Chapter 155 – Roguishly (2)
Li Man laughed. "En, it looks sort of similar. If you add one more stroke, it'll look like the character for five. As she said this, she added that stroke to his awkwardly written attempt.
"How is it? Isn't that much better?"
“En.” Pleasantly surprised, Little Five nodded. He repeatedly scratched out those two characters onto the dirt. When he first started, his hand was a bit shaky, so Li Man held his hand in hers to guide him until he improved.
It took Little Five almost an hour to get to the point where he could write his name legibly. Li Man leisurely asked, "Your fourth brother is also literate. Why doesn't he teach you?"
Wanting to get better at writing, Little Five continued to practice. He simply answered, "I used to get sick a lot. Oldest brother was worried that learning how to read and write would be too tiring."
"Oh." No wonder this child looked much weaker than other children of his age. Li Man couldn't help feeling bad for him. She rubbed his little head and encouragingly said, "There's no hurry. Older sister will teach you how to write many words when there's free time in the future too."
“En.” Little Five wrote out his name one last time. He felt that it looked pretty similar to what older sister had written. He hopefully requested, "I want to learn how to write older sister's name."
"Oh, mine?" Li Man smiled. She looked very pretty as her eyes curved into crescents. She generously wrote out 'Li Man'. The Li is from the li that means plum. The top part of Man is the grass radical (艹). Oh, but the bottom part of Man is a bit harder.)
(T/N: Characters for Li Man's name is 李蔓)
Actually, it was really hard. Once she had finished writing it out, Little Five was a bit dumbfounded. Older sister's name was much more difficult than his. He couldn't even remember what her first stroke had been.
Li Man pursed her lips and lightly smiled. "Older sister's name is hard to write, right? How about this, I'll teach you about the individual strokes. Once you learn that, it won't be difficult for you to write my name."
“En.” Little Five regained his confidence and looked up at Li Man with a big grin.
Just like this, Li Man spent the afternoon teaching Little Five about the various strokes, such as the starting at the horizontal right angle character stroke, vertical stroke with a hook at the end, left-slanting downward stroke, downward-right concave character stroke, etc. Li Five was an extremely serious student. After an afternoon of practice, at least his writing posture was correct, his hand no longer shook, and his strokes were standard. His horizontal lines were straight without any wiggly curves.
(T/N: Here's a wiki link if you're curious about the individual strokes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_(CJK_character).)
He was very happy.
The sky had gradually darkened. When Li Man went into the kitchen to cook dinner. Little Five remained outside scribbling until Li Mo called him inside.
“Oldest brother, what's the matter?" Little Five was still holding that stick. He obviously hadn't gotten enough of writing yet.
Original translation is from fuyuneko dot org. If you’re reading this elsewhere, this chapter has been stolen. Please stop supporting theft.
Li Mo looked at the wall. He had scratched out two characters with a dagger, but they looked very crooked. He suddenly felt embarrassed.
"If there's nothing, I want to go back to practicing. Older sister is going to teach me new stuff tomorrow." Little Five impatiently turned around to leave.
"Wait." Li Mo quickly grabbed him and pulled him to the wall. "Look at this for oldest brother. Is oldest brother's name written correctly?"
Sure enough, Little Five seriously looked at the characters. “Oldest brother, the character for Li is wrong. Older sister said Li is the li for plum. You're missing a line. And the character for Mo, it looks really strange. It doesn't look like what four brother had previously written."
Although Little Five was young and hadn't received formal schooling, his memory was as excellent as Li Hua's. When Li Hua had first started school and came back home, he had tried to teach his older brothers how to write their names, and they had tried to learn for several days, but they hadn't succeeded. In the end, Little Five was the only one that remembered. Although he couldn't write the characters, he could recognize them.
T/N: A reader asked on Patreon if Li Man’s name means beautiful, so I copied and pasted my answer here if anyone else is curious.
The Man (蔓) in Li Man's name is added to other characters to mean vine, so Li Man (李蔓) can mean pear vine. If the grass radical (艹) is removed from 蔓, you'll get 曼, which is the one that can mean beautiful and also has other meanings depending on how its used. Confusingly, 蔓 and 曼 have the same pinyin, Man.