It is already a week past and I finally write about it.

 

In Hong Kong, the Chinese name of Halloween is 萬聖節, literally "10,000 Saints Festival". It is a reasonable translation of All Saints Day, because in Chinese 10,000 typically means uncountably many. In English, you have one, ten hundred, thousand, and then jump to a million (which is a thousand thousand). In Chinese, you have the extra step 萬 10,000 after 千 1,000, before jumping to 億 100,000,000 (ie 10,000 * 10,000). However, the 1000 and 10,000 are common words that appear in many Chinese sayings and quotations. The Chinese word 億 100,000,000 is hardly ever used other than in a scientific context in the recent centuries (or to describe the billionairs).

 

I think British English and American English have different meanings for a billion - British take it as a million million while Americans a thousand million. In Chinese, there is another word beyond 100,000,000, which is 兆. I wonder if people really know how big that number 兆 is. I just looked up a dictionary, which says 兆 means 10,000 * 100,000,000 (ie 10,000 ** 3, similar to the American logic).

 

The Chinese name for Halloween also implies that we have confused the 31/10 with the 1/11. And we don't have any name for the real All Saints Day.

 

And Halloween always reminds me of a riddle from a short Asimov story. In the story, a character said in an excited voice "In a way, Halloween is exactly the same as Christmas." The secret police was looking for a mathematics geek and ruled the character off as a possible suspect. It was decades later that somebody else figured out what the sentence actually mean. So for a mathematician, in what way is Halloween exactly the same as Christmas?

 

Halloween is one of the few Pagan festivals that have survived the religious prosecution. Yes, I am with the Pagans right now. In the past months I've been writing the walk through for Blood Trail and is approaching the finish line.

 

 

 

TI ran into Dr. Pangloss today, the best of all possible tutors. He asked me an interesting question:

Meet him at Pangloss Wisdom. The site even included the first 8 chapters of my favorite book: Voltaire's Candide. It is a bit disappointing that only the English translation is posted, without the original French version. It is the first French book that I read cover to cover. It was when I had only studied French for less than half a year. It took me a long time to learn that the story is a satire. Any reader should have found it fishy when Voltaire introduced "one of the most powerful lords" by telling us that his castle "had not only a gate, but even windows, and his great hall was hung with tapestry.", but at that time I thought it was strange to me only because I didn't understand the language well enough. I am however, probably simply stupid. The same also happened to me with My Fair Lady. It again took me many years to understand.

 

PS: Wow the internet is really full of everything. Here is the full original French text matched with English translation:

 

It is unfortunate that the paragraphs don't align correctly. It is much easier to read them on separate browser tabs: