March arrived! What plan you might have in mind to spend your spring break? To study Chinese all week? Highly courageous but I don’t think you will ever realize that. Let’s be more practical, and think of some achievable things you can do. How about flying kites in the spring wind? Sound good? Let’s learn how to say ” Spring break is a good time to fly a kite in the sky” in Mandarin Chinese: chun2 jia4 shi4 zai4 tian1 kong1 fang4 feng1 zheng1 de5 hao3 shi2 hou4. 春假是在天空放风筝的好时候。Chun2 (春 noun, spring) jia4 (假noun, vacation) shi4 (是 verb, is) zai4 (在 preposition word, in) tian1 kong1 (天空 noun, sky) fang4 (放 verb, originally means put, here refers to fly) feng1 zheng1 (风筝 noun, kite) de5 (的 particle, to connect the attributive and the noun it modifies) hao3 (好adjective, good) shi2 hou4 (时候 noun, time).
Kites are a fascination (让人着迷的东西 rang4 ren2 zhao1 mi2 de5 dong1 xi1) for many people all over the world. No one knows exactly (确切地 que4 qie4 de5) why or who invented (发明 fa1 ming2) the first kite. It is a consensus (共识 gong4 shi4) that ancient Chinese people were the first kite flyers approximately (大约地 da4 ye1 de5) 2,800 years ago.
However, some said that kites were the invention of the famous Chinese philosophers (哲学家 zhe2 xue2 jia1) 墨子 Mozi (ca. 470 BC – ca. 391 BC) and 鲁班 Lu Ban (507–440 BC). Later, paper kites were being flown to be used as a message for a rescue (解救 jie3 jiu4) mission (任务 ren4 wu4 or 使命 shi3 ming4). Ancient and medieval Chinese people used kites flying to measure distances, test wind direction (方向 fang1 xiang4), and military communication.
In Japan, the popular name for a Japanese kite is Tako. Tako sounds a bit like Tokyo. In Tokyo where kites are very popular. The Japanese even have a word in their vocabulary “Tako-Kichi” which means, “kite crazy”.
In Thailand kites were flown during the time of monsoon (季风季节 ji4 feng1 ji4 jie2)
to hope the winds to blow away the rain clouds and protect their crops (庄稼 zhuan1 jia4 or 毂物 gu3 wu4) from flood.
It is said that the explorer Marco Polo who brought kites to Europe from his adventure to the East in the 1300s.
In the western world, before eighteenth century, kites were mostly a children’s toy. In 1749, there is the first usage of a kite in a meteorological(气象学的 qi4 xiang4 xue2 de5) experiment. They used a train of kites to measure the temperature at different altitudes ( 高度 gao1 du4). Later Benjamin Franklin demonstrated the electrical power of lightening (闪电 shan3 dian4) by successfully flying a specially designed kite in a thunderstorm.
The period from 1860 to about 1910 became the “golden age of kiting”. Kites began to be used for many scientific purposes; they were used in meteorology, aeronautics, and wireless (无线 wu2 xian4) communications. Years later, manned kites and power kites were developed. As the invention of airplane, scientists decreased their interest in kites. Since then, kites are mostly used for recreation (娱乐 yu2 le4 or 消遣 xiao1 qian3) purpose.
潍坊 Weifang, 山东 Shandong, China is the kite capital of the world. It is home to the largest kite museum in the world; there are thousands of kites displayed in area of 8100 m2. Weifang also hosts an annual （ 每年的 mei3 nian2 de5 ） international kite festival.
“The optimist pleasantly ponders how high his kite will fly; the pessimist woefully wonders how soon his kite will fall.” How about you? What is your flying kite attitude? Enjoy each of your kite fly high experience and live your life sometimes like a kite — “Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.” Do you know that “You can’t fly a kite unless you go against the wind and have a weight to keep it from turning a somersault. The same with man. No man will succeed unless he is ready to face and overcome difficulties and is prepared to assume responsibilities.” Wish you good kite courage and smooth high flying most of times; even you got crashed down sometimes, it is OK. Just make another kite and fly it again when the right wind comes!
U2 – Kite Lyrics
風箏與風-Twins (Kite and wind. A Cantonese song, lovely)
放风筝 – Flying Kites — a Chinese fan dance