In the News- In the Future of Cars, Irag's New Culture, and Catholics are Facing a New Dilemma.

What has our military done to Irag?

Finally the American military is leaving after more than eight years in Irag, leaving behind not only a new democracy and bitter memories of war, but a new culture for the country's youth. Eight million, a quarter of the population, (and about one million people born each year if my math is right if we've been in Irag for eight years) has been born since 2003 and nearly half the country is under 19. Many youngsters have adopted hip-hop styles:

Calling themselves "punky," or "hustlers," many are donning hoodie sweat shirts, listening to 50 Cent or Eminem and watching "Twilight" vampire movies. They eat hamburgers and pizza and do death-defying Rollerblade runs through speeding traffic. Teens spike their hair or shave it Marine-style. The "Iraq Rap" page on Facebook has 1,480 fans.

To many of their fellow Iraqis, the habits appear weird, if not downright offensive. But to the youths, it is a vital part of their pursuit of the American dream as they imagine it to be.

Another youth,  Mohammed Adnan, 15, says that nobody minds the "U.S gangsta" look in his neighborhood. In fact, they get invite to weddings or other celebrations to preform break dancing.

It all adds up to a taste of the wide world for a society which lived for decades under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship that deprived them of satellite TV, cell phones and the Internet, and then through invasion, terrorism and sectarian killing.

But not all Iragis are accepting of our (American) culture. One sociologist says that many of the youths are adopting the negative aspects of American culture such as rejecting school uniforms (okay really, since when do any kids willing accept those?), engage in forbidden love affairs (Um, hello? Kids are going to and have been doing that for centuries.), and rebeling against their elders (like that hasn't happened before).

Like many Iraqis, high school student Maytham Karim wants to learn English. But the English he hears most often from his peers — and mostly those who listen to American music — is laden with profanity. "The F- and the 'mother' words are used a lot, which is a very negative thing," Karim said.

Apparently the only thing these youth seem to have gotten out of "American culture" are the negative aspects. What about the good things? Why are those being reported on? To see the whole article click here.

New Mass Translations for Catholics. 
Yes, I'm Christian, but these changes do not affect me. I am a Lutheran and although we've never had our services in Latin before, we used to have them in German in the past because where I live most people come from a German heritage. Actually one church that I know of still offers services everyonce in a while in German. Anyways:

The Mass itself — the central ritual of the Catholic faith — hasn't changed, but the English translation has, in the largest shakeup to the everyday faith of believers since the upheavals that followed the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. A years-long process of revision and negotiation led to an updated version of the Roman Missal, the text of prayers and instructions for celebrating Mass, which originally was written in Latin. The new translation was rolled out across the English-speaking Catholic world on Sunday after months of preparation.

And what exactly are these changes? Well apparently the English translations are now closer to Latin. Most things haven't been changed, just a few words or pharses here and there, but it's enough to make some people dislike them. So much that some people fear that it may make people distance themselves from the church. Here's what some people have said:

Maribeth Lynch, 51, a publisher from the Milwaukee suburb of Elm Grove, said she was "distraught" over the changes and would refuse to "learn the *beeep*  prayers."
"It's ridiculous. I've been a Catholic for 50 years, and why would they make such stupid changes? They're word changes. They're semantics," she said.
"It's confusion. All it's doing is causing confusion," she said. "You want to go to church and be confused?"

Kathleen McCormack, a church volunteer and former school teacher, said she didn't like the new translation and didn't understand why the church needed a translation closer to Latin.
"Consubstantial? What is that word?" McCormack said, referring to a term in the retranslated Nicene Creed that replaces language calling Jesus "one in being with the Father." 

"It's more British in some ways," said Monsignor Michael Clay, pastor of St. Ann. "But this is the first time that every English-speaking country in the world will be using the same translation of the Mass." 

 (Why it's more "British in some ways" I don't get. Isn't it suppose to be more like Latin?) For the most part, what the priest says has been changed the most. But its not like this was thrown out all of the sudden.

Parishes and dioceses around the country have spent months trying to prepare Catholics for the change. Descriptions of the new translation have been printed in weekly bulletins, seminars have been held and, since Labor Day, many parishes have been gradually introducing the new translation piece by piece, starting with the parts of the liturgy that are sung.

 Apparently this choice was made by Vatican officials in 2001. To read the whole article, click here.
*The Beeep is a swear word and I won't put those in this blog.

