Chinese Cinderella

For my first book project this year I am reading Chinese Cinderella, which is a true story of the childhood of Yen Jun-Ling (Adeline Yen). Who was not wanted by the remainder of her family, after her mother had passed away several days following her birth. I have enjoyed reading all 205 pages of this moving book.

The moral of it is that persistence and determination will always be rewarded. Through her life's many hardships Adeline was still able to build a strong character, who never gives up. The moral in this novel is very important to me, because I feel as though if anyone lacks inspiration and is discouraged, in following their dreams they can read this story and realize that anything can be accomplished with hard work.

The only thing in this book that was on occasion hard to understand was the frequent use of Chinese symbols, it was quite confusing in the begging but as I go farther along in the story I started to understand them, what really helped with understanding those symbols though was the guide on the front page of the book, and that after every symbol that was used its meaning was put in parentheses following it.

After reading this novel I would really like to learn some if not most of the Chinese symbols because I found it so interesting to learn about them throughout this book. A question I had after reading the book was why is it that the spoken Chinese language has so little, if nothing, to do with the written one?