Readers' Discussions, Comments & Inquiries
Archived pages
You raised a very interesting topic: greetings and communication. Let me try to give you some ideas of how Chinese greet each other.
When we meet a stranger or somebody whom we are not well acquainted with, naturally we are more reserve. We either nod our heads, or extend our hands to greet them. If we are greeting our own friends, we usually greet them by their first name or give them a hug or a pat at the back. Not much a difference as is with the western culture.
When we greet our elders, we are more polite. We would nod our heads deep down but not bowing down as the Japanese. We would address them by their "title" ( e.g. Uncle, or Aunt, grandma, etc . We have proper term for different relatives, not just cousins or uncles ). When we greet our seniors or people of higher rank, we would address them as Mr., Mrs or Madam. We would rarely address them by their first name ( unless permission is given by the addressee ) as is the custom in the West.
In certain parts of China and with certain families, there is still a tradition that family members are obliged to kneel and kowtow to their elders on occasions such as birthdays, new years and marriages.
As for non verbal communication, we use telephone, letters and emails to communicate with each other. Of course, regardless of which kind of communication one uses, one has to be polite and courteous, more so to the elders than to our peers.
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Friday, January 22, 1999 at 13:17:28 (PS
The correct title is:
"FUN WITH CHINESE CHARACTERS The Straits Times Collection (vol. 1-3)"
¦³½ìªºº~¦r¡E®üÔû®É³øÂO®Ñ
Federal Publications (S) Pte Ltd
Times Jurong, 2 Jurong Port Rd., Singapore 226,
ISBN 981 01 3004 X
Alfred
http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
"Traces of Butterflies'
Dreams" - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry Site
Dear Julian, your suggestion to put graphics together with the Chinese characters is a very good and reasonable way of teaching children, in order to demonstrate that this special kind of writing has no 'alphabet' (as still is assumed by many adult readers of this board) and originally was a kind of drawing pictures. Many - not only basic - characters still are pictures (as sun, moon, tortoise, horse etc. etc.). Yet, I just have limited space on my two servers and picture graphics are comparably big files. I own very nice educational stuff to teach children (and adults too) with lots of fine pictures relating to the original composition of Chinese characters ( also including all styles up to ¯ó®Ñ), but, alas, these pictures all are copyright. To those interested, I'll tell the booklets' details:
"FAN WITH CHINESE CHARACTERS The Straits Times Collection (vol. 1-3)"
¦³½ìªºº~¦r¡E®üÔû®É³øÂO®Ñ
Federal Publications (S) Pte Ltd
Times Jurong, 2 Jurong Port Rd., Singapore 226,
ISBN 981 01 3004 X
Alfred
http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
"Traces of Butterflies'
Dreams" - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry Site
Dear Ming, thank you for your help. You are right. We did some brainstorming
with Siu-Leung in the meantime with regard to an appropriate title. We think
the one above will be o.k. - I've put it to the page now. As for the javascript:
up to the moment, I could not fix the program's problems with NS v. 4.07 and
earlier versions. Please report your experiences.
Alfred
http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
"Traces of Butterflies'
Dreams" - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry Site
This is very good and useful project, and I am sure will be welcome by many teachers around thw world.
May I suggest some changes in the title, to make it easier for the search engines and people who happens to come across the page.
The words ¬ÛÃÑ mean to "know each other", especially two persons, and does not connote the idea of "learning."
The words »{ÃÑ mean to "know and recognize" both people and things. It also may be used to connote " to learn."
If you do not like »{ÃÑ , there is another possibility.
The words ¬ÛÃѺ~»y can be shortened to just
ÃÑ ¦r
Then the next project would be to teach children
读 书
:-)
Ming
FROM:Ming L. Pei <pei@chinapage.org>
- Wednesday, January 20, 1999 at 06:36:43 (PS
Please do not associate abbreviated characters with pingyin. Pingyin is also used in writing Big5. And in fact a lot of my friends from Taiwan use pingyin instead of Zhuyin now. I know this kind of association is habitual. In order to really teach kids to pronounce properly, pingyin is closest to the "natural usage" of the Roman alphabets (other than "q" which is always a tough one). Eventually other phonetic systems will go with expiration of the "card catalog".
