I am very happy that 11 year old DD#2 “Georgia” can read 「六個夢」by famed author 瓊瑤 now. I printed out several pages of the first short story (without zhuyin) and she read it just fine. She can explain to me the story paragraph by paragraph. She can also read aloud at least 90% of the characters. I think she is still ahead of her elder sister at the same age. So, yeah! I will have her read a couple of these short stories this week.
跟各位家長分享女兒們CLE(Chinese Language Ecosystem) 進入另ㄧ個階段,用學到的中文帶給別人喜悅~
My DDs got to a new level in their CLE, namely using the Chinese they learned to give joy to others! They were invited to perform at a Chinese New Year banquet in Atlanta. Though we are new in town and never had this kind of opportunity in rural eastern NC before, we decided to give it a shot. I decided to buy and learn to play a bass guitar for the classic CNY song “恭喜恭喜“, as there are only four notes to play! We have had so much fun rehearsing for their first public performance!
The girls had a successful performance this weekend. Here are their greeting and CNY blessing.
Then, DD#1 sang 周華健’s 「朋友」.
Finally, DD#2 sang 陳歌辛‘s 「恭喜恭喜」.
This is another win for their CLE! DD#1 did make me promise that our band will learn to play an English song next time~ It is all about balance!
DD#2 “Georgia” finished watching all fifty episodes of 女醫 明妃傳 (The Imperial Doctress). This historical fictional TV series is based on historical figures and events in the Ming Dynasty during the 15th century, including 土木堡之變 and 奪門之變. Georgia greatly enjoyed the show, given the protagonist is female and there is a romance storyline as well.
Now comes the “fun part”, at least for me!
I got on Wikipedia and put together the “real” story on paper. I first read it to Georgia and now have her read it aloud, over several days. She should learn much from the reading, as it is written in slightly more formal Chinese. Having zhuyin helps with pronunciation greatly.
I tried to find another TV historical drama which can teach a lot about the salient part of Chinese history but is also fun to watch for a tween girl. Unfortunately, she has not liked 三國演義. We watched the first episode of 東周列國春秋篇. It was very educational, starting with 周幽王烽火戲諸侯 but, unfortunately, very boring for a 11 year old girl. Not to mention it was produced twenty years ago. There are many excellent historical TV drama series such as 漢武大帝, 大秦帝國, 雍正王朝, 康熙王朝, etc. but I know that my tween girl would not find them interesting, unfortunately.
At the recommendation of some parents, Georgia and I are starting to watch「那年花開月正圓」, set in late 19th century China, with a female lead protagonist loosely based on a historical figure. So, this seems to be a good fit for my DD. Hopefully, she will learn a few things about the turbulent time at the end of the Ching dynasty.
“Speak” by Laurie Anderson
At the mean time, 14 years old DD#1 “Charlotte” is reading “Speak” by Laurie Anderson, a New York Times best seller in early 2000s, for her English class. It is a trauma novel about a high school freshman who was raped at a summer party. Charlotte had trouble telling me the plot of the story all in Chinese, which I totally understand, given the type of language involved. It is not something she read or we discussed in Chinese before. So, I put together kind of a synopsis from various internet sources, as below. Too bad there is not a Wikipedia entry in Chinese on this book. Hopefully, we will get to go over these over the weekend.