chinese tuesdays

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Christmas Tuesdays: Festive idioms

Ho ho ho (哈哈哈), a very merry Christmas and happy holidays to ants all over the world. The Anthill is taking a week's break, and will be back in the new year with more narrative sketches and stories from China. Until then, here's a cracker-full of chengyu, four-character Mandarin idioms – some meant for spring festival – that could be repurposed as more Western festive greetings ...

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Chinese Tuesdays: To forget about home

 

I haven’t posted any chengyu [idioms] for a while. Here’s one which I’ve heard a couple of times in reference to myself: 乐不思蜀 (lèbùsīshǔ). It’s used to describe someone who is having so much fun abroad that they forget about their country and family back home. Could be especially relevant to expats staying in China over Christmas.

Shu (蜀) refers to Shu Han (蜀汉), one of the Three Kingdoms (220–280 AD). When Shu was defeated by Wei, the last emperor Liu Shan (刘禅), also known as A Dou (阿斗 – a word that has come to mean a weak and incompetent person) lived comfortably ever after in the Wei capital, where he claimed not to miss his old kingdom at all. And so the idiom was born. Almost two thousand years later, people are still saying it.

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Chinese Tuesdays: While the snow is hot

 

The Chinese expression for “strike while the iron is hot” is more or less exactly the same: 趁热打铁 (chènrèdǎtiě).

There has been heavy snow in Harbin lately, and apparently people were taking advantage of the situation to charge drivers whose cars had become stranded on icy roads 30-50 yuan to help push them out of trouble. This behaviour was described as 趁雪打劫 (chènxuědǎjié), replacing 热 (hot) with 雪 (snow) and 打铁 (strike iron with 打劫 (rob/plunder/loot). The result could be translated as “Steal while the snow falls.”

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Chinese Tuesdays: Chitty Chitty Biang Biang

 

There's a new noodle joint on my street, and this is the sign on the window:

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Chinese Tuesdays: Guess my age

 

In English, a typical age guessing exchange might go something like this:

A: Guess how old I am

B: 30?

A: Older

B: 35?

In Chinese, it's the opposite:

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