285 Book

Have you ever read any ancient Chinese literary classics? The special guest for today is Shuangyi Li who is both an adventurer, a trend-setter and on top of that, she is a book lover! She tells something of the story of how she used books to study and educate herself after leaving middle school as a teenager. Her hometown was in Guizhou Province in China, which interestingly was the place where political prisoners were sent into exile back in ancient times because of the difficult terrain and a rather unwelcoming geography which made life there rather hard work. However, an upside of this is that nature has been quite well preserved in the province! ShaoLan teaches the words for book and other things related to books, such as library or bookshop. There’s even a cultural hint of what not to take books with you if you go to a casino with Chinese friends!

The Chinese word for “book” is 書/书 which includes the image of a paintbrush on the top, something which comes from ancient Chinese culture when rice paper was used to write scripts.