chinese tuesdays

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Chinese Tuesdays: Noodles


Sitting on a bus in Wenzhou last month, I saw a noodle restaurant with a creative sign. The character for noodles, 面 (miàn), was written to make it look like a bowl of noodles with chopsticks. I might have been fooled into thinking 面 was a pictograph, if the traditional character wasn't 麵, with 麦 (mài, wheat) on the left for meaning and 面 on the right for pronunciation.

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Chinese Tuesdays: Pale skin, good water

 

Even after living in China and Korea for more than eight years, being bombarded with ads for skin whitening creams, seeing people wear arm sleeves and carry sun umbrellas, and hearing them constantly compare skin colour, I’m still surprised at just how important women consider pale skin in terms of beauty. There's even a Chinese saying, 一白遮百丑 (yībáizhēbǎichǒu) – “white skin covers up a hundred flaws”.

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Chinese Tuesdays: Hanzi heroes

I'm loving 汉子英雄 (hànziyīngxióng – "Chinese characters hero") as usual. It's a programme on Chinese TV where contestants are tested on their memory of hand-written characters (hanzi), under the clock. There's also an app which lets you test yourself in a couple of different ways – which is a lot harder than I thought when you are put on the spot with a time limit.

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Chinese Tuesdays: Tigers, Monkeys and Heros

 

Here are a couple of expressions that have stuck in my head for ages:

山中无老虎 猴子称大王 (shānzhōngwúlǎohǔ hóuzichēngdàwáng)

If the tigers leave the mountain, the monkey is named King. This phrase is from a fable too long to summarise here, and is an equivalent to "When the cat’s away the mouse will play." You can use it in the same situations, such as when your boss is away for a week.

英雄无用武之地 (yīngxióngwúyòngwǔzhīdì)

A hero with no place to display his prowess.

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Chinese Tuesdays: Hairy Russians

Ed: Sam Duncan is now based up in Daqing, China's far northeast, as of the end of last year. Here's a new one of his blog posts about some of the local turns of phrase (东北话) he's picking up there

 

People here in the Northeast have their own word for Russians, 毛子 (máozi). 毛 means hair so I guess the term translates as "hairy ones.” The nicer version is 老毛子 (lǎomáozi – old/venerable hairy ones), and the more derogatory usage is 傻毛子 (shǎmáozi – stupid hairy ones).

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