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分享一个知识点： Reader question: In this sentence – I carried the anonymous letter with me, like a hair shirt meant to remind me, amid earthly joys, of the atonement to come – what does “hair shirt” mean? My comments: It means the letter was irksome and irritating. Hair shirt, or hairshirt is a shirt made from animal hair or rough cloth. Needless to say, a hair shirt is uncomfortable to wear. The prickly hair or rough threads touch upon the skin like thorns, nails or needles, whichever sensation you prefer. Kidding aside, that’s indeed the purpose of a hair shirt, also known as sackcloth, made for people to wear in olden times as a form of punishment, penitence or hardship training. Ever since olden times, you see, various cultures have had the same beliefs that one can fortify the mind by mortifying the body, that is, by deliberately depriving themselves bodily pleasures. The Chinese, I’m afraid, are particularly good at this, making Zen or virtually any spiritual training such painful physical experiences that few people actually go through them. That’s why to the Chinese, the spiritual sphere in general is not a whole lot of fun. We therefore admire Tai Chi more as a form of ancient marshal art than something the average man would care to pursue on a daily basis today. And by a stretch you could even make a similar case for book reading – Parents make book reading sound like such a chore to children that the youngsters by and large hate school – many adults I know have stopped reading altogether after graduation. | 
