Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 6, 2025
Under the old system the Chinese boy learned a thousand characters before he learned their meaning; after this he took up a book containing a list of all the surnames in the empire, and the "Trimetrical Classics," consisting of proverbs and historical statements with each sentence in three characters. Now he is taught in much the same way as the Western boy.
'The Garden of the Three Exquisites. Pshaw! that's a theatre notice: enterprising manager. Ah, more like it. Long preamble, regular trimetrical platitudes here we are: "'These Red-Bristled Ghosts teach their dupes to break the ancestral tablets, and to worship the picture of a naked infant, which points one finger toward heaven, another toward earth.
Visits, forms of address, and giving of presents had each their set of formulae, known and observed by every one as strictly and regularly as each child in China learned by heart and repeated aloud the three-word sentences of the elementary Trimetrical Classic. But while the school text-book was extremely simple, ceremonial observances were extremely elaborate.
They achieved the latter object by building anew on the lines, but not in the spirit, of the old. Thus the Trimetrical Classic, the famous schoolboy's handbook, a veritable guide to knowledge in which a variety of subjects are lightly touched upon, was entirely rewritten.
Our boy now begins to go to school; to a day school, it need hardly be specified, for a boarding school would be entirely out of keeping with the family life. Here, he is given the "Trimetrical Classic" to start on, that he may learn the characters by heart, picking up incidentally what ideas he may.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking