chinese tuesdays

 

The first time I learnt that the word for boss, 老板 (lǎobǎn), was made up of the characters for "old" (老) and "board" (板), I found it a little confusing. But lately, when studying traditional characters, I noticed that the 板 (bǎn) in 老板 does not mean board or plank, but is actually the simplified version of 闆, a character which can also be pronunced pàn and which means "To catch sight of in a doorway" (as you do with a laoban?).

I'm not sure why they decided to simplify 闆 to 板, but I suspect that as 闆 is an uncommon character that is rather fiddly to write (17 strokes versus 8), the powers that be decided to replace it with a more common one with the same pronunciation.

 

鸿门宴 (Hóngményàn) was a banquet that took place in 206 BC. It's a long story, and one that everyone in China knows, but the short version is a rebel leader called Xiang Yu (项羽 Xiàng Yǔ) tried to have his rival Liu Bang (刘邦 Liú Bāng) killed at a feast. Liu Bang escaped, however, and eventually defeated Xiang Yu in battle to become the first emperor of the Han Dynasty.

Now the phrase has come to mean a ruse intended to trap a guest. If a rival or someone you don’t like or trust invites you out to dinner, for example, you could joke, “Is this a 鸿门宴?”

There a couple of other handy idioms that also originate from this event:

 

老百姓 (lǎobǎixìng) – literally "old hundred names", in reference to the most common Chinese surnames – is a common term for "ordinary folk" or "the man on the street". It even works as an adjective, as in "he's really 老百姓".

How did the term come about? Apparently, due to naming taboo ("a cultural taboo against speaking or writing the given names of exalted persons in China"). During the Tang Dynasty it became necessary to avoid the word 民 (mín), as that character was in the given name of the Emperor Taizong, so instead of saying 人民 (rénmín) to refer to the "common folk”, people started using 百姓 (bǎixìng) instead.

 

偷吃还不知道怎么擦嘴" (tōuchī hái bùzhīdào zěnme cāzuǐ). This expression means you steal food (偷吃 tōuchī) but don’t know how to wipe your mouth clean afterwards (擦嘴 cāzuǐ), and is used to disparage someone sneaky enough to do the wrong thing but not smart enough not to get caught.

For example, I heard it used in response to a joke that's going around on the Chinese Internet about the MH370 missing flight. In the joke, someone asks help for a friend who went to visit his girlfriend, but told his wife he was going on a business trip to Malaysia, returning on MH370. Since the disappearance of the flight, the friend has been hiding out in a hotel and doesn’t know what to do, does anyone have any ideas?"

 

I’m back from a trip to Japan, where it was interesting to see the different uses of Chinese hanzi as Japanese kanji, the same characters with similar meanings but different pronunciation. This sign, for example, says parking prohibited (驻车禁止 zhùchējìnzhǐ) and is understandable if you read Chinese, even though in China they usually use a different character for park, 停 (tíng) rather than 驻 (駐 zhù), and you wouldn't be able to read it aloud.