Toyota unveils the ulitmate car ever.
One of Toyota's latest concept cars is the Fun-Vii, probably the most futuristic and coolest car idea I've seen yet besides hovering vechices. "Vii" standing for Vechicle, interactive, internet certainly shows one of the most interactive cars that could certainly put the "fun" back into automoblies. The wedge-shaped car is designed as a personal display space with both the interior and the exterior doubling as display screens. On the outside, the driver can change the car's color and design plus the car's color also changes depending on mood. And the car works like a personal computer with users able to connect to the internet wirelessly and to the roads around it, letting the car access future technologies like smart grids.

According to one news article:

And it's not just the outside of the Fun-Vii that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie, the interior is just as futuristic. Making generous use of augmented reality technology, the Fun-Vii will plot a virtual path for you right on your windshield, and even offer a virtual guide to help you on your way. Of course, many of these touches still reside firmly in the realm of fantasy, but the fact that a major car company is looking so far ahead gives us hope for a very tech-friendly future.

She looks like a flight attendant!

If you ask me, while being able to change the outside of your car is cool, I could see it causing a lot of distractions while driving. Especially if you change the outside of your car while your driving.

To see the whole pictures and articles click here and here.

But to let you get an idea of how awesome this car looks, I've provided pictures.
If you're having trouble seeing these, just click on them to make them bigger.

One company showing off

The cool interior. Only three people though.

Happy Birthday!

If you ask me, its actually an ugly shape for a car,.

Those little squares you see are interactive. 

Writing Tips- World Building

World building is very important. It's probably easier if you're writing in a real-world setting and even harder if you're creating your own world. In any case, it requires research and thinking.

First Step: Research
World building has two things to build a great and believable world. Creativity and research. When one researches, one must remember that you do not need everything you research. In other words, you must figure out what to read. If you're using historical parts in a fantasy novel you probably don't need the most credible sources. Although it's also good to make sure you have true facts in case you end up using something that makes you sound like you don't know what you're talking about. But even if you're creating your own version of a culture, you'll still need to use your imagination.

Even though one must be careful about how much you research because it can quickly take up your writing time and you may never end up starting the story, how much one researches depends on how closely you want your story to relate to true facts. If you want your story's culture to sound like something from Ancient China, you may want to research that culture unless you want to loosely base your culture off of it.

But besides researching historical facts, researching scientific facts and other things will make you sound like you know what you're talking about. You might ask why you need all this researching if you're writing a fantasy novel, but you see, there's these things called plausibility and realism.

Plausibility vs Realism
Plausibility is making your fantasy sound real, as if you're almost there. Realism is using facts from the real world to help make your world sound real. Without real facts, you might end up making your work harder than it has to be.

Tips to help your world:

• Make a list of rules and stick to them: If your world uses time travel and you can hyper-jump to a planet, make sure that if so, you can hyper-jump during any time of the novel unless there's a reason why. If your spaceship can do so during one chapter but can't the next, why? 
• Create maps and research them: I love making maps. They can be very helpful in not only knowing what your world looks like and deciding where things are, but they can help with traveling. They can help you decide what routes to take, where buildings, towns, and geographic features are. How long does it take to get to the next town? How far apart is one town from the next? Knowing where deserts commonly are found and why can be useful. Knowing weather patterns and what causes them are the same. 
• Stick with real things or have a reason not too: If you decide not to have gravity or some universal rule, make sure you have a reason why. Maybe a gaint spell came along that caused the world to loose its gravity. Or it has something to do with being closer or farther away from another planet or maybe it's less dense or more dense. 

What Creatures inhabit your world?

Three tips to decide what flora and animals are normal in your world:

1. There are no created animals, all the animals and plants we know of exist.
2. There is part created creatures/plants, part animals we know of existing: Creatures that don't really exist live in the same world as animals and plants such as deer and coconuts. Remember that the animal kingdom is arranged in a pyramid with large predadors at the top and a larger number of smaller creatures at the bottom.
3. There is no creatures that we know of exist: In other words, you created all of your creatures and plants. Remember that your creatures should fill the same roles as earth animals. Like horses. Although your creature that has a horse-like roles can do things horses can't like flying.

