In A Place Far Far Away (Chinese lyrics by Wang, Luo-Bin)

This is a classic folk song written by Wang, Luo-Bin.  Several versions performed by singers from different countries are available on youtube. The lyrics are slightly different from one version to another. The lyrics below seems to be the original.

Chinese character handwriting

On this post, you can find Chinese character handwritings.

First, some basic information on Chinese language is explained using plain English. Chinese characters show up with perfectly horizontal, or vertical lines, or with perfectly curved turns in publications. Handwriting is different of course. It is perfectly fine to write a little off the direction as long as it's not off a lot. Chinese handwritings also have different styles.  What's shown here is one common handwriting style similar to the font named Kai-Ti.

Four Chinese characters and their pronunciation (top) and meanings (bottom)

Above the characters are their pronunciation in Chinese, also known as (aka)  han yu pin yin. Pin yin comes with one of four tones (or accents), indicated by the short line on the top of one of the letters, usually, vowels. For example, à indicates the 4th tone (falling tone) on letter a. It's like how when we say 'Good!!!'.  á indicates the 2nd tone (rising tone). It's like how when saying 'what???'.  The 1st tone is neither rising nor falling, and indicated by ā. The last tone (the 3rd one in the order), is a combination of the 4th and the 2nd tones and is indicated with ǎ .  In summary, the 4 tones (accents) are indicated by   ̄,   ́,   ̌, and   ̀, respectively.


Note that a tone is an essential part of pronunciation for one Chinese character.
When two characters sound the same except the tone, they are considered different pronunciation.

It's common that as many as a dozen or more Chinese characters may have the same pronunciation. Meanwhile, a specific character may have more than one pronunciation. The meaning of the character is different when pronounced differently.

Handwriting sequences for two Chinese characters, up and down

Handwriting sequences for two Chinese characters, left and right

The Chinese handwriting shown here is hand-crafted using postscript language and doesn't depend on any Chinese font resource. The goal is to explain how to write Chinese characters, recognizable and reasonably good, by hand. Hopefully this can enhance your Chinese language learning experience.

Despite the time I spent on preparing them and the fact that Chinese is my native language, the hand-writings shown here can certainly be further improved.

In addition, I have tried my best to make sure all information is correct to the best of my knowledge, including the writing sequence for each character. There could still be errors.  We don't live in a perfect world, do we?

 

Four Chinese characters representing the four seasons in a year

Handwriting sequence of the Chinese character spring

Handwriting sequence of the Chinese character summer

Handwriting sequence of the Chinese character autumn

Handwriting sequence of the Chinese character winter

Help kids about elementary math

Unique, talented, one of a kind music legend. Remembering Prince

I am not very familiar with his music. Just knowing "When doves cry" and "Purple rain" by Prince. But I like the ways he performed "Purple rain" both in the movie and in the Super Bowl half-time show some years ago. Prince will be missed by many.

Linux network tip

When trying to activate eth# in a Linux PC, one might get error message similar to "linux network Determining IP information for eth1 failed no link present check cable"

I found out one solution on the internet and it worked for me. Below is another copy of the solution.

Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1, (when working with eth1)
#add following 3 lines at the bottom of the file:

check_link_down() {
  return 1;
}

Open terminal and issue command:

ifup eth1

It works on a Red Hat Linux under root account.

Bohr Magneton

L. Pauling & E.B. Wilson Jr. explained Bohr magneton in their 1935 classic "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics". This note is to understand it in SI units with current constant values. And it's just for me to have some idea about the magnitude of the constants. "goldbook" at iupac.org is recommended to find out the exact constant values including Bohr magneton.

Based on the book, magnetic moment of 1 Bohr magneton is he/(4πmc).

where at that time,

Planck constant h=6.547e-27 erg sec (1 erg =1e-7 Joules,)

electron charge e=4.770e-10 abs e.s.u. (absolute electrostatic unit, or statcoulomb)

electron mass m=9.035e-28 g

speed or velocity of light c=2.99796e10 cm /sec

It was given that Magnetic moment of 1 Bohr magneton μ₀ = 0.9175e-20 erg/gauss

Nowadays,

h=6.626e-34 Js

e=4.8025e-10 abs e.s.u., or

e=1.602e-19 C (note if using 1.6e-19C, speed of light should be removed in the equation. Note that e in unit C is smaller by a factor of c, the speed of light, compared to e in e.s.u.)

m=9.109e-31 kg

c=2.99792e8 m/s

1 Bohr magneton μ₀ = 9.274e-24 J/T

To roughly check the result, 1 erg = 1e-7 J, 1 gauss = 1e-4 T. Therefore, the two values are reasonably close to each other.

On iupac goldbook website, Bohr magneton μ_B = 9.2740154e-24 J/T

Songs ~30 Years Ago

Billy Ocean's "Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run)" and Ray Parker Jr.'s "Ghostbusters". I first heard these two songs around 1986 when I was in a small city in China. I still like these songs 30 years later.