Dr Gunther Von Haagens (Bodyworld's) Teaches Me Chinese Reading System On Plane
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On a trip back from Beijing in 2005 who should sit
next to me on the plane, but the inventor of
plastination and owner of anatomical specimens which
have been plastinated, Dr. Gunther Von Haagens -
BodyWorlds, or just BODIES exhibition.
I was delighted to strike up a long conversation with
him and tried my best to make a friend out of this
impressive self-made marketer and medical doctor.
He told me that on aeroplane flights he always works
on a system for learning how to READ and WRITE
mandarin Chinese. I was immediately intrigued.
He has developed a system which does not so much
involve monotonous repitions of words, such as that is
taught in the Chinese schools, but descriptive ways of
explaining how each character is written out of a
number of different strokes.
For example, the strokes for the number 1 in the Von
Haagen's system is HORIZON. This is because it is a
horizontal straight line stroke which could be
interpreted as a symbol of a horizon in the distance.
When you look out to sea and see the horizon, that is
what the horizon looks like - a horizontal straight
line.
So to remember how to read and write the Chinese
symbol for the word 1 (ONE) the sentence is...
ONE HORIZON. - the first word of the sentence is
always the actual translation of the character and
tends to make sense (there is only one horizon
generally in the distance).
Let's look at a two stroke (but still very easy)
character.
The number 10.
The Chinese character for the number 10 (TEN) is
similar to the PLUS SIGN (+). In other words it is a
vertical line intersecting a horizontal line.
Von Haagens explained to me that the way in his system
for learning to write Chinese for reading or writing
the number TEN 10 is to remember the Western sentence
coming up below.
Of course, Dr. Von Haagens native tongue is German so
he was in fact slightly vexed by getting the perfect
translation of his system into English, a task for
which I was only too eager to volunteer to do!
Notice that the symbol for the number 10 involves the
HORIZON again (horizontal line) and there is a
vertical line straight through the middle. Von
Haagen's calls this the POLE line.
Therefore to remember the Chinese character for number
10 the sentence in Western speak is:
TEN POLES ON THE HORIZON (+)
Of course there is only one pole, but to remember that
the meaning is TEN (10) the ten is the first word of
the sentence.
In this way, Dr. Gunther Von Haagens has created
sentences with a meaning (sometimes humourous) from
which can be constructed more than 2000 Chinese
symbols.
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