This week, the new foreign teachers in our beginners Chinese class learned about two kinds of characters, Associative Compounds and Pict phonetic Characters. First, the teacher wrote 休 on the board, as the students had already learned 人 and 木. They quickly grasped the meaning of休, which is a person leaning against a tree, which extends in meaning to “having a rest”. Then they guessed the meaning of 坐（two people sitting on the ground）泪（water that flows from the eyes）卡（stuck）. The students were so excited guessing characters; it was like solving riddles! So the teacher gave them another riddle: If 人 means a person, 从 means one person follows another, what does 众 mean? Does it mean one person standing above the other two, or acrobatics? They all laughed and began to think about this question. Then the teacher gave them another example: 木（tree） 林(woods) 森(forest). At last, they came to a conclusion: characters with this kind of structure, means plenty of something. In Chinese culture, 三 always indicates a big number.
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