Read it here!

I have to say that reading about all those places in Shanghai I know so well makes me nostalgic for the place and all the friends I made there. Miss you guys!

Hearing old Shanghainese people calling into talkback radio shows makes me miss the place!

I mention this to bring up slight differences between mainland and Taiwanese Chinese.

One translation company I talked to asked me which variety of Chinese I specialised in; Traditional or Simplified. (In case you didn’t know, Simplified is used on the mainland, Traditional in Taiwan and Hong Kong.) My immediate reaction was that I didn’t care. – Although I prefer Simplified characters all you have to do if someone gives you a tricky passage in Traditional is input it into an automatic converter (like this one) and it’s transferred automatically.

As it turns out it’s not as simple as that. The difference in writing between Taiwan and the mainland is trivial, and easily adjusted for by automatic converters. But they have a certain turn of phrase in Taiwan (and Hong Kong, for that matter) and some local oddities (like the 坪 issue I mention above) that do make for some differences.

Just now was reading an article on migrant workers in Chinese cities. They have a hard life. And by ‘migrant’ they don’t mean people from other countries, but people from the countryside who come to big cities to work.

You see, people who are from cities have it good. Their children have good schools, they have health insurance funded by the state, and they get an old age pension.

But just because you live and work in a certain city doesn’t entitle you to these benefits. The article gives the example of one woman who has lived in Beijing for 24 years. Even after these 24 years her kids can’t go to proper schools (unless she pays extra fees) and she doesn’t have any medical insurance.

The article mentions the meeting of the CPPCC and the NPC, the country’s two biggest political entities, which is happening today. Reform of the system that doesn’t allow non-residents to get benefits of the city that they’re living in was brought up, but the article mentions that it’s brought up every year without any action being taken on it.

I was considering translating the thing but it’s really long. Here’s a part that I found interesting though:

秦紅霞一個月掙錢不會低於六千元，但因為這種生活的不確定性，她所有的錢都從指縫裏省下來，消費低得驚人。她以炫耀的口吻問記者：「你猜從去年九月到今年 一月，我一共花了多少錢在伙食（吃飯）上？」「五百？」「再猜。」「三百？」「再猜。」「一千？」「呵呵，我告訴你，只花了五十六塊錢……」她幾乎笑得臉 都要開花了，聽者只是驚呆在原地。

And the English:

Qin Hongxia makes more than 6000RMB a month, but with such uncertainty in her life, she saves most of it. Her expenses are astonishingly low. She proudly asked this reporter: “From September last year to January this year, how much money do you think I spent on food?” “Five hundred?” “Guess again.” “Three hundred?” “Nope.” “A thousand?” “Haha, I’ll tell you this: I only spent 56 RMB….” Her face broke out into laughter, and all listening were dumbfounded.

I can tell you that I would be one of those people dumbfounded. A quick Google search tells me that she spent the equivalent of 9 Australian dollars. Granted food is a lot cheaper in China but I can tell you that a day out in China, or even a couple of hours spent in a local establishment downing alcoholic beverages would set you back more than that.

Those 农民工 (rural workers) really have it tough.

“Dad…” “We spoke on the phone only this morning…”

Read the rest at ChinaSMACK!

The girl in this post definitely knows I was taking photos of her, because she saw me!

Read the rest at ChinaSMACK!

The most daunting thing about this kind of thing is the technical jargon; the best thing about the Chinese language is that it does away with weird sounding words based on Latin and Ancient Greek roots and puts them much more simply. Here are some examples with their English translations.

星系 – Galaxy

An English speaking person would tell you that a “galaxy” is a system of stars. Chinese makes the whole thing much more simpler, because the Chinese word for “galaxy” is literally star-system.

引力 – Gravity

The Chinese word for “gravity” is literally attracting-force. Makes sense. Why do we have to come up with an entirely new word for something that just sucks?

强力 – Strong Nuclear Force

Chinese does away with “nuclear” and just calls it the strong force. I haven’t got to the bit in the book that mentions Weak Nuclear Force but I have a sneaking suspicion about what the Chinese for it is…

超新星 – Supernova

超, the first character means “super”. 新, the second, means “new”. The last one, 星 = star. So we literally have “super-new-star”. Makes sense if you think that nova = new. Confusingly though, a supernova is a star at the end of its life, not at its beginning, but we’ll forgive the Chinese for making that mistake, since it’s just a literal translation of a mistake made in the English.

Incidentally, a supernova is a star that, at the end of its life, explodes. These explosions are so bright that the earliest people who noticed supernovae thought they were new stars instead of old ones that suddenly went bang. Hence the name ‘supernova’. If I can digress once more, the earliest recorded observation of a supernova was made by the Chinese, so why they have adopted our word and not the other way round is a mystery to me. Perhaps it’s my Anglo-centric view of the world, perhaps English did in fact take the Chinese word.

电子，中子，质子 – electron, neutron, proton

Electricity is, in essence, the flow of electrons. Whenever you turn the switch on in something electric, these little electric-thingies called electrons come out of the power socket and flow into your computer, or tv, or whatever it is. Why we call them “electrons” is anyone’s guess; the Chinese didn’t bother coming up with an entirely new word and call electrons electric-things. Neutrons, on the other hand, have no charge, and are called neutral-things. Protons are called 质子, but I can’t work out why.