Government

Creating your culture's government is very important. Every society and culture has some type of government. And characters are often a part of something government related. Some types of government can be:

• Empires
• Kingdoms
• Anarchy
• republic
• city state
• feudalism
• dictatorship/totalitarian
• communism
• federation

And then these governments can be separated by even more things like:

• patriarchal
• matriarchal
• militaristic
• theocratic

And within these are even more things your people can be apart of. States, armies, secret societies, government agencies, guilds, and other things ran by governments. 

Creating Culture

Many things help create culture, things like:

• Religion- What someone believes in can greatly affect the culture. How often do the characters pray? Are they deeply religious or not so much? If your culture has religion, recall that religion usually affects every day life and almost everything that people do. In Christianity, most people might go to church every Sunday or some people go once in a while. Muslims pray several times a day. 
• weights and measures- Things like pounds, miles, and quarts are part of the system that America and one other country uses. Everyone else uses things like the metric system. The American system was based on how long the average person's arm or foot was, while the metric system is based on the number ten. How do people count time? By the postion of the sun or the moon? How much does something cost? And what do they use to decide that? Coins, feathers, shells?
• sayings and slang- What people say, how they say it, and what they mean by it differs from culture to culture. Where I live, people say something is "breast" when something is awesome or cool. My cousin says "cool beans" when something is cool. I bet people over in Africa have their own slang for when something is cool.
• diet and food- What does your culture eat? Meat, just veggies and fruit, or both? Also remember that many cultures have different foods from other ones. Italian is very different from Chinese food. Or something that's a common dish in Africa would be exotic in America. 
• music, art, and pop culture- Music and art all say something about people's culture. The Egyptians are famous for their hieroglyphs and the sarcophagus that hold mummies. While the Olmec in Ancient America carved giant heads.  
• prejudice/racism/tolerance- Back in WWII there were many anti-Jewish feelings. People were racist or against Jews. People can be prejudiced against fat or malformed people. Some people tolerate certain groups of people but view them as like second class citizens. 
• manners- Is it polite to bring food when you visit another home? How does your people greet each other? Its important to know what is rude and what isn't. As is how to show respect to someone of higher rank. Do they bow or salute? 
• clothing- The type of clothing and how they wear it contributes to culture. People in India wear saris while the traditional dress for the Japanese is the kimono. Is their outfits made out of cotton during the summer and wool in the winter? Are bright colors worn in the summer and spring while dull colors are worn in the winter and fall?

So what are your favorite created worlds?


Sincerely,
Sareh

Book Review- Pucker

(From Goodreads) Thomas Quicksilver, known to his classmates as "Pucker," has always been an outsider. His crazy mother, the secret of his family's strange origins, and above all, the terrible scars on his face from a childhood fire these things have kept Thomas isolated and lonely. But now, at seventeen, Thomas is suddenly given the chance to change all that.To be magically healed, even beautiful; to have girls throwing themselves at him.To fit in. The question is, what is he willing to sacrifice? His home? His personality? His mother s life? 

The story itself is quite odd in my opinion. Thomas comes from  a paraell universe where certain people have an extra skin- called a seer skin- that lets them see into the future. In the story, there was a gaint war over this and eventually the seers were forced to read everyone's future every morning. But Thomas parents are both seers and he isn't. When his parents rebel, his father is killed, Thomas's face is badly burned, and his mother is stripped of her seer skin.

And so she and Thomas both flee to earth where Thomas's mother works as a future teller. She also happens to be bed ridden because if she leaves her room, she is assulted by futures of basically every living thing that passes by their apartment. While his mother does this for a job, Thomas must survive in school where he is nicknamed "Pucker" because of his scars. 

His mother tells him early on in the story that he must return to their homeland and get her seerskin. Without it she shall die. At first Thomas doesn't want to go but he does and goes there as a Changed. The Changed are basically human slaves who have been changed back into beautiful people in return for their service for the rest of their lives.

While there he meets some people and turns out to be this good looking guy. Thomas also turns out to be a jerk and lets his looks go to his head. And eventually he saves his mother and falls in love.

Now, while the story was good, I thought that the writing was jerky and it didn't seem to flow at all for me. I thought that Pucker would say random stuff at times when it wasn't needed or things weren't clear enough. For example, he spent two pages talking about some girl's white pants, only for that the end of the chapter to say that she was going to have her period. Well why didn't you say that in the first place? There were some other examples too and it made me almost stop reading into the first hundred pages.

