How are you? I do hope that you are well and have an easy and relaxed weekend.

Saturday, when I thought of my topic of this letter, an idiom "Wen Gu Zhi Xin -- Gaining New Insights Through Reviewing Old Material" by the Chinese greatest ancient philosopher and educationalist -- Confucius (551B.C.-479B.C) jumped into my mind.

Do you know why? Since I started to adjust my Chinese Language Learning column, on the web site in my national holiday in early Oct, I have been reading some of my former textbooks in my student and teacher times and many reference books and last data online. The more reading, the more new things I have learned, the more weaknesses of mine to be realized, the more new ideas have jumped into my mind. A strong feeling is that much new knowledge is just coming from the old material.

I was quite confident about myself to be a Chinese language and literature teacher. I did not think it would be very difficult to do something in this field on the web site via my Chinese foundation. After all, almost all of my university classes had got marks 90 to 99. My Modern Chinese Language was 98, Chinese History was 100. After all, I passed the practice test by my former students who were more than 15 years older old than me. Can you imagine? They tested me via some Chinese classical Lyrics Tunes in the newspaper as soon as I reached their college. However, I won and my Chinese classical language and literature lesson got their warm applause and welcome, at least 7 of them wrote their first compositions as "My Teacher - Little (Younger) Ms. Zhang".

However, after I have re-read my Chinese Modern Language, Chinese Poetry History, Chinese Lyrics History and many reference books and data, I suddenly realized that I have forgotten something that I had learned and I did not really understand some of them in my student and teacher times yet.

For example, when I re-read the Chinese Pinyin Rules, I realized that I had not paid more attention to some Chinese characters's tones changing, when I was working on it. When I re-read Chinese Lyrics's history, I re-understood the relationship between lyrics and ancient folk songs and it is making me wonder what the affection of the modern folks to today's lyrics is? When I re-read the Chinese Character's origin and development, I just knew how Chinese radicals had been created and re-reviewed the distinguishing between Chinese radicals and Chinese character components and so on...

I have been involved myself into something I am studying deeply. I am learning something new, realizing my own weakness somewhere and thinking to create something new via researching the old material, just as Confucius had taught us 3000 years ago -- Wengu Zhi Xin -- "Gaining New Insights Through Reviewing Old Material".

Do you agree with this Chinese idiom? Do you have any similar experience?

I am just a learner on that art of painting, music, calligraphy, languages and to work on the web site in my free time. I would really like to do a little bit things with what I have learned to make this little web site to be An Electronic Bridge Of Culture Exchange, Friendship and Language Learning. To help the others while to improve myself.

I appreciate your understanding, directions and supports. I do hope to get your friendly help...

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please write to shirley@ebridge.cn or shirleyz004@yahoo.com. You are welcomed to publish your opinions in the forum.

Shirley Yiping Zhang
Written and Edited on Sun, October 28, 2007