Learn to Speak Chinese by Quoting Chinese Poem

Last week, Tom’s mandarin tutor was having lunch in his home. And the tutor saw there were some leftovers in the plates. And then the tutor said: “粒粒皆辛苦(li4 li4 jie1 xin1 ku3)” to Tom. Tom seemed to be puzzled of this sentence. Actually, it comes from one of the most famous Chinese poem.

As we all know, Chinese poems reflect the profound Chinese culture. If you are learning mandarin(學普通話) now, you need get to know this part of Chinese culture.

So, in this class, I will explain this famous poem to you.

The title is “悯农(min3 nong2)”. And it contains four lines as the followings:

“锄禾日当午(chu2 he2 ri4 dang1 wu3)”

“汗滴禾下土(han4 di1 he2 xia4 tu3)”

“谁知盘中餐(shui2 zhi1 pan2 zhong1 can1)”

“粒粒皆辛苦(li4 li4 jie1 xin1 ku3)”

Only twenty characters have described a diligent farm in front of us. The general meaning of this poem is like the following: “At a sunny noon, there is a farm hoeing in the field. His sweat dripped down the soil. Who knows each grain of rice in our bowl is produced by much hardship and effort. ” Usually in primary school, after students have learned the Chinese characters for kids, they will come to the simple Chinese poems and “悯农” is an exemplary one.

So, you may have a general idea of this poem. Do you know the implied meaning of it? Actually, it is created to remind people that it is not easy to get food and we have to learn to cherish the hard-won food. The concept of cherishing food is advocated all over the world.

Why should we learn to speak Chinese by quoting Chinese poem? Because the beauty and power of Chinese poem lines.