My son borrowed this Chinese book because his Chinese teacher took his class to the library during a lesson. I don’t think he would have chosen a book teeming with words on his own accord. I scored distinctions in Chinese throughout my academic career, but I found myself stammering through some paragraphs and relying quite heavily on the hanyu pinyin. Geez.

I don’t think my son really retained much from my storytelling; I can hardly keep track of it myself. But I was captivated by an explanation in regard to why heavy watermelons float on water. Introduced terms like water resistance to my boy.

“So size doesn’t matter,” he summarized astutely. Colour me impressed.

I then found the term 高兴 at the bottom of the page - and nudged him to read it. He took a while, then pronounced 高 hesitantly, paused fora while before uttering 兴. Wow, he is capable of recognising characters and pronouncing them based on what he has encountered before.

Suddenly, my week of accumulated fatigue vanished like my doomed pay cheque segregated to fund bills the moment it hit my bank account.