Sorry for my lack of posts recently. I've been very busy the past week and will remain so for the foreseeable future. We are doing our best to bring out the English version of the illustrated Chan (Zen) stories (Chinese title is 禅话禅画 Chan hua chan hua) by the end of the year and so I'm devoting a lot of time to that project. We're trying to come up with an appropriate title, one that most closely captures the Chinese pun on hua. The best I've come up with so far is "Chan Exposures", but I doubt that will make it. Any ideas? This has been a very worthwhile endeavor for me personally and I think the finished product is going to turn out quite good, but it is much more difficult than I expected. Even in Chinese a lot of the stories don't make much sense, and the dialogue can be bizarre to say the least. But Chinese have the advantage of lifelong exposure to Chan thought---even if they aren't practicing Buddhists, the characters and events in many of the tales have become part of Chinese literary tradition and cultural lore, so a Chinese reader can connect the dots even if she isn't sure of the literal meaning. Obviously a Western reader can't even hope to do that, so we must include a good many footnotes. Other interesting problems occur over the translation of certain terms that this particular Buddhist order has standardized, even when those terms will confuse a Western reader. For example, they insist on using the proper name Avalokitesvara even though a Western reader is much more likely to be familiar with the Chinese word "Guanyin" [Kwanyin] (probably the most beloved Bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism). On other occasions, they insist on rendering a word in a certain way even though the Chinese term doesn't mean what they say it does. I've even shown them the entry in the 中文大辞典, which is the Chinese lexicon, but to no avail. Fortunately these instances are few, and when they do happen my colleague and I try to come up with a solution sufficiently ambiguous to please everyone.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 9/29/2003 02:50:00 PM| |

 
I've taken John's lead and made the switch to Unicode. I re-edited all Chinese characters on this page so that they would not turn up as gibberish, but I doubt I'll get around to it for previous posts. Sorry for any resulting confusion to any archive divers, but you either get on the progress train or you get squashed.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 9/24/2003 03:20:00 AM| |

 
Very quick entry because I'm on battery power and I fully expect to crap out at any second. I've always loved how Asians play cards. When it's time to call, or show a card, they don't just civilly place the hand down on the table, which is tantamount to meekly accepting fate (or the cards they've been dealt). No, they SLAM it down with emphatic machismo [nanchismo or nüchismo in pinyin], the harder and noisier the better. The amazing thing is they'll often remain speaking in a very subdued, even-handed tone of voice at the same time they violently fling the cards, tile, whatever down with a resounding smack! I've noticed this habit extends across all Asian cultural boundaries. The Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese all do it. When we were in China way back in the day, a good American friend of mine and I decided to extend this trait to every activity requiring panache. For instance, in draining the final beer, trying to force down a last bite of food in one of our infamous eating contests, attempting to eat something extremely bizarre, spicy or pungent, we would hurl the bottle, empty plate, etc. down on the table with a resonant whack. Needless to say, we got a lot of funny looks.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 9/23/2003 02:40:00 PM| |

 
Update from the Chinese study front: I picked up a new reference work that I'm pretty happy with. It's not that new, actually---it came out in 2000, but I highly recommend it for the student of Chinese, intermediate and above. It is called the "Xinhua Dictionary With English Translation" 汉英双解新华字典 and the publisher is The Commercial Press. Xinhua compiles the most popular and authoritative (Mainland) Chinese language dictionary by far. First published in 1957, it has undergone nine revisions and a total production run of more than 380 million copies. This volume is very useful to the student of Chinese because it is a complete verbatim translation of Xinhua's 1992 edition of the dictionary, including all appendices. Not only do you learn the meaning of a word, but you also learn Chinese dictionary terms, so it teaches you how to read a Chinese dictionary. It's also great in that all word usage examples are from the Chinese edition---so you can see how the Chinese explain a word to native readers. Like its Chinese version, the dictionary is arranged by Hanyu pinyin, with Zhuyin fuhao (the Mandarin Phonetic Symbol system used in Taiwan) printed next to the pinyin. It also displays the traditional form of the character, if any. All in all, a handy little item to own, but get it in China if you can---in the US it lists for $18.95. In China? RMB 26. That's just a bit over three freakin' US dollars. So get two. The latest in my series of nifty Chinese folk sayings:

Huangjin suizhe chaoshui liu lai, ni ye yinggai zaoqi ba ta lao qilai 黄金随着潮水流来, 你也应该早起把它捞起来 [Even when gold washes ashore with the tide, you still have to have to rise early enough to scoop it up!]

