User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Behind the Scenes at the Beauty Pageant
February 20, 2008 at 6:31 AMBoth 面子 and 脸 are important for understanding Chinese culture. 丢面子 (diu1 mian4 zi) lose face 失面子 (shi2 mian4 zi) lose face 给面子 (gei3 mian4 zi) save face 留面子 (liu2 mian4 zi) preserve face 爱面子 (ai4 mian4 zi) concerned about face-saving 丢脸 (diu1 lian3) loose face 失脸 (shi1 lian3) loose face 没脸 (mei2 lian3) feel ashamed 脸皮厚 (lian3 pi2 hou4) cheeky 厚脸皮 (hou4 lian3 pi2) cheekiness 有脸皮 (you3 lian3 pi2) have the nerve to 不要脸 (bu2 yao4 lian3) shameless, brazen-faced
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 20, 2008 at 4:14 AMHi auntie68, I have googled and found a lot of phrase “识繁写简” on the Internet. This might be the most practical and pragmatic way to “socialize” with Chinese characters for people who live in “简体字” regions. I hear that Taiwanese people also use very “simplified characters” when handwriting something.
Posted on: To Love or Be Loved
February 20, 2008 at 3:44 AMHi auntie68, Wiki-changye : 団鬼六 (dan-oni-roku, or dan-ki-roku) is a well-known male writer in Japan, whose works often feature hardcore SM pornography and have sometimes been made into movies over the past few decades. Unfortunately, according to Japanese law, foreign people, especially a pure vanilla Singaporean, are not supposed to read and see the works by 団鬼六. Auntie68, it seems that you know Japan backwards and forwards!
Posted on: To Love or Be Loved
February 20, 2008 at 3:44 AMHi jillybterp, You are very right. 红旗 is “a legal wife”, and 彩旗 is “a mistress”, of course, hopefully young and beautiful. 红旗 also means 五星红旗 (five-star red flag), the national ensign of the PRC. For the record, 红旗 is also the name of the Chinese national flag automobiles, which are usually used by the top leaders of China. Ironically, local governments leaders commonly prefer BMW and Mercedes Benz to 红旗 brand. http://auto.sina.com.cn/salon/FAW/FAW.shtml To tell you the truth, I am not so sure about the meaning of the saying. Its most famous form should perhaps be 家中红旗不倒，外面彩旗飘飘, which usually means that you have both a peaceful home and mistress at the same time. Some people say it also implies that you can afford a mistress, UNLESS your wife discovers it. In that sense, you can modify the saying like this, 只有家中红旗不倒，外面彩旗才能飘飘.
Posted on: Hot Soup
February 19, 2008 at 8:30 AMGoogle results. eat yogurt = 339,000 drink yogurt = 648,000 吃酸奶 = 937,000 喝酸奶 = 796,000
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 19, 2008 at 8:16 AMHi auntie68, As to those "unique traditional hanzi in Canton”, I think they eloquently demonstrate or symbolize one of Chinese traditions, that is, local governments do not easily obey the central authority. Perhaps you can find much more “strange” characters, not listed even in 康熙字典 or 中华字海, all over China and in overseas Chinese societies. How interesting!
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 19, 2008 at 7:45 AMHi auntie68, Thanks for reading my long grumbling. I will buy your "let Nature take its course" policy. I find it much to the point. The Beatles sing “Let It Be”, Maradona has the “invisible God’s hand”, and even China is enthusiastically advocating “free market capitalism” at present. The discussion reminds me of the Indonesian slogan of “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika”. I hear it is old Javanese (be careful, not “Japanese”). This means “Unity in Diversity”, which sounds very favorable to me, of course, provided diversity is not extreme enough to lead to chaos!
Posted on: Hot Soup
February 19, 2008 at 3:58 AM我喝粥 (wo 3 he1 zhou1) I eat rice-porridge.
Posted on: To Love or Be Loved
February 19, 2008 at 3:36 AMHi wei1xiao4 and auntie68, Now, let me hand in homework belatedly, although I feel a little embarrassed to translate my clumsy Chinese into clumsier English. As is often the case with materials written or translated by non-native speakers, my postings also do not come with any guarantee! ------------------------------------------- I hear that a Chinese Han woman often tests her husband and reconfirms his love for her. Once a wife catches a cold, she would call her husband right away and ask him to take her to a clinic. If a wife’s parents ask favors, their son-in-law would get a day off work and immediately take action about that. In case his “’performance” is not good enough, it exactly means that his wife loses face just in front of her parents. What I wrote above might be somewhat exaggerated, but I believe that there certainly is some truth in that. Even if a husband keeps a beautiful young mistress, it seems that his wife can still enjoy her stable position at home. That is why even Chairman Mao had difficulty controlling his third wife (江青), and it is understandable that the great revolutionist once jokingly offered to send ten million Chinese women to US. -------------------------------------------
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 20, 2008 at 9:22 AMHi user43682, I enjoyed reading your posting. Your proposal, sort of 写简识繁 in auntie68’s comment, might be somewhat provocative but there is a certain amount of truth in it. In fact, to some extent 写简 has already been achieved by using PCs and word processors, although my old mother is not a beneficiary of those gadgets. As I mentioned before, ordinary people usually tend to use “their own simplified Chinese characters”, regardless of 繁体字 and 简体字, for handwriting to save the trouble, therefore I think writing 繁体字 is not a big burden anymore. If 毛泽东 had used a word processor, 简体字 would not have been created. Like in China, Japan also had several “get rid of hanzi” movements in the past century. Some scholars advocated complete romanization, some insisted using only Japanese phonograms, Katakana or Hiragana. Surprisingly, a few radical scholars proposed to abandon Japanese and adopt French as the national language. The biggest “crisis” came soon after the World War II ended. The American Occupation Army in Japan tried to purge Chinese characters out of good will and conducted a nationwide survey on literacy rate, however they gave up the purge project immediately after they found the literacy rate in Japan was incredibly 98%. Japanese contains abundant borrowed words from Chinese, and there are a large number of homonyms among them, therefore using only phonograms would definitely reduce readability of Japanese. PC can help you in writing, but not much in reading. And in general, you spend more time reading than writing in your life. Japanese people never give up Chinese characters!