Dahan (大汉), hanzi (汉子), haohan (好汉) and nanzihan (男子汉) all have the character han (汉). 【小题1】

During the Han Dynasty (206 BC—AD 220), the Han people lived in Zhongyuan, or the Central Plains region. The soldiers (士兵) of the Han Dynasty fought against the Xiongnu people from the north. They were brave (勇敢的). 【小题2】 So the Xiongnu people called them dahan, hanzi, haohan and nanzihan. 【小题3】 People used them to refer to (指) the soldiers of the Han Dynasty.

Later, people used hanzi to refer to men. Dahan referred to tall men. Haohan referred to heroes (英雄). 【小题4】

Did you know? In the Song Dynasty (960—1279), haohan referred to a certain (特定的) group of people. 【小题5】 A good example is the 108 haohan in Heroes of the Marshes (《水浒传》).

Poems play with sounds, words, and grammar. That makes poems difficult to write but very interesting to read. They use colours, feelings, experiences, and images to paint a picture in your mind. Let’s have a look at the following Chinese classical poem:

On the Stork Tower

By Wang Zhihuan

The sun along the mountain bows,

The Yellow River seawards flows,

You can enjoy a grander sight,

If you climb to a greater height,

Translated by Xu Yuanchong

In Chinese classical poems, the form is very important: the correct number of lines and the number of words in each line. Poems often follow special models of rhythm（节奏）and rhyme. However, modern poets begin to reject traditional forms and structures（结构）for poems in the 20th century. As a result, most poems today are written in free style, with lines of different lengths.

Today many Chinese people are becoming more interested in reading poems, no matter in what language they are written. Translations can be good, but being able to read in the original（最初的）language is best.