to cook braised pork today”
And my grandmother was so mad
He was totally in his own world
My mom spent around twenty years sorting out the pictures
The publisher said we had to give the book a name
Then I suggested “interesting”
He was interested in one thing because he has curiosity
He didn’t pursue a result
But he was really happy after doing that
Because it was “interesting”
I think that’s what he was after