A short, sweet children's essay about how umbrellas look on a rainy day. Most of this is beginner reading, but there is one part of a sentence towards the end of the text which is intermediate reading. 

<h3>Di di da da</h3>
You'll also notice another onomatopoeia (I've been running into those a lot lately), 滴滴答答. We're rather lucky when we describe sounds in English, we can mash a bunch of letters together until they sound similar to the sound we heard - we have a little more flexibility. I could write: pfffsssshhhh, and you could make that sound, or imagine that sound. The Chinese have no alphabet to work with, so they do this by taking existing characters that sound similar and arranging them together. In this case 滴滴答答 (di1 di1 da1 da1) represents the pattering of raindrops, as you might hear rain fall against a window or roof.

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<h3>Chinese text</h3>
<strong>1)</strong> 今天，我回家写作业的时候，我听见外面<strong>传来</strong>了<strong>滴滴答答</strong>的声音，我想一定是下雨了。我赶忙跑到窗前，向下一看，街上的<strong>行人</strong>都打着<strong>雨伞</strong>，真的是下雨了。

<strong>2)</strong> 雨伞有黄色的、有白色的、有红色的、有紫色的，还有银灰色的……，美丽极了</strong>!

<strong>3)</strong> 我觉得雨伞可真好，它为我们<strong>撑</strong>起了一片<strong>晴朗</strong>的天空，它真是我们的好朋友。我希望每天都能下雨，让我的漂亮小雨伞每天都能<strong>陪伴</strong>我。
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<strong>1)</strong> Today, when I had returned to my house and I was doing my homework, I heard the sound of droplets coming from outside, and I thought it surely must be raining. I hurriedly ran to the window, and looked down, on the street the pedestrians were all carrying umbrellas, and it was indeed raining. 

<strong>2)</strong> There were yellow umbrellas, and there were white ones, and red ones, and purple ones, and also silver ones... so beautiful!

<strong>3)</strong> I thought about how great umbrellas are, they unfurl a sunny and cloudless sky for us, they're really our good friends. I wish it could rain every day, so that my beautiful little umbrella could accompany me.

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