Chinese number puzzle: 

Ever since before Arabic numeral system was  introduced into China in 1592 in mathematics by mathematician Cheng Dawei, two  distinctly different traditional Chin-ese numerals, plus one set of sim plified numerals have been in wide use for formal documentations like archiving and financing. The Arabic numeral system, while has greatly simplified the writing task, has not yet replaced the traditional Chin-ese numerals. The ever more pre-valent and popular computeri-zation, however, has now started off toward eliminating the domi-nant use of traditional Chinese numerals in a wide area, though the manual backing up by means of conventional accounting still intensively employs the traditional numerals.

Learn it all?

Numerals are often the beginning of a long grind in language learn-ing. Chinese numerals of one, two, three are extremely simple and often overlooked for someth ing like a piece of cake. " The one is simple, you put a chop-stick horizontally and you have the number. " The teacher illustrated. The first day. " Put one more chop stick on top of other two. " The teacher continued the second day. " The three looks like " the  teacher said and put one more chop-stick on top of other two. On the fourth day, a pupil handed in a rough exercise book, with pages and pages of horizontal strokes, in threes, in fours and in fives.... the teacher was amazed and amu-sed, asking why." Well ", the pupil explained, " the numbers are very easy and I have learned them all."