A Chinese Saying I Read (Natively) At An Adelaide Restaurant

When I was at Adelaide airport a few weeks ago, I saw this Chinese restaurant called "Hawker Bar 新茶餐 (xīnchá cān)". It was my fasting day, or else I would have gone in to eat something.

While walking past, I saw a sign in Chinese with the English translation below it.

Chinese saying: "Man with one chopstick goes hungry"

To my utter surprise, I was able to read every character of the Chinese text too!

用 一个 筷子 吃饭 的 人 是 饿 的 yòng yīgè kuàizi chīfàn de rén shì è de (literally, "Use one chopstick eat rice person is of hungry (characteristic)").

There were a couple of other signs there, but I didn't do that well at reading them.

"You have rice in your teeth"

I struggled a bit with the last character on this one, and realised much later that the characters were Traditional Chinese and not Simplified Chinese.

你 牙 裡 有 米飯nǐ yá li yǒu mǐfàn (literally "you in teeth have rice") is how it's written using Traditional Chinese characters.

你 牙 里 有 米饭 is how it would be written in Simplified Chinese. I like to think I would have been able to read this without difficulty.

This is another one I couldn't fully read.

"I'd recommend the fish"

Incidentally, the restaurant seems to be quite famous, and its photos can be found on the web. Someday I hope to be in Adelaide airport on one of my non-fasting days, so I can enjoy the fare there.

"Let The World Feel The Beauty Of Chinese"

I saw this on the website of the Global Chinese Learning Platform:

Almost unconsciously, the Mandarin translation came into my head:

让 世界 觉 中文 的 美 ràng shìjiè jué zhōngwén de měi

And then I thought to myself:

我 已经 觉过 中文 的 美，很 喜欢! wǒ yǐjīng juéguò zhōngwén de měi, hěn xǐhuān!

(I have already felt the beauty of Chinese, and I like it very much!)

Jade Dragons Flying In The Sky - Another Instant Reading Comprehension Achievement

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a tweet today in Chinese, and I could read all the characters immediately, with no effort at all.

The line at the top said

玉龙飞天 yùlóng fēitiān, which I immediately recognised as "Jade Dragon Flying (in the) Sky"

I think I understood the meaning even before the pronunciation of some of the characters came to memory, which is what an ideographic language does for a reader.

天 tiān, meaning "sky" or "day" is one of the most commonly encountered words in Chinese, of course. The words 今天 jīntiān (today), 明天 míngtiān (tomorrow), and 昨天 zuótiān (yesterday) are encountered early on. I've talked about a mnemonic to remember this ideograph here.

龙 lóng means dragon, and any student of Chinese will encounter this word too fairly early in their journey.

飞 fēi means "to fly", and I have posted before about the ideograph resembling a hummingbird.

How did I know about 玉 yù (jade)? That isn't a very common word. Well, I learnt early on that the word 国 guó ("country") is a rectangle around the word for jade. Jade is the material from which the seal of the Chinese emperor was traditionally made, and the box therefore represents the bounded region under the emperor’s writ. I wrote about that too here.

How did I know it was pronounced "yù"? Well, I had read in the news about the Chinese moon rover 玉兔 yùtù (meaning "jade rabbit"), and the name was easy to remember. As a bonus, I'd learnt the word for rabbit too.

The video confirmed my reading of the words. It was a dance with four dancers in green robes suspended in the air.

I then looked at the words in the hashtag.

#玉龙雪山 yùlóng xuěshān

The first two characters were the same, and meant "jade dragon".

I recognised the character 雪 xuě ("snow") from a lesson on the weather. Rain is 雨 yǔ, and the ideograph strongly suggests rain seen from inside a window. 下雨 xià yǔ means "to rain" (literally "down rain"), and 下雪 xià xuě means "to snow" (literally "down snow").

山 shān means "mountain", and the ideograph evokes that image. The Chinese provinces of 山西 shānxī ("West of the mountain") and 山东 shāndōng ("East of the mountain") are well-known, and I have written about the evocative names of China's provinces too.

I had also come across the idiom 山高皇帝远 shāngāo huángdì yuǎn ("The mountains are high, and the emperor is far away"), which is similar to the English idiom "When the cats are away, the mice will play".

So the term in the hashtag meant "Jade dragon snow mountain"

Pasting both sets of words into Google Translate confirmed that my reading was correct.

I was very pleased, not only that I had managed to read whatever I was seeing, but also that I was able to understand the meaning of the text so fast, and even before I remembered the pronunciation of all the characters. (It took me a couple of seconds to remember the pronunciations of 玉 yù and 雪 xuě.)

When I Made A Pun In Chinese (And Got Praise For It)

I had come across this interesting lesson on Du Chinese, called "Did you do it for nothing?"

Essentially, it's about a Chinese idiom for doing something in vain.

If you go to your friend's house to hang out, but he/she isn't at home, then your trip was in vain. You might then say,

"我白来了！" "wǒ bái láile!" ("I came in vain!", literally, "I white/blank came")

白 bái, which literally means "white" or "blank", is used idiomatically to describe a wasteful activity.