Finally tonight, one of the freelance translators came in today to go over some issues he's encountered in the text he's working on. It was our first meeting and he gave me his name card which had his webpage address on it. I checked it out when I arrived home and I was astonished to discover I had visited it quite some time ago. It turns out we are both big fans of 1930s pop singer Zhou Xuan 周璇 and I had downloaded one of her most famous songs from his site. Check out his Zhou Xuan tribute here. My favorite tune of hers is "The Four Seasons Song" Siji ge 四季歌 which is available from his site here.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 9/20/2003 11:40:00 AM| |

 
Are The New China Hands Nothing But a Bunch of No-Good Slackers? OK, maybe that's a bit harsh, but after a few weeks into my latest translation gig I'm starting to wonder. I've written about this project before---basically we are translating a number of Chinese Chan (Zen) Buddhist works from Chinese into English. We have many resources in our office and library and several of them are works by 19th-early 20th Century missionaries and the "China Hands" of the mid 20th century-1990s. You may remember I defined the "China Hands" as that group of academics who came of age during the time when the PRC was closed and Westerners could not easily go there. Therefore most of them did not learn how to speak or understand Chinese very well, but their capabilities in the written language are phenomenal. I studied under several of these guys in undergrad and grad school. I then contrasted them with the current generation of China scholars/junkies who for the most part live several years, if not more, in China/Taiwan and develop very strong language skills all across the board. But I've got to give the China Hands their props: there is one area where we can't touch those guys for some reason, and that is their productivity. They have some seriously prodigious output. Guys like James Legge and Burton Watson, who translated enormous numbers of the Chinese classics, and more modern examples like Howard Goldblatt (whose spoken Chinese, by the way, is amazing) and Thomas Cleary. Cleary is unreal. He has translated over 70 religious/philosophical works from Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Pali, Arabic, and Old Bengali. I've been reading his translation of the Flower Adornment Sutra because it relates to some things we're doing, and it is a highly complex, significant work several hundred pages long. It would take me years to do it, if I even could, and besides this he's cranked out scores of other equally difficult volumes in several other languages. My question is: How do these guys do it? Number One, where do they find the time? If you've ever tried translating a legitimate text-length work you'll know it is very time consuming, yet they knock off dozens. They also somehow managed to learn many other languages as well. I remember talking about this with a grad school classmate. We considered ourselves quite studious and hard working but we were simply in awe of our prof who was similar to Cleary in that he had mastered reading-wise a number of very difficult languages, all while a doctoral student of classical Chinese poetry at Michigan in the 1960s. I'm curious what explanations any of you might have as to the apparent qualitative/quantitative differences between scholars of today and yesteryear. Maybe it's just me that doesn't get it and all the rest of you not only have mastered Chinese, including the major dialects, but are expert in classical Tibetan, with a strong reading knowledge of several Altaic tongues like Japanese and Korean, not to mention Aramaic, French, Russian, and passable Urdu...
- posted by Prince Roy @ 9/19/2003 06:15:00 AM| |

 