While the other world is interesting, I didn't like Dash at all. Actually for some reason, I felt confused about Dash and how he treated Pucker most of the time. Was he trying to be nice most of the time or wasn't he? He...just confused me. And the love interest girl also confused me. As did how the Changed society worked. Mostly, I stopped reading the book because I got really confused and I didn't like the protagonist at all.

The other characters were very good either. The only thing I liked about the book was the plot itself and how eventually Thomas learns that looks isn't everything.

Would I recommend it? Probably not.

On Goodreads: Pucker

Sincerely,
Peony

Interesting Facts- Incas are More Alike Us than We Realize (part 2)

So Sunday I posted a long post about Aztecs (Read it here), and today I'm forcing you all to learn about Incas now. Unfortantly, I won't have a post about the Mayans because I haven't done enough research on them. But one day I will!

Anyways, the Incas were interesting people. They believed that the original Incas started out as children of gods who came out of this cave. And according to this legend, they then went on to conquer other native peoples. The people who became part of the Inca's empire weren't actually called Incas (just like how the Aztecs called themselves Mexicas). The only person who was called Inca, was the Emperor and the actual noble people. The emperor was actually called the Sapa Inca  or just the Inca. While the other nobles were called that, only they could be called Incas if they were descended from the first Incas.

Like the Mayans and the Aztecs, the Incas had the concept of zero too. In fact, their system of goverment was based off of numbers. You see, every 10 households was governed by a head figure. These leaders of ten, reported then to the heads of fifty households, and then they all reported to heads who governed prefects of 100, 500, 1,000, 5,000, and then finally, 10,000 households! Those those who governed over households larger than fifty, their postion happened to be hereditary.


Unlike us, the Incas did not have money. Instead everything was bought through time. This was called the Mit'a which means that it was a tax placed on the people. To pay for this tax you had to spend a certain amount of time doing something. For example, you could spend a year in the army, or repairing roads. In exchange, the government provided everything the people needed, kinda like a welfare system.

Every town or city had storage houses where things like rations went to the widowed, orphans, or disabled people every day, and food and stuff went to everyone else during times of strife or during a catastrophe, like if there was a earthquake. And for the army, there was a storage house where things like armor and weapons were held in towns so that where ever the army was, they were well equiped. They also even had runners to bring messages, much like our pony express.

Not only did the government provide this, but for every marriaged couple, the government gave them enough land to support themselves and any extended family memebers they may have. But before they could work on their own land, the general people had to work on the land of the Emperor and the nobles before they could work on their own. The Emperor even began the planting season by breaking the ground with a golden plow, although after that, he never really did anything to grow food.

Common people also owed a certain amount of cloth to the government because cloth was very valuable. Interestingly enough, even though the government provided for them, people who were disabled or had issues could only marry people who had the same problem as them. For example. only blind people could marry other blind people.


One of the most interesting things about the Incas is that they had a special group of women called Chosen Women. An Acllacuna was the school where girls (ten years old) were selected from all over the Inca empire to be trained as Chosen Women. They were selected based on beauty and social rank. Being trained by older Chosen Women, the girls learned things such as dyeing, weaving, singing and dancing, they preformed religious rites, and they had to make clothes for the emperor. After a certain amount of time (usually three years) they were sent to Cuzco to the Festival of the Sun where the Emperor would decide what happened to them.

 If they weren't selected as a concubine they could be married off to a nobleman or "married" to a diety. If a man spent time with a Chosen Woman both partners could be killed and the village from where the Chosen Woman came from destoryed. But if the Emperor spent a night with one, a temple guard would be sent to the Emperor and ask him if he had indeed spent time with a Chosen Woman. If he said yes then all would be forgiven.

An Acllahuasi was the house where Chosen Women stayed. And a Mamaconas was a Chosen Woman who had been selected by the Emperor as either a concubine or a priestess. Chosen women were expected to be publically moral and lead a good example for other women. They were treated as queens and ladies, leading great and fantastic lives which were filled with pleasure and amusement. the people and lords loved them and they were very esteemed and highly regarded. So much were they respected that commoners would never look them in the eyes.

The Incas are famous for their writing system, known as the quipu. The quipu is a system of strings and knots that represent something. These strings could only be read by the person who created them. Because of this, scribes were very powerful people since they could lie about their quipus. And with this great power, the Sapa Inca had investigators who came around to make sure that the quipu makers didn't lie about what they "wrote" about. And because only the person who made a quipu could understand what it said, people today have no idea what the which still exist mean. There is some ideas going around but no one is really sure.