The abbreviation of Chinese words was systematically promoted during the 1950's for the reason that many people were illiterate and teaching the Fanti was painful. I think once literacy is reached, the Fanti should be taught to retain the ability to read ancient scripts. It is the only way to preserve knowledge. It is like we should never abandon the proper writing for shorthand or all the roots will be lost.
The following may clarify my suggestion:
¨àµ£=children in general
«Ä¤l=kids (implying offsprings of the first person or some person)
¬ÛÃÑ=to know each other (people to people)
»{ÃÑ=to know (the subject can be people or things)
http://www.asiawind.com
FROM:SL Lee <sllee@asiawind.com>
- Tuesday, January 19, 1999 at 13:49:18 (PS
Dear Siu-Leung, thanks for your appreciation of my small 'project'. Originally,
I had no intention to publish the pages, just wanted to make some Chinese characters
available to a teacher for educational purposes (she has the characters copied
by her students, and also counting with Chinese numbers in her math station).
The title is due to the very special project and also the characters' small
selection covers those kids' specific 'world' and surroundings. I do not intend
to teach Chinese on the internet ;).
As for the transcription: if you click the characters on the chart, they'll
appear on a separate page in a larger size and you will also find both ways
of transcription: Wade-Giles and Pinyin - there's no Yale transcription. Although
I first began to study Chinese using pinyin system, in my opinion /emotion(!),
Wade-Giles looks much better because being "far off from ordinary everyday
use", mainly dealing with ancient Chinese and poetry and still being used
in sinological libraries all around the world. In my feeling, pinyin is somehow
related with the establishment of the simplified characters, and good for typing
and character input on computers. (But anyway, I like it a lot better than 'simple'
GuoBiao, in my highly subjective view, always reminding me of those ugly white
characters I used to see in the PRCh printed on military trucks etc. - Please,
bear with me!)
Alfred
http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
"Traces of Butterflies'
Dreams" - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry Site
My heartfelt congratulation to your effort in building this site for the children. You are definitely on the right path in helping more children world wide who want to learn about Chinese culture. There are many sites on Chinese culture in the web that dedicate to adults, but not many good ones to children.
As a site for children, I suggest that you can include graphic and pictures together with the words, e.g. a picture of a hawk, the sun etc. Chinese words are very graphical themselves. It would interest the children more if they can see how a Chinese word evolves from a graphic picture to its present form, e.g. ¤s , ¤é .
Another suggestion. With Ming’s permission, perhaps you can link your children’s page to this website. As they learn more Chinese and are more interested in Chinese culture, they can explore other areas in this site.
Have a good day.
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Tuesday, January 19, 1999 at 08:46:40 (PS
Your children's page is great!
If I may, please consider the following"
1. The phonetics is really best expressed in the standard Romanization
used by China and United Nations now. The Yale phonetics are very confusing in
the use of ch and ch', j, etc. It may be tough for you to do the changes.
If you have problems, I can help you.
2. ¨àµ£º~¦rªì¶¥ (First Steps in Chinese for Children) would be a preferred title. The content actually is
good for anybody, not only kids, to learn Chinese. So, actually
omitting ¨àµ£ is fine.
I hope you can continue to build the vocabulary. It is a very interesting project.
Congratulations!
FROM:SL Lee <sllee@asiawind.com>
- Tuesday, January 19, 1999 at 04:07:34 (PS
Your children's page is great!
If I may, please consider the following"
1. The phonetics is really best expressed in the standard Romanization
used by China and United Nations now. The Yale phonetics are very confusing in
the use of ch and ch', j, etc. It may be tough for you to do the changes.
