There is a Chinese saying: “A book holds a house of gold.” In my opinion, this quote has its limitations. Yes, in general, knowledge from books has greater potential than knowledge gained from experience. With resources like libraries and acquired reading skills, we can learn almost everything we want, like history, biology, geography and more. Books seem to have almost no limits. We can not only learn from books, but also have fun with both fiction nonfiction books, such as being able to visualize amazing places in the world just by looking at a geographic encyclopedia.

On the other hand, other people may argue that knowledge gained from experience is more comprehensive. For example, when I play golf, it is hard to imagine and learn how to do a swing without any experience and with only research from books. Although there may be good golf swing examples in books, if we don’t really try the swing by ourselves, then how can we know we can truly do it? And how do we know if a certain swing fits us? Sports are an important part of life that can match the importance of knowledge, but I have never heard of someone learning a sport by just reading instructions from a book. Even if we do get the information from books, we still need to try it, which is experience.

If you ask me which source is more important, however, the answer can vary. People’s interests are different―some people like sports, so they need more experience with how to play sports, while some people like history, which would then require more reading of books because hands-on experience would not be as helpful. Some knowledge can be found in books, but on the other hand, we need to build experience. Therefore, I think we need both sources, by which the circumstances can determine which one we need more.