Someone I follow on Twitter tweeted a photo of a student protesting during the shortlived "color revolution" over the weekend of November 26th-27th. As per the fad or fashion of the protesters, they were holding up a blank sheet of paper.

It immediately struck me that the protests (that had by then fizzled out) could be aptly described by the Chinese idiom that I'd learnt.

So I tweeted:

我"白"抗议了！ wǒ "bái" kàngyìle! ("I protested in vain!", or literally "I white/blank protested!")

A number of people "liked" my tweet. Most gratifying of all was the comment by @HarrietInForest:

先生您的中文太棒了吧！xiānshēng nín de zhōngwén tài bàngle ba! ("Sir, your Chinese is amazing!")

I felt a burst of encouragement, a feeling of

加油! jiāyóu! ("Come on!" or "More power to you!", literally "Add fuel!")

I was doubly gratified. (1) I was being praised (however undeservedly) for my language skills, and (2) I had successfully made a witty remark in a language I was still learning.

That Feeling When You Understand A Chinese Meme

I had a most gratifying experience today when I saw a response on Twitter and understood what the meme was saying.

The words
你 知道 我 要 说 什么
nǐ zhīdào wǒ yào shuō shénme

mean "You know what I want to say" (literally "You know I want say what")

The deliberately neutral expression on the man's face says it all. He has an opinion, but isn't saying anything.

I was so pleased that I was able to read and understand every character in the meme, and best of all, understand what the meme meant.

Understanding this meme from pop culture is another small milestone in my journey to gain better insights into Chinese society.

The Story Behind The Peculiar Romanised Spelling Of China's Olympic Mascot (Bing Dwen Dwen)

When I saw the cute panda mascot of the Beijing Winter Olympics and learnt its name, I was a bit puzzled.

Normally, the name 冰墩墩 would be spelt bīng dūn dūn in pīnyīn (冰 bīng = "ice", 墩墩 dūn dūn = “robust, healthy, stout”). But it's actually spelt Bing Dwen Dwen.

Looking up Google, I finally found the answer. The strange romanised spelling was done for the sake of overseas visitors, who would mostly be unaware of the rules of pīnyīn spelling, with its diacritical (accent) marks denoting tones.

This article talks about an older romanisation scheme for Mandarin called Gwoyeu Romatzyh (National Language Romanisation), which would itself be spelt guóyǔ luómǎzì in pīnyīn. Although quite complex in its rules, this scheme has two advantages over pīnyīn.

1. It doesn't use diacritical marks, so it can be typed out using a regular keyboard
2. The pronunciation that it suggests to a non-Chinese person comes closest to the actual tonal pronunciation of the word

This site provides further detail on the origins of the mascot's name.

Reading about Gwoyeu Romatzyh was quite fascinating. That someone thought up such a sophisticated romanisation scheme for Mandarin in the 1920s is amazing.

Here's how the Wikipedia entry describes the notation of the four tones in pīnyīn and in Gwoyeu Romatzyh:

		High tone	Rising tone	Falling-rising tone	Falling tone
Example 1	Pīnyīn	xuē	xué	xuě	xuè
	Gwoyeu Romatzyh	shiue	shyue	sheue	shiueh
Example 2	Pīnyīn	chuān	chuán	chuǎn	chuàn
	Gwoyeu Romatzyh	chuan	chwan	choan	chuann
Example 3	Pīnyīn	chāng	cháng	chǎng	chàng
	Gwoyeuh Romatzyh	chang	charng	chaang	chanq
Example 4	Pīnyīn	hāi	hái	hǎi	hài
	Gwoyeu Romatzyh	hai	hair	hae	hay
Example 5	Pīnyīn	bāo	báo	bǎo	bào
	Gwoyeu Romatzyh	bau	baur	baoo	baw

Today, the romanisation we see is almost always pīnyīn, but Gwoyeu Romatzyh is used in rare cases, the most famous being the spelling of the Chinese province of Shaanxi.

There are two adjacent provinces called Shanxi and Shaanxi. In Chinese characters and in pīnyīn, they're written 山西 shānxī and 陕西 shǎnxī. The only difference here is in tone, represented by diacritical marks, but since these are not always guaranteed to be preserved in all text, a safer way to differentiate the spellings of the two provinces is to use Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanisation to call them Shanxi and Shaanxi.

Champion 的 相片 (Champion De Xiàngpiàn)

Duolingo had only taught me that the word for photo was 照片 zhàopiàn.

However, I learnt from a recent Du Chinese lesson (The Watch) that another word for photo is 相片 xiàngpiàn.

A pun came to mind immediately, since triple Olympic medallist Eileen Gu (谷爱凌 Gǔ Ài Líng) is now the talk of the town.

This is a photo of the champion. In other words, 这 是 champion 的 相片 zhè shì champion de xiàngpiàn.