Lu Paradise • December 10, 2014 • 302 views
By Robert Goh
The International Red Cross in its 1998 world disasters report says that year was the worst on record. Hurricane Mitchell struck in central America, drought in Indonesia, and floods affected 180 million in south China. Earlier, in 1939 floods in north China from the Yellow River killed 100,000. Prior to that, in 1931 floods killed 3.7 million, and in Manchu dynasty times in 1887, a flood caused 900,000 deaths. Ancient China must have had a long record of floods, since, like ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, its early civilisation was built near a river.
Consequently, the Chinese must have built boats quite early, and a form of the word must have been written down since early times. The modern Chinese word for boat or ship (船 chuan) is a curious one. It escaped the 1956 character simplification reform in China, but today it is found in two forms.
In both the forms, there is a sailing vessel (zhou) as a radical, and also a character for “mouth” (kou) and finally, one with a component for either “several” (ji) or “eight” (ba) . But which is the correct one? Continue reading Chinese Memories Of Noah’s Flood? Ship with 8 mouths!
Ancient Patriarchs 