Why this site exists
Hi! I'm a dad of two children who learn Chinese with 刘老师 and 王老师. A lesson is only once a week. We want children to arrive ready: knowing the words, hearing the tones. Then the lesson can be about playing, celebrating what they can already do, and learning from the teacher. Five minutes here every day is enough. Everything is free and checked by the teacher.
Where does the name come from? 和合 (hé hé) are two characters that sound exactly the same. 和 means harmony and calm; 合 means joining things into a whole.
For centuries people in China have told stories of the Two Immortals of Harmony and Union, 和合二仙. In the best-known version they were two monks and poets of the Tang dynasty, Hanshan and Shide. They lived by a temple in the Tiantai mountains and were inseparable friends: Shide saved food from the monastery kitchen for Hanshan, they wrote poems together and laughed so loudly that the whole mountain could hear them. Centuries later an emperor named them the saints of Harmony and Union. Their picture is hung at weddings and at New Year, so that a home stays in harmony.
In pictures they are two laughing boys, one with a lotus flower, the other with a round box. It is a Chinese play on words: lotus (荷, hé) sounds like harmony (和), and box (盒, hé) sounds like union (合). So the objects "speak" a wish: live in harmony and stay together. Sometimes five bats, Chinese symbols of good fortune, fly out of the box as well.
We have two small successors — and it started with them: Henryk and Helena both begin with "He". Instead of a lotus and a box, they have a cloud and a spark.
Henryk is 4 and he is our Cloud, our 和: calm, a little quieter, he likes to watch first and learn at his own pace. A cloud, like a lotus on still water, doesn't fight the wind — it moves with it.
Helena is 7 and she is our Spark, our 合: sociable, curious about everything, quick, in love with the "aha!" moment. A spark, like a box that keeps treasures in one place, joins the pieces into a whole: the character, its sound and its meaning suddenly click. The Cloud gives the Spark room to shine, and the Spark lights up the Cloud.
Why am I telling you this? Because they are two completely different children at the same lesson — and the site has to fit both. For Henryk nothing here rushes him: he can listen first, a mistake is only a stumble, and the word simply comes back later. For Helena there are games, speed, conversations with the panda and putting words together into sentences. And because she loves to sing, I am now working on songs made from the lesson words — they will be one of the most important ways to learn on this site. We try every new thing on both of them: will the quieter one lose heart, will the quicker one get bored? Your children are different again — tell us in a comment what works for them and what doesn't.
The lesson at school and practice at home are two different worlds for a child. This site is here to bring them together — in harmony. 加油！ — a dad
