PAGE ADVICE

Learning to read and write Chinese one Doraemon' story at a time

- KARON LIU

Karon Liu browses the comics at Chan Sheung Kee Book Co. in Chinatown.

LUNAR NEW YEAR 2024

It goes against conventional wisdom for parents to tell their kids to ditch the workbook for a comic book, but it was one of the best pieces of advice my dad ever gave me.

“It’s how I learned to read,” he reasoned. “If I didn’t understand a character, the drawings helped progress the story. It was more interesting than picking up a textbook.”

That’s how I found myself becoming a regular customer at Chinatown’s Chan Sheung Kee Book Co. (457 Dundas St. W.), a gem of a book, magazine and stationery store that’s currently decked out for the Lunar New Year.

I’ve previously written about my ongoing goal to learn to read and write Chinese since the pandemic began and I no longer had to spend three hours a day commuting. Specifically, I want to learn traditional Chinese, which is used in Taiwan and Hong Kong (where my family is from), as opposed to simplified Chinese, developed by the Chinese government in the 1950s to promote literacy on the mainland. In essence, traditional Chinese characters often contain more brush strokes than simplified, and there are a few words and phrases with different meanings.

The store also sells stationery and decorations for Lunar New Year.