This week is mainly for an event celebrating Chinese characters in G4-5 of SHSID with the theme “Chinese Character Week, Let Legends Meet.” A series of games and activities were carried out throughout the week. Each fourth-grade student received a passport where they could collect stamps of Chinese legends. Through the fun activities, students experienced the profundity of Chinese characters and extended their knowledge of Chinese.

In Chinese class on Tuesday, the fourth-grade classes held a Chinese character carnival where students participated in various games in different classes. The students worked in groups to complete four challenges, including tough twisters, Fei Hua Ling*, Idiom Challenge, and Word Puzzle. The tough twisters elevated students’ pronunciation accuracy and reading fluency; Fei Hua Ling challenged students to brainstorm related poems, idioms, and proverbs; Idiom Challenge tested students’ sensitivity to characters’ structure and components; Word Puzzle helped students have a better understanding of the construction and promoted their interest in characters. The fifth-grade students learned the phonetics of Chinese characters. The beauty of the sounds enhances the charm of the characters. The changes of pronunciation are like a beautiful melody; the rhymes at the beginning and end of the sentence are like a cheerful drumbeat. From ancient times to the present, poems and classical Chinese have never failed to show the beauty of phonology to the fullest. The sound of the characters is like dancing with the meaning of them, casually both suppressed and raised. The sound of the characters is also fun. Characters with the same sound and similar sound can be combined into a unique tongue twister supplemented by polyphonic characters and polysemous characters which is humorous and amusing.

Chinese characters have a long-standing history. With even only a few strokes, one character contains well-established meanings. In Chinese class on Wednesday, the fourth-grade students watched the “Chinese People in Chinese Characters” series. Through the concise and interesting animation, students learned the evolution of Chinese characters and the philosophy embedded in the characters. The students in Grade 5 learned about the history of the development of Chinese character pattern. From the oracle bone inscriptions carved on the tortoise carapace and the scapulae of cows to the commonly used regular script and running script, Chinese characters have a history of more than four thousand years and have played an incalculable role in the inheritance of Chinese culture. In class, the students also had a calligraphy copy experience on the water writing cloths. Taking into account the different levels of students in calligraphy, they could freely choose to copy basic strokes, single Chinese characters, or entire ancient poems. In order to encourage creative writing, there were also blank water writing cloths on site for students to show their skills. Walking along the corridor of the fifth grade, you can see various brilliant calligraphy works by students.

The best part of the week was the final of the Chinese Character Competition. Each class in the fourth and fifth grade selected two students in the pre-contest and regrouped into a 4-person team to participate in the competition. The final round tested students’ knowledge of character components and structures, meanings and connotations, and context analysis. There were a wide variety of games, including guessing the idioms with only parts of the characters presented, guessing the words by meanings, finding the wrongly written characters, listening to the music then answering questions, and so on. Not only were the 28 students on the stage engaged in the games, but the rest of the students were also very excited about the various games and actively participated throughout the competition.

One word one world, one stroke one universe. The Chinese class on Friday was for the presentation of Chinese character topics. The fourth-grade students used their own names as a starting point and introduced one character of their names in depth. They shared the origin of the character, related historical people, the meaning of the character, and stories behind it. The students in grade 5 chose a Chinese character that they thought was the most interesting or the most meaningful for their presentation. By searching for relevant materials, the students learned more about the story behind each character and presented this to the class through posters. Some students focused on the history of the character’s shape and meaning evolution, while others explained anecdotes related to this Chinese character. Students actively made connections between Chinese culture and history and themselves.

Chinese characters are a kind of language with unique charm. They are as beautiful as a picture, as melodious as a song, and as lovely as a poem. All of this allows China’s long civilization to be passed down to this day, yet it still remains as bright as something new.

*Fei Hua Ling (飞花令) game rule: one Chinese character is presented and students need to think of the poems, idioms, or proverbs that include the character.

(Written by Shen Jingfeng, Wu Yin Pictures by G4-5 Teachers)