The Incas were great builders. One of their most famous cities is Machu Picchu. Anyways, the Incas buildings were so well put together that they could withstand earthquakes and a knife couldn't even be put between the stones. The stones were uncut and fitted together naturally so that if there was an earthquake, the stones would rumble together and not fall apart. When looking at one building built by the Incas, the researchers discovered that each stone had a small indent or mark so that they would fit together like a puzzle.

Resources:
Aztecs: Reign of Blood and Splendor by Time-Life Books and Dale M. Brown
Incas Lords of Gold and Glory by Time-Life Books and Dale. M. Brown

So, did you learn anything? Do you think the Incas are interesting?

Sincerely,
Peony

Book Review- White Cat

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers — people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they're all mobsters, or con artists. Except for Cassel. He hasn't got the magic touch, so he's an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail — he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.

Ever since, Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts crumbling when he starts sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He's noticing other disturbing things, too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him, caught up in a mysterious plot. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he also wonders what really happened to Lila. Could she still be alive? To find that out, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.

Holly Black has created a gripping tale of mobsters and dark magic where a single touch can bring love — or death — and your dreams might be more real than your memories.

First of all, the concept was really cool. And I love Cassel's name, it's epic. Cassel Sharpe lives in a world where a simple touch can be life or death, love or hate, good or bad. He lives in a world where people with magic are called workers. Workers are shunned by the normal people because they think that workers are bad people. Because curse work is illegal most of the workers have ended up working as mobsters or con artists. They also work for large crime families or other workers.

I thought that Cassel was a good character. I think that he is a character that some of us at least can relate to. Why? Well Cassel happens to not only be an outsider at his school since few people are related to workers, but he is also an outsider in his own family since he can't do magic. One of the traits I liked about him was his strong sense of family ties since I believe that family is very important. 

All the characters were very good too. From Cassel's brothers, his friends, family, and other people. They were all believable and cool. I loved his friends, they amused me. As did his grandpa. And I love how he turns out in the end, go grandpa! 

And the plot was amazing. As the story progresses Cassel figures out that his memories have been tampered with. So as you read, you're never really sure what's real and what isn't until the very end. I enjoyed how Holly Black explores the idea of memories and how they affect you. Like, if your memories change, does that change you? Can changing someone's memories make them a better or worse person? 

The other concept I thought was cool was the concept of curses or magic in this book. There are many different types of curses, good and bad, ones that can give you luck and protect you from other curses, to ones that can erase your memories. And according to the story, we find out with every time you curse someone, you get a blowback or something happens to you. Kinda like a check and balance. So say if you erase some one's memory, than a part of yours is gone too. Or like with Cassel's grandpa, he's a death workers which means he can kill people by touching them, so for every time he curses someone, he loses parts of his fingers. Eventually he's left with just stubs where his fingers used to be. 

Of the things I didn't like, I found some misspellings (although one of them I wasn't sure if it was intentional or not) and things got confusing for me at times that I had to reread something. I had problems following the story line and figuring out how a con worked. But other than that, I really loved this book! 

Overall this book was really good and I'd certainly recommend it. And I normally wouldn't read this type of book, dark and morbid
 at times, but overall I thought it was interesting. And it's good to read something you normally wouldn't. I haven't read Black's other books, but I've been meaning too. 

So, have you ever read any books about mobsters and gangs? Actually, do you know of anyone who has stories about mobs and gangs? According to a rumor floating around my family, we used to be related to some guy in the mafia. But he died a long time ago and we don't know if it's true or not. 


On Goodreads: White Cat

Her Website:  Holly Black

Sincerely,

Peony

The Poetry of Epicness

When you think of epic poetry two poems probably come to mind: the 
Odyssey and the Iliad. Epic poems were at first always told by oral traditions. They could be in a sense, the ancient people's form of listening books and entertainment. Often the stories could be acted out.


Epic poems are long, serious, and narrative. They pertain to the heroic acts that significantly effects a nation or culture. Usually the heroes are mythological figures and they struggle on some kind of journey or quest.


Epic poems usually have seven different ways you have tell them apart from other forms of literature.

1. It starts in the middle of the story, usually with flashbacks to explain what happened before.
2. The setting occurs in many different places.
3. It begins with an invocation to a muse (called the epic invocation)
4. It includes th use of epithets.
5. Features long and formal speeches. 
6. Usually has gods and goddesses or some kind of divine force interacting with human affairs.
7. The protagonist (the hero) usually embodies the characteristics of the civilization.