We just started watching what promises to be a really great Chinese miniseries. It is called Jiqing ranshaode suiyue 激情燃烧的岁月[Years of Passion]. We borrowed a set of (burned) DVDs from some Mainland friends of ours. First aired in 2002, the series stars the actress you see on the left, Lu Liping 吕丽萍. The story spans several decades, beginning from when Lu's character and that of Sun Haiying 孙海英, who plays her husband, met as PLA soldiers fighting the KMT in the Chinese civil war after the defeat of Japan in WWII. I'm not sure when it ends, but during the opening credits we see them made up as an elderly couple so it may go through the 1980s-early 1990s. I've always found Lu to be an interesting actress. She's not the most beautiful of women, but she has a pleasant, very recognizable appearance and has been in many groundbreaking Chinese films, from the very beginning of the 1980s Chinese cinematic renaissance, i.e. "Old Well" and "Blue Kite". She usually plays the role of a long-suffering, loyal woman slightly overwhelmed by her circumstances. Lu is from Beijing and was born in 1960, but it seems like she is invariably cast as a 30-something character in her films---even when she was in her 20s. In this series though, since it follows the protagonists through time, we see her in the initial episodes as a girl in her late teens-early 20s. Mind you, she was 42 when shooting this, and she can't quite pull it off, though it's not too distracting from the story. Sun Haiying has it easier---his character is 36 years old, which is fairly realistic because many of the PLA army leaders married very young girls during the revolution. We've only seen the first two episodes, but if it's anything like "Year After Year" 一年又一年 Yi nian you yi nian, it'll be quite enjoyable. Have any of you in the China crowd seen it? Let me know how you liked it, but please don't give the story away! This kind of series is what I like about Mainland Chinese TV---it reflects issues in contemporary Chinese society, which has undergone enormous changes in just the past 20 years, but even more so when compared with the revolutionary period. It'll also be fascinating to see how this series portrays the years right after the CCP emerged victorious in the civil war (1949-1956). For many Chinese it was a time of unbridled hope and innocent optimism that a new China would emerge. With the most egregious and tragic policies of the CCP yet to occur, it probably remains the Golden Age of the CCP, the last time it truly enjoyed popular support. I've often wondered, then, if Chinese wax nostalgic about the '50s, much like many Americans do. Does the euphoria in the successes of those early years overshadow the despotic excesses of the late 1950s-1960s? Do memories soften with age? Look at the U.S. for example---for a great number of people 1950s America was not a very pleasant place at all, yet that decade still retains a wistful grip on our collective psyche. Many people even hold it up as an example of what we should attempt to regain, much in the manner of Confucius' harkening back to the days of the early Zhou.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 9/18/2003 02:25:00 PM| |

 
Those Inscrutable Chinese Part III Long-time readers may remember my post of July 12, 2003 in which I discussed the alleged Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times". Moments ago I received an email from a regular visitor who pointed me to a web page that provides a possible source for this saying. Check it out here. I haven't had time to explore the site in depth yet, but it looks very promising. This just may be the mother lode of fortune cookie wisdom!
- posted by Prince Roy @ 9/15/2003 12:25:00 PM| |

 
R.I.P. Johnny Cash
- posted by Prince Roy @ 9/13/2003 11:53:00 AM| |

 
All Quiet on the Billy Mays Front Means No Economic Recovery Certain AM talk radio blowhards and Beltway think-tank geeks would have us believe the United States economy is finally climbing out of recession. They point to certain indicators and indices, plus a slightly rebounding stock market to make that conclusion. I, for one, don't buy it for a minute---the economy is still in the doldrums, and I can prove it. You only need look to one guy to see how the US economy is really doing, and it's not Alan Greenspan. No, that man is Billy Mays.

Ask yourself this: When was the last time you saw Billy Mays on TV pitching his latest innovation? If you answered December of 2002 you are correct. That was when he came out with the Rotomatic Rotary Tool Set. A couple of months before that it was the Fone Free. Since then...nothing. I only see him very rarely on TV now, and always for a previous product. Now, if everything was going so great wouldn't it stand to reason that he would be on the air all the time shoving all kinds of crap down our throats? There's something our leaders aren't telling us. They don't want us to know the unpleasant truth. I also believe the tools we use to measure the economy are no longer valid. To address this I've devised a new formula that I believe more accurately reflects and forecasts the actual state of the United States economy. I call it the Billy Mays Index and below I provide a data set for the previous six years. It's pretty straightforward: the more new Billy Mays products we see, the better the state of the economy. If he's not on TV selling you a Gopher or a few cases of Orange Clean, the US economy is in the tank. It's that simple. But don't just take my word for it; see for yourselves:

above: the ingenious Billy Mays Index, a device certain to revolutionize economic forecasting methods

I have another proposal that I've written up and forwarded to the US Department of Commerce. My idea is to have an annual Billy Mays event patterned after groundhog day. Commerce officials should conceal themselves outside his Palm Harbor, FL home on a predetermined March morning. If he comes outside, picks up the paper and heads straight back inside scowling, we are in for another year of disappointment. If, on the other hand, he's got his arms loaded with boxes of merchandise and he hops in his Bentley to head over to the Home Shopping Network studios, happy days just might be here again...
- posted by Prince Roy @ 9/12/2003 04:35:00 PM| |

