And now you know...

Some people in western countries, like America, wonder when the Chinese will ever get around to changing from their ancient Chinese characters to Romanized characters like we use in English. 

Might as well give it up, because that's probably never going to happen.

See this paragraph written in Chinese characters?

Now look at it when it is written in the Roman alphabet (which in China is called "pinyin"):

"Shi shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi. Shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi. Shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi shi shi."

The Chinese characters have meaning. If you know Chinese you can read the paragraph and know the story it tells. By reading the Roman type, though, you know nothing.

In case you care, in English, the paragraph says this:

"A poet named Shi lived in a stone house and liked to eat lion flesh and he vowed to eat ten of them. He used to go to the market in search of lions and one day chanced to see ten of them there. Shi killed the lions with arrows and picked up their bodies carrying them back to his stone house. His house was dripping with water so he requested that his servants proceed to dry it. Then he began to try to eat the bodies of the ten lions. It was only then he realized that these were in fact ten lions made of stone. Try to explain the riddle."

One more note. If you plan to tell this story to anyone, it may help to know that the pronunciation of "shi" is something like "sure."