And after going on this long quest and having faced many enemies, the hero usually returns significantly changed since the beginning of the story.

I remember learning about epic poems in literature class during my freshman year of  high school. We studied the Odyssey for a couple months. We listed the good/bad traits of Odysseus, talked about epic poems, and as the stupid freshmen we were, we made goofed off during class. I think I was the only one who actually payed attention.

Resources
Wikipedia- Epic Poetry
Epic Poetry

So, what are your favorite epic poems? Have you ever tried writing one or do you know of someone who has?

Sincerely,
Peony

The History, Usage, and Language of the Hand Fan.

My dad's wall fan 

Note: Jessika is on vacation is week so Peony will be doing today and Wednesday's post.
Fans have always interested me. There are many kinds and have been used in the past all the time. They were known by the ancient Egyptians, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Greeks, and Aztecs. Although the orgin of the hand fan is unknown, one of the earliest fans found in ancient times was on pictures and paintings of the Egyptians. The invention of the folding fan is credited to the Japanese. When Cortes went to the Americas, he was given six feather fans. Columbus brought fans back to Europe also from the Americas. 

One of my fans, it was a gift. 

These ancient peoples used fans for not only cooling themselves on hot days, but to scare away insects that might be harmful. Children used them as toys. In later times fans were mainly used as a form of communication (anyone remember The Princess Diaries where Mia's grandmother teaches her how to properly use a fan?). 


In Japan and Korea, fans have been used as weapons. They were not only used to cool off warriors, but could be used as defensive or attack weapons. In Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small Quartet, her Yamani used these kinds of fans. In Japan, Tessenjutsu, is the art of fighting with war fans. There were three types of fans used:

A fan that my mom gave me. 

• Gunsen- Were folding fans that were made of wood or a light metal for the inner spokes and then thin iron or stronger metals were used for the outer spokes which made them light but strong at the same time. 
• Tessen- These folding fans had their outer spokes made out of iron which was designed to look like normal, harmless fans. Some clubs were shaped to look like a closed fan. Warriors could take these weapons to places where weapons were normally not allowed. These type of fans could be used to fend off darts, arrows, as a throwing weapon, or as an aid in swimming. 
• Dansen Uchiwa- These large open fans could be made out of solid iron with a wooden core, or soild wood. These could be used to fend off arrows, a sunshade, or to signal to troops.

According to Wikipedia:

Some wove flexible metal ribbons along the outer most edge for cutting power or preferred feathers that hid finger-sized razor blades which would rake upon striking. Others held variations of poisons or were used to conceal other weapons such as throwing blades which could be released in a spread upon snapping the fan open. Poison fans often hid deadly to stunning concoctions in bladders or channels which would open upon spreading the fan, allowing the user to gently direct a gust of irritants and toxins at their opponent over short distances.

Folklore and hearsay also suggests occasional traveling merchants trading with China possessed fans with small compartments in the vanes of the fan which held small explosive pellets that upon striking a surface would create a bright and dazzling flash of light, similar in concept to modern Chinese novelty fireworks.

My sandalwood fan.

 As I was saying earlier, fans could also be used as a form of communication. Doing some research I found some of the language. This was mainly used by ladies when they wished to speak to their friends or men they were interested in. Because it is a form of communication somewhat lost to modern day culture, sources have varied meanings. 

• To hold it to your right cheek: Yes.
• To hold it to your left cheek: No.
• Drawing it through your hand: I hate you.
• Drawing it across your cheek: I love you.
• To fan slowly: I am married.
• To fan quickly: I am engaged.
• Dropping the fan: We are friends.
• To hold the handle to your lips: Kiss me.
• Opening it with your left hand: Come talk to me. 
• Touhcing the edge of the fan with your fingers: I wish to speak to you.
• Drawing it across your forehead: You have changed.
• To move the fan with your left hand: We are being watched.
• To open and close the fan: You are cruel. 

Resources

My paper fan. 

For more fan language: All Hand Fans: Language of the Fan; Fabulously French: The Secret Language of the Fan; A Cool Breeze- The Language of the Fan

For more history of the fan: All Hand Fans: History; Hand Fans; Asian Ideas: History

So, do you have any fans? Do you use them? 


Sincerely,
Peony