Quotes:

One student born in the 1980s wrote: From Junior One to Senior One, I spent four years learning texts by heart. According to our ancestors, ‘Memorizing 300 Tang poems makes one a poet himself’. … It is also true to foreign language learning. I regret not reciting enough texts then. [1: 218; Chinese original]

After the teacher finishes his explanation and checks with the students to see if they have correct comprehension, the students are required to read the text just learned 100 times: slowly at first, then a bit faster. The text should be read with rhythm, correct pauses and accurate use of the four tones. If any student cannot perform the reading- aloud properly, another 100 times of reading are required of him. [9; Chinese original]

Yu MinHong 4 , a celebrated educator and English teacher who was born in the 1960s, wrote: In primary and secondary school, all that we had were several thin textbooks. Without any other books to read, we had to recite the texts again and again − so much so that I could recall them till now as if they were carved in my heart. [13; Chinese original]

In monastic choirs the demon Tutivillus was believed to collect up sackfuls of dropped syllables from the Psalms to be weighed up at the Last Judgement against those who voiced the texts inaccurately 6

In her detailed analysis of uses of memory and the conceptions of memory in the Middle Ages, Carruthers [24] showed how memory played a significant role in medieval people’s intellectual and cultural lives. The great values they attached to memory can be sensed from Carruthers’s depiction: Ancient and medieval people reserved their awe for memory. Their greatest geniuses they describe as people of superior memories, they boast unashamedly of their prowess in that faculty, and they regard it as a mark of superior moral character as well as intellect. [24: I; emphasis original] … Memoria, …, was a part of litteratura: indeed it was what literature, in a fundamental sense, was for. Memory is one of the five divisions of ancient and medieval rhetoric; it was regarded, moreover, by more than one writer on the subject as the ‘noblest’ of all these, the basis for the rest. [24: 9; emphasis original]

I've personally been trying to memorize the first 40 lines of the 3 character classic, the 三字经。Both as an experiment in memory: how much of this book can I commit to memory so well that I could recite it in full and explain every line and character? and also to get more familiar with classical chinese since it has such a distinct vocabulary, with words like 此，孝，昔，善，义 that occur elsewhere too but I haven't seen much of.

Alt text

No other country in the world is as dominated by the automobile as the USA. From the very beginnings of automobile travel in the early twentieth century, rates of automobile ownership and use in the USA have exceeded levels in other countries, and current rates of ownership and use are by far the highest in the world. Even countries with higher per capita incomes have fewer cars per capita than the USA. The automobile has not only dominated passenger transport in the USA; it has also become the most important determinant of the American lifestyle, urban form, and even the organization of the American economy. Virtually every aspect of life in the USA - work, social activities, recre- ation, education and culture - is crucially dependent on the automobile. For most Americans, every other mode of urban transport is practically irrelevant, and life without the automobile is unimaginable. Unlike other advanced industrialized countries, where car ownership only became widespread over the past two or three decades, almost all Americans living today grew up in an automobile dominated society, and most of them have never experienced anything else. The dominance of the car in the USA is especially striking in cities because its impact on urban land use patterns is highly visible and unmis- takable. It is also what most clearly distinguishes American cities from European cities. The term 'urban sprawl' first emerged in the USA to describe the extremely low density, unplanned, rather haphazard residen- tial and commercial development that increasingly surrounds every American city. Widespread suburbanization began earlier in the USA and has been more extensive and lower density than virtually anywhere else in the world. Low density urban sprawl would be impossible without the automobile. Just as the automobile encouraged suburbanization, so subur- banization has encouraged ever more automobile use, since low density development cannot be served effectively by public transport. The extremely high levels of car use in American cities have caused severe problems of congestion, air pollution, noise, loss of open space, traffic accidents and inadequate mobility for the poor, the elderly and the handicapped. Similar problems have arisen in other countries, but they generally arose earlier in the USA and have been more severe**___**#

When visiting cities in other countries, one is often struck by differences in their transportation systems. These differences are among the most visible indicators of variation in underlying social, political, and economic systems.

Take, for example, the Soviet Union and the countries of Europe and North America. Going from east to west, there is an unmistakable increase in the relative importance of the automobile and a corresponding decrease in the importance of public transport modes, such as bus, streetcar, subway, and commuter rail.

In the United States and Canada, the vast majority of urban travel is by auto. At the other end of the spectrum, in the Soviet Union public transport almost completely dominates, with extremely low levels of auto ownership and use. Europe lies along the middle of this spectrum, with Eastern European countries much closer to the level of public transport dominance in the Soviet Union, and with Western European countries somewhat closer to the level of auto dominance in the United States.

These differences in urban transportation have not arisen at random. To a significant extent, they result from decades of deliberate public policy. In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, socialist governments have directly set the costs of auto ownership and operation extremely high through their system of regulated prices: in addition, they have sharply restricted auto production, thus keeping supply limited. At the same time they have offered extensive public transport services at extremely low fares.

By contrast, policies in the United States have strongly encouraged auto ownership and use. For many decades, large subsidies to highway construction, automobile use, and low-density suburban housing have made the automobile very appealing if not irresistible. Since the same policies have contributed to the decline of public transport, that alternative was eliminated for most Americans anyway.

I've been reading the first book of 西游记 Journey to the West, 猴王的诞生, Rise of the Monkey King. Here a few words I learned, especially simple or widely used:

• 哭，ku1, cry
• 喊，han3, shout
• 流, liu2, flow (water)
• 简单, jian3 dan1, simple (definitely seen before)
• 祖师, zu3 shi1, founder/master

你呢？

Probably not great for studying with as is, but could be very useful for creating study material.

我昨天晚上做Tamales，今天晚上会去印度饭馆。最近经常玩Battlebit，看书。我开始了读西游记。

I don't know if I'd be able to restrain myself from moving... but I may try 😀

"A boy is stranded alone on a ship in a storm and receives help from a mysterious magical dwarf. Uses just 358 different Chinese words."

They seemed to really like this author on Reddit. I downloaded this ebook but haven't read beyond the first page yet. Let me know your thoughts.