 
You laowai who complain about how Chinese always treat you as outsiders ought to be careful what you wish for. Sometimes it's good to be on the periphery. Especially as the Mid Autumn Festival looms large. Right now every Chinese I know is in a frenzy buying expensive mooncake packages to present every family friend, acquaintance, and person who has done them a good turn in the past or whose help they may need in the future. Or to whom they think might be bringing them a box of mooncakes. Everyone is in a mad dash to outdo everyone else, be it in the reputation of the mooncake bakery or the extravagance of the wrapping. And for what? Mooncakes have to be the most vile, least anticipated holiday fare in the lunar calendar. I know what you're thinking: Mooncakes are nothing more than the Chinese version of the obnoxious Christmas fruitcake. I get that. So what's the difference? Well for one thing, in the West it's not all that difficult to opt out of the annual vicious circle of holiday cards and fruitcakes. You just don't reciprocate and gradually people get the message. I wonder if the Chinese have that option. I don't know a single person who actually enjoys receiving the boxes of mooncakes (no matter which bakery makes them they all taste pretty much the same---like crap) and they sure as hell are put out by having to spend good money on the damn things. It's ludicrous when you think about it---Li and Zhang each spend $25 to buy the other the same box of mooncakes they both have no intention of eating. The only ones who benefit are the mooncake bakeries. A Chinese emperor of antiquity must have owed some baker big time to enforce this cruel custom on his unwitting subjects, and unfortunately we're all still paying his debt. Listen, if anyone's interested I've got a closet full of fruitcakes from Christmas' past that I'm willing to sell for a song. You can substitute these for your mooncake needs and I'm sure no one will ever be the wiser.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 9/09/2003 02:35:00 PM| |

 
This Is Not Your Father's PRC Probably unlike many of you, I am fairly optimistic about the future of US-China relations. The next 10-15 years will be the most problematic, but after that I see a window of opportunity and I hope both sides are wise enough to take advantage of it. The reason I believe this is that China's next generation of leaders (the so-called 'fifth generation') will be the most capable and sophisticated in its history. Unlike the third and fourth generation of leadership currently in power, these are not the stodgy, frumpy technocrats with engineering degrees from Moscow Tech, East Germany or Bulgaria. In other words, this is not your father's PRC. There will be no more clumsy "Three Represents" kinds of idiocy from these guys. The elite waiting in the wings are in their late 30s to 40s, and to a person they have advanced degrees from the finest universities in the US, UK, Europe and Japan. Like over half a million other Chinese students since 1978, they've lived, studied and worked in the West for quite significant periods of time. They speak our language, both literally and figuratively, and they understand how the modern world works. It should be all the easier to form a constructive dialogue with such a group because we will share a common frame of reference. That's the theory, anyway, and I subscribe to it for the most part. But I sincerely hope we have like-situated officials coming up on our own side---people who have taken the time to learn China's language, history, culture and way of life. Participation in a two-week business tour, a comfy life in Shanghai as a pampered expat with a Fortune 500, or a semester abroad as a language student just won't cut it. I'm talking in-depth exposure in the field here. Otherwise these people are going to eat our lunch. They are that good. China will need every bit of their talents, because domestically the picture is far less brighter, and frankly the problems facing China are of such a magnitude that I am skeptical even leadership that capable will be able to solve them. "Lamey", my good friend and former colleague at VOA, brought up a number of valid points in her comment on my previous post: the unemployment/welfare/pension problems stemming from SOE privatization, the bad loan crisis of the state banks (as much as 40% according to some experts), the PRC's artificial propping of its currency, corruption at all institutional levels of the government, the lack of accountability and unresponsiveness of a party holding a monopoly on power, etc. To these I would add China's population---China will always have too many people and their sheer number will restrict how much higher the general standard of living will rise. And no one has even addressed what may be China's biggest problem: ecologically the country is a basket case. Still, it is far better for China that it will have such a well-qualified bunch coming on the scene just when it needs them the most. I only hope they will have the resolve to take the difficult steps needed to guide the country peacefully through the inevitable transition to a competitive and participatory society where, to quote the late Chairman, 'a hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend'.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 9/03/2003 06:25:00 AM| |