Lesson

In my opinion, the major problem of our Chinese children book is not the lack of material with the appropriate level of complexity, but the quality of the stories.

You see? We Chinese are just too keen to teach our children a lesson. There must be a motto after a story, and the virtue is then emphasized once again after the story is finished. We have Turning the iron rod into a needle (鐵杵磨針), The blinds feeling an elephant (盲人摸象), Watching the sky from the bottom of a well (坐井觀天), The silly man who tries to move the mountain (愚公移山)... and what not.

Yes, they are all brilliant stories. However, when I was a kid and heard any story that ended with a description "The lesson that we learn is...", I always shivered and sneered and thought to myself, "I'm not that thick. I know what I am supposed to learn." The feeling is, alas, somewhat similar to what you feel when you see all those product placements (植入式廣告) while watching Transformers 4.

But, now, my feeling is different. I would say to myself, "Why couldn't they think of some stories just for fun?"