The Shanghai-based Xinmin Evening News reports on a six month old baby boy that they say can already recognize over one thousand Chinese characters.

The baby, Zhuangzhuang, can pick out the right card depicting a character from amongst several different cards, which are themselves selected from over one thousand Chinese character cards.

Zhuangzhuang's parents say that from among these characters, they have only taught their baby around 50.

Experts believe it is too early to define the baby as a wonder kid and his marvelous recognition of characters may simply be caused by a kind of photographic memory that babies possess.

(CRI January 16, 2006)