If you have problems, I can help you.
2. ¨àµ£º~¦rªì¶¥ (First Steps in Chinese for Children) would be a preferred title. The content actually is
good for anybody, not only kids, to learn Chinese. So, actually
omitting ¨àµ£ is fine.
I hope you can continue to build the vocabulary. It is a very interesting project.
Congratulations!
FROM:http://www.asiawind.com ">SL Lee <sllee@asiawind.com>
- Tuesday, January 19, 1999 at 04:05:24 (PS
Dear friends (and any reader of this board),
Perhaps you remember a lady asking for educational stuff some time ago in this
forum. I meanwhile have put together some teaching materials as an introduction
to writing (and pronouncing) Chinese characters. To also demonstrate the way
numbers are formed in (ancient and nowaday) China, I wrote a javascript program
working well on Macintosh platform using NS Communicator 4.5 or the latest version
of IE, whereas NS v. 4.07 (PC) or NS Navigator 3.x (Mac) are yielding javascript
error messages (although the code used is said to be supported also by those
versions). I'd ask your help providing me some feedback on your experiences
with the site's program etc.. Your e-mails are welcome and highly appreciated:
the little site's URL is: http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/school/RAINL.RXML.
( I'd suggest to first access the notes' page, and only then go to the counter
page, so you'll have all the digit graphics necessary loaded for off-line use.
Just have at least one number displayed while online, in order to also get the
second frame's background gif loaded.)
Alfred
http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
"Traces of Butterflies'
Dreams" - ***/*™
My Poetry Site
Good to hear from you!
I made a few editorial changes to your postings, only to improve the
line-wrap, which may cause readability problems for some
browsers.
With you permission, I shall add the poems to the regular poetry pages as well.
Ming
FROM:Ming L Pei <pei@chinapage.org>
- Sunday, January 17, 1999 at 14:59:12 (PS
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¿½±ø¬î«B¤i¡A»a¯í·¡¦¿±â¡A®É¨£¤@¦à¦æ¡AÀÛÀÛ¤ô¶³¥~ ¡C
¥Õ®öª÷¤s¦x¡A«C¤sÅKÂ|«°¡A¬G¤H¤µ¤£¨£¡A·¨¬h§@¬îÁn ¡C
µù¡RÅKÂ|«°¡A§YÂí¦¿«° ¡A®]§d®É¿v¤l«°¡C©T¥HðI¡A¦]¦Ó±o¦W¡C
Åô¾ô±H¤º¤Gº
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Åô¾ô¨â©¤¤d±ø¬h¡A°eºÉªF¦è´ç¤ô¤H¡C
¤ÓµØ²×«n¸U¨½»»¡A¦è¨ÓµL³B¤£»î¾P¡I
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²D¤ë²H©t¦à¡A»»(§ø)Áô¬õ¾ð¡AªHªH¼ÇÂk¤H¡A±y±y´ç¦¿¥h¡C
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§@¤W¨Ê¦¿¥_©T¼Ó¡A·L¯í·¤é¨£¥Ê¬w¡A¼h¼h»·¾ð¯B«CÂÉ¡A¸¸»´¦|°_¥ÕÅáC
´¤l¾ôÀYÂû¥¼»ï¡A¥Ê¬w«°¥~¤éªF¥Í¡A·ªi¤£¼ª¦è¬z´ç¡A¤@¨£ª÷µJÂù²´©ú¡C
±¥¤`¸Ö¡]¤hæЦ~¥|¤Q¤T¡A¦b¨Ê¨Ñ¾¤á³¡¡A©d±i¤óª\©ó®a)
ÃÄÄl¸g¨÷°e¥Í²P¡AÁIºf¬K·¨âÆKµØ¡C¤@»y±H§g§gÅ¥¨ú¡R¡y¤£±Ð¨à¤k¦çĪªá ¡z¡C
µù¡RĪªá¦ç¡A¶{¤lÄʤp®É¡A¥V