光子 – proton

It was Albert Einstein who first postulated the idea that light was made up of discrete particles; his ideas caught on, and were ultimately proven; these particles become known as “protons”, from the Ancient Greek photo (meaning “light”) and on (“unit”). In Chinese we call protons light-things. Much easier to remember.

反中子，反质子，正电子，反电子，正子 – Anti-electron, anti-proton, positron

Here’s where we get a little far out.

Each elemental particle (electrons, neutrons, protons etc) has an “anti” equivalent, with the opposite charge (if you’ve read Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons you might remember that the bomb that threatens to destroy everyone is an antimatter bomb).

So a proton, which has a positive charge also has an “antiproton” equivalent, which looks the same except has a negative charge. With regard to the English language, it’s quite easy to say what you mean, you just put “anti” in front of the original word. (So the proton version is called the antiproton.)

Chinese fixes the problem in a similar way. We just put 反 in front of whatever it the original particle is. So if proton is 质子, antiproton is 反质子.

Now, for some strange reason, don’t ask me why, we have another name for the anti-electron. It’s called the positron. If you remember the electron has a negative charge, so its anti- equivalent has a postive charge. Maybe that’s why they sometimes call it the “positron”. I personally think it’s bloody confusing to have another name for the anti-electron and not have one for any of the others but I don’t decide these things.

Chinese also has trouble naming the anti-electron. It’s alternatively called the 正电子 (positive electron) and 反电子 (anti-electron). This is somewhat confusing because they seem to mean the opposite thing, don’t they? The “postive” in “positive electron” refers to the electrical charge (which is positive), but 反电子 (anti electron) refers to the fact that it’s the antimatter equivalent of the electron. Confusing.

I haven’t finished reading A Briefer History of Time but I am impressed with the translation. The best translations are always invisible; that is to say that you shouldn’t be able to ‘see’ the original text, instead you should just be able to go through the translation without realising that it isn’t in fact an original work. It’s a challenging book but it’s so well put together that the translation doesn’t get in the way at all!

In a situation like this, all you have to do is consult the internet. I entered 支吾 into YouKu.com (the Chinese version of of YouTube. One of the results was this one.

I think it gives a pretty clear image of what 支吾 means. So whenever I hear 支吾 I’ll think of this video.

Aside from that I’ve found out what “hem and haw” means too!

Freedom of speech does not extend to obstructing the provisions of the US Constitution, nor does it extend to publications that libel or attempt to overthrow the US government…

Another post by me has been put up at ChinaGeeks. This one was pretty full-on, I chose one of the most difficult bits to quote above, have a look if you’re interested.

I started with 蜗居. One of the best things about it is that it was made in Shanghai. Every time there’s a long shot of some location a thousand memories spring to mind… I feel like elbowing the person next to me and saying “Oh… oh.. see that place, there’s a bar on that street that has an open mic night every Tuesday, for as long as you’re holding an instrument and playing beers are free…”

It’s a little depressing though. The main characters are a couple who have left their hometown to come to the big city and are having trouble buying a house. They’re kinda bone-headed about it too, just talking about how they don’t have enough money to buy one, and how they really want to. Ok, I’m oversimplifying it a bit, but instead of talking about educating themselves better, or perhaps making plans to save money, or even getting a mortgage, they just keep looking for houses and getting frustrated that they can’t buy anything.

I got a little sick of mainland accents and sensibilities so gave up on 蜗居 a few episodes in. I went to 花样少年少女, otherwise known as Hana Kimi. It’s about a girl who dresses up as a boy and goes to a boys’ school to get the love of her life. Sounds a bit weird with that premise, right? Well, it was mildly amusing for a bit, bit got really strange. One of the guys falls in love with the girl, not realising that she’s a girl he thinks he’s turning gay. It starts getting really weird when the school doctor, who is also gay, finds out, and the school playboy, not gay, gets chummy with the girl (not realising she’s a girl of course). I gave up on Hana Kimi at this point so I’m not sure what happens next.

I tried 奋斗 after reading all about it from Ben Ross. It’s about a group of recent university graduates that make their way in the world. I didn’t get very far with it. The subtitles were hard to read, and all the actors were from the north of China. I just can’t stand their accents. And they have a way of speaking, a certain turn of phrase… anyway I find them really hard to understand.

Next I tried the Chinese version of Detective Conan コナン名探偵. It’s a Japanese anime series that I love. It was quite pointless though, it is dubbed into Chinese really badly. Oh well, worth a shot. I always enjoy detective shows, even Conan, which is made for kids. They always follow a set pattern: set up a situation, someone dies, detectives arrive, investigate, and find the murderer. The end.

Anyway, I’m back on 蜗居 now, where I started. The two idiots who want to buy a house are still discussing how difficult it is, they still haven’t thought of a way out of their problem, but there are some other characters whose stories are getting told. Their accents are easier to understand and every now and then I get a glimpse of Shanghai which takes me back to my happy days there.

Does anyone else watch TV like this? Jumping from one thing to another? I don’t want to give everyone the impression that the shows aren’t any good, it’s probably just that too much of either one of them at once makes one get sick of them.

And is it just my imagination about the accents? To my ears, 蜗居 (made in Shanghai) is easiest to understand, Hana Kimi (Taiwan) is a close second, and 奋斗 (Beijing??) might as well have been made on Mars for as much as I understand. (Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit.)