The Chinese numbers

A friend shared to me this story over coffee this morning.

The Chinese numbers one, two and three are pretty easy to write. 一 yī (one), 二 èr (two) and 三 sān (three). Well, that's what a young boy thought. His father tried to teach him to write a number each day going from one to ten. By the time he had mastered writing the number three, the boy decided that he had no more need of his father's help.

"It's so easy," he confidently said. "All I have to do is to draw lines."

"Alright then, write the number 100," his father said.

The boy did as told. It took him more than an hour to write all the one hundred lines.

The Chinese character for the number four is 四 sì.

He wouldn't have gone through all the trouble if he had learnt to write the simple number four.