In the new session of my weekly Chinese class at the downtown Seattle library, our teacher asked for volunteers to present on one of three topics, and I went with the “My Hobby” option. “Hobby,” I quickly learned, is translated as two familiar characters: 爱好. love/good. 

In Taiwan, 30 years ago, I learned traditional characters, and now I'm learning the simplified versions, and this was the first time I'd noticed the difference in “love.”

This is the traditional Chinese character for love: 愛.

And this is the modern simplified version:爱

It may be tough to see the difference, but here it is: They took out 心.

What's that? Xin. It means heart. That's right. To simplify “love,” they took out “heart.” Not sure who was on that committee, but, as we say today, the optics aren't good. 

My presentation is below. It's about movie box office, particularly Chinese movie box office—a topic that was way too difficult given my level. Put another way: You have no idea how much work went into sounding this stupid.

China is about to become the world's biggest movie market. 

我很喜欢看电影。我小的时候，我爸爸在明尼苏达报纸写电影评轮。这是他的工作。 不错。

我也写电影评论 。十五年以前，我给西雅图时报写过。 现在，我用我的博客。

我也觉得电影票房很有趣。 “为什么很多人要看这部电影？他们要什么？”

今年, 我听说, 中国票房比美国票房大。

中国票房最大的电影是。。。

1. 战狼II (2017)： $854 million
2. 红海行动 (2018)： $579 million

（它们都发生在非州。为什么？ 这个。）

1. 唐人街探案 2 (2018):  $541 million
2. 美人鱼 (2016)： $526 million

我最喜欢的中国电影是。。。

• 一一 (Edward Yang)
• 饮食男女 (Ang Lee)
• 警察故事,第一，二， 三 (Jackie Chan)
• 功夫（Stephen Chow： 在美国是“Kung Fu Hustle”）
• 巴尔扎克与小裁缝：Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress