Microstories 微故事 0017：One Hundred Billion 一千亿 2

一千亿 2

在我地下室的一些箱子里

有一些我曾祖母的相册。

一些可能是1860年代的。

我想象这段一千亿人、二十万年的人类历史，

像一个有文字的相册一样。

每一个出生的人是一张照片。

有的有词，有的有句子。

都属于这个故事。

Word List

亿 yì one hundred million, 100,000,000
十亿 shí yì one billion, 10 × 100,000,000 = 1,000,000,000
一千亿 yī qiān yì one hundred billion, 1,000 × 100,000,000 = 100,000,000,000
地下室 dìxiàshì basement
曾 zēng great (generation above)
祖 zǔ ancestor
曾祖母 zēngzǔmǔ paternal great-grandmother
相册 xiàngcè photo album
属于 shǔyú belong to

One Hundred Billion 2

In a few of the boxes in my basement

are some of my great-grandmother’s photo albums,

some probably from the 1860s.

I imagine the 200,000 year history of

the 100 billion humans estimated to have ever lived

as a photo album with captions.

Everyone born is a photo.

Some have words. Some have sentences.

All belong to the story.

Notes

1. An estimated 117 billion humans have ever lived. For artistic purposes, I rounded down to 100 billion. If we define the beginning of human history as the appearance of Homo sapiens, human history is estimated to be about 200,000 years.

2. A microstory also entitled “One Hundred Billion 一千亿” is here.

Microstories 微故事 are short works written at the intermediate level in two versions, one in Simplified Chinese characters and one in English. Microstories 微故事 are written by Anne 安妮 Giles and edited by 侯慧颖 Hóu Huìyǐng “Mary.”

Some words are repeated in the stories in hopes of offering language learners the 3 to 17 exposures (number of times a learner encounters a word in different contexts) that may be needed to learn a new word.

Microstories 微故事 may serve as short reading and discussion texts for busy adult language learners of Simplified Chinese Characters and/or English.

更多

• Word lists for review are in Hack Chinese.

• A list of Microstories 微故事 is here.

• 枝丫1: Twig: A Fantasy Novel begins here. The complete 枝丫1 story, just 汉字, is here

• 枝丫2 Twig: A Fantasy Novel begins here. The complete 枝丫2 story, just 汉字，is here.

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