I was walking around the Taipei Botanical Garden when I came across this sign, which explained some plant idioms. Think this sign could have specified more of the Chinese idioms and provided a proper equivalent in English to explain the idioms properly, but definitely a cool idea:
The first idiom is expanded to one side as follows: Continue reading
This is an update to a former post that you can check out here. The previous post described the use of the term 「不恥」(bu4chi3) in a short story by a Taiwanese author. I later came across the term again in 《馬橋詞典》 (A Dictionary of Maqiao), a book written by a mainland Chinese author:
The phrase containing it in Chinese reads:
Continue reading（二）三耳朵做過很多人所不恥的惡行[……]
(2) Sanerduo had done some pretty despicable things[…]
A Dictionary of Maqiao is a really considered and philosophical book, whilst managing to retain an earthiness and wit throughout. 
I liked the way the narrator poses the book as an effort to deconstruct traditional story-telling. He sees the traditional novel as directing its gaze selectively – focusing in on those things that relate to the central narrative, while ignoring the things that are on the periphery of this:
Things that can’t be put in the traditional novel are normally “insignificant.” However, when your focus is theocracy, science is insignificant; when it is humanity, nature is insignificant; when it is politics, then love is insignificant; when it is money, then aesthetics are insignificant. I suspect that everything in the world has the same level of significance, however, and that the reason that some things appear insignificant at times, is because they are filtered out by the author’s framework of meaning and are resisted by the reader’s framework of meaning, as they are not exciting enough. Clearly, these frameworks are not innate and unchanging, but rather the contrary, they are reformed by fads, habit and cultural tendencies – this mould is then set in the form of the novel. [My translation]
Photo via Wiki Commons
I’ve been eager to start a Chinese version of cryptic crosswords for some time, but it’s a pretty challenging feat.
There is already a tradition of the Chinese character riddle or 字謎.
Examples of this kind of riddle, taken from this helpful site are as below:
1. 真丟人 (The solution and an explanation follows in white, highlight it to reveal) You take the 「人」shaped two strokes off the bottom of 真 to get 直 which is the solution.
2. 見人就笑 (The solution and an explanation follows in white, highlight it to reveal) This is where the algebra component of 字謎 comes in. 人+ x=笑 hence 笑-人=x hence x=竺
3. 千古恨 (The solution and an explanation follows in white, highlight it to reveal) This references a popular saying taken from 《隋唐演義》 which goes 一失足成千古恨 (one step out of place can spawn hatred for a thousand years), here it means you combine 失 and 足 to get the character you want, 跌
4. 禮義廉恥 (The solution and an explanation follows in white, highlight it to reveal) These are the four social bonds 四維: propriety, justice, integrity and honor, if you were to put these into one character, 四 can be put on top and 維 put on bottom to make 羅.
5. 二小姐 (The solution and an explanation follows in white, highlight it to reveal) Another word for secondary is 次 and 小姐 indicates a woman, 次 and 女 can be combined into one character 姿 meaning posture.
6. 存心不善，有口難言 (The solution and an explanation follows in white, highlight it to reveal) This is algebra again, x + 心 = 不善 and x + 口 = 難言, so we have to think of a character that when it has a heart radical means not good, and when it has a mouth radical means “hard to say”, the solution is 亞, as 惡 means evil (not good), and 啞 means mute, which would make it hard to speak.
7. 寶島姑娘 (The solution and an explanation follows in white, highlight it to reveal) The 寶島 can only be 台灣, specifically the 台 and the 姑娘 is 女, which together make the character 始.
Try some of the clues yourself, or at least try to suss out how you get the answers.
I’ve blacked out the answers in this Google Doc.
I like it a lot better when the solution is hinted at in the clue, and think that it could be extended to longer clues, making a crossword. Unfortunately I lack the programming skills to make it happen.
I tried to make up my own cryptic Chinese clue a while ago, wonder if anyone can guess it.
不善之冷欠古人錢，傳說似反斤?
(答案爲兩個字）
Hint: 不令 is a synonym for 不善
犟 jiang4 (/qiang3)
I found this variant of 強 in a traditional character version of a mainland Chinese novel (《馬橋詞典》 Dictionary of Maqiao by 韓少功 Han Shaogong). This character is not listed in the Taiwanese Ministry of Education dictionary although it is listed in the variant dictionary. I was surprised to see the character in a traditional character book, because it incorporates the simplified version (or variant) of 強: 强 above 牛 (ox). Lots of simplified characters were adapted from variants or commonly used shorthand however, so it’s not overly unusual. At first I thought it might be an amusing glitch thrown up in the process of transcribing the simplified characters into traditional characters, but after checking the original on Google Books, it seems to have been a choice by the author:
In the Taiwan variants dictionary it is weirdly listed as a variant of standard character 
although this character cannot be typed – as it automatically switches back to 犟 when typing in zhuyin 注音 and Cangjie 倉頡.
Neither are listed as variants of 強 either. So I can only assume that Taiwan chose to replace this character with 強 in daily usage, although it still exists in its simplified form.
I recently posted a list of Chinese character variants and the Taiwanvore blogger posted an additional pair of variants to the list in the comments section – one in very common usage in Taiwan, specifically 裡 (for Cangjie fans that is 中田土) and 裏 (卜田土女). This variant pair is quite a rare example in modern Chinese as both are in regular usage, although according to Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, 裡 is the standard character (正體) and 裏 is the variant (異體).
Continue readingI started a collection of variants some time ago on Google Docs, but I gradually forgot about it – would be happy to hear from anyone about variants they have discovered in their language learning process.
| Strokes (Original) | Standard Form Character | Variant | pinyin | 倉頡碼 | Unicode | Note |
| 3 | 以 | 㠯 | yi3 | unknown | u382f | Classical only |
| 5 | 冉 | 冄 | ran3 | 月一一 | u5184 | |
| 8 | 姐 | 姊 | jie3 | 女中x竹 | u59ca | |
| 10 | 挽 | 輓 | wan3 | 十十弓日山 | u8f13 | |
| 10 | 笑 | 咲 | xiao4 | 口廿大 | u54b2 | |
| 10 | 鬥 | 鬭、鬬、閗 | dou4 | 中弓口一中、中弓月一中、中弓卜十 | U9B2D, u9b2c, u9597 | found in 齊物論 |
| 12 | 普 | 暜 | pu3 | 卜廿日 | u669c | |
| 13 | 群 | 羣 | qun2 | 尸口廿手 | u7fa3 | |
| 14 | 褒 | 闁 | bao1 | 日弓日弓 | u95c1 | |
| 15 | 鋪 | 舖 | pu4 | 人口戈十月 | u8216 | 4th tone 鋪 only – both written 鋪 in classical, later 舍 replaced 金 as it reflected the noun’s meaning more accurately |
| 15 | 璇 | 璿 | xuan2 | 一土卜月山 | u74bf | |
| 17 | 斂 | 歛 | lian3 | 人人弓人 | u6b5b |
Comment below!
I’ve noticed certain interesting irregularities in Chinese fonts. The book I’m reading at the minute (《馬橋詞典》; the edition was originally published by 聯經出版社/Linking Books) in Feb. 2011, and this copy is the second printing) uses the form of the character 感 seen in the top line of the image below, as opposed to the one on the bottom. The character on the top line has a 丿that encloses the entire character, as opposed to the one on the bottom line in which the heart radical at the bottom is separate.
I’ve noticed similar differences in other characters before and was curious if anyone else had spotted any other slight differences that come to mind. Also curious if this is influenced by historic instances of difference in the way the character can be written.
The interesting thing for me as a Cangjie user is that it should technically change the way the character is written in Cangjie, as instead of 戈口心 it should follow the example of 威 (戈丿一女) and be written 戈丿一心, although obviously this is just a font.
Which form do you come across the most in the books you are reading? What are the names of the different fonts that use this form?
Warning: there is adult content in this post.
This is Li Ang’s much anticipated follow up to her 1997 book Everybody sticks it in the Beigang Incense Burner (《北港香爐人人插》), which I’ve yet to read. At first glance it is an irreverent look at the misogynistic self-aggrandizement that characterizes the generation of democracy campaigners who rose to fame after being imprisoned in the martial law era in Taiwan, some of whom later formed the Democratic Progressive Party and went into government under former president Chen Shui-bian. The book also deals with the symptomatic nature of the way the February 28 incident and the White Terror continue to manifest themselves in the political arena. Although this might seem a rather obscure or outdated theme, it can give us an insight into the background of the political mindset in today’s Taiwan, particularly in light of the recent Sunflower Movement and the problems in governance that it has highlighted. The attempt to smear the participants of the Sunflower Movement in March and April as violent rioters, for example, is reminiscent of the Kuomintang’s rhetoric against democracy protesters during the 1980s and 1990s that features in the book.
The book centres around the life of Chen Junying (陳俊英) from his youth as a dissident during the Martial Law era, to his slow drift into irrelevance as a retired politician living in the US in his later years. Li Ang goes to great pains in the introduction, stating several times that the character isn’t based on any one person in particular – her protestations are so frequent however that it’s almost as if she’s prompting us to take this denial with a pinch of salt.
Chen feels owed by Taiwanese society and Taiwanese women in particular and he has a mantra that recurs throughout the book which rationalizes his misogynistic behavior:
(My translation) He was forever the one being let down, it wasn’t just the Taiwanese people who owed him, didn’t Taiwanese women owe him too‽ So it was natural for him to sleep with a good number of women when he came out of jail.
The book can be read as a satire up to a point and parts of it are quite funny, recalling the satirical bite of Wang Chen-ho’s Rose, Rose, I Love You /《玫瑰玫瑰我愛你》, like the protagonist’s assumption that he will ejaculate more than other men because of the years he spent in prison, and because he thinks so much of his own masculinity:
(My Translation) She discovered that Chen Junying was excessively liberal with toilet paper after making love. When he climaxed, he didn’t leave that much ejaculate in her (his sperm wasn’t particularly greater in volume than other men, nor did it smell fishier), and not much of it would drip out of her vagina after they’d finished, so one or two sheets of toilet paper would have been enough to absorb it all. He would grab a handful of tissue from the box, however, and pass her a pile, watching her as she meticulously wiped herself clean of any trace until all of the tissue was used up.
In the same vein, Chen takes a very chauvinistic attitude during sex, as, despite being reviled as a dissident by many women in his youth, he still finds time to grumble about the only girl who is willing to get together with him, and treats her with scorn, viewing her status as the product of a “mixed marriage” between a mainland soldier and an aborigine as below his – with a lot of his fellow dissidents using the phrase 「無魚蝦也好」 (bô hî, hê mā ho – If there’s no fish, you can make do with shrimp) to tease him
Continue reading
OK – just a quick post today! Am reading 《馬橋詞典》(Dictionary of Maqiao) by 韓少功 (Han Shaogong) at the minute and came across a word for a woman’s period or menstruation – 例假 – that I hadn’t seen before. For some reason I read this as 例期 however and looking it up I found the variant 朞 – a bottom top variant of 期 – combining 其 and 月. This reminded me of a few other variants that follow this pattern, like 峰 and 峯 feng1 “summit,” and 群 and 羣 for “qun1” crowd.
There’s also 鑒 and 鑑 jian4 which have their ingredients stirred around a little.
Let me know if you know of any others!