My attitude toward those fairy tales, by now, is clear, and I do not intend to keep telling those stories. Instead, I want to share something useful, thoughtful and interesting with my sons.
Since Anbo is really interested in swimming, so I borrowed a few books about it. What we read tonight is "DK Superguides Swimming", by Rick Cross. While Anbo enjoyed the pictures in the book, I read aloud to him. Occasionally, he stopped me and asked a few questions. I answered them one by one, and then resumed reading to him. He liked this way of reading. Me, too.
This way of reading not only broadens his view, but also helps me knowing more. Tonight, I finally solved a puzzle which has been haunting me for couple of decades. The puzzle is about swimming strokes. In Chinese, we call one particular stroke, in which the swimmer uses his arms alternatively to propel him through water, as 自由式, meaning the freestyle stroke。In English, the stroke is called 'the crawl'. I was always puzzled by that Chinese name since I was 8. To me, the free style literately means any style I like. If a style is fixed in such a way that the swimming has to use his arms alternatively, it should not be called 'free style'. Then, why is that kind of particular stroke called as 'freestyle' stroke in Chinese? The freestyle stroke is not free at all, isn't it?
The following sentence in the book comes to rescue: "In competition, there is no actual event called the crawl, but it is the most common choice of stroke in the freestyle event." It is clear that 自由式 was a translation mistake. It should be called "爬式“。 自由式 is a competition event name, not a stroke name. As the name suggests, in the freestyle event, you are free to pick your favorite stroke to compete. It just happens that most people choose 'the crawl' stroke since it is the fastest one. Now, everything makes sense to me.
