Another Minor Triumph Of Understanding

I saw a TikTok video recently, and I paused it at one stage to read the characters displayed.

To my surprise, I could read every character on the two lines.

The top line says

学校给孩子看父母工作的样子 xuéxiào gěi háizi kàn fùmǔ gōngzuò de yàngzi

"A school gives children a view of the way their parents work."

The line below says

明白了父母的不易 míngbáile fùmǔ de bùyì

"Understood the difficulty of parents."

To be honest, I could not immediately recognise the very last character 易 yì. I had to scan it with the camera option of Google Translate, and then I remembered it as part of the word 容易 róngyì ("easy").

I also couldn't translate 不易 bùyì as "difficulty" straightaway. I realise that Chinese does not make strong distinctions between nouns, verbs and adjectives. "Not easy" is an adjective, but can be used as a noun ("difficulty").

I'm still a long way from being able to read Chinese fluently, but some phrases and sentences turn out be be completely comprehensible.

超级英雄可以办任何事情 - Superheroes Can Do Anything

I've always felt that the Chinese character 办 bàn ("do", "manage") resembles a caped superhero standing in the sky.

Apologies, I have these weird ideas, and I feel the urge to express them. 怎么办? zěnme bàn? ("What do I do?")

(The title says 超级英雄可以办任何事情 chāojí yīngxióng kěyǐ bàn rènhé shìqíng ("Superheroes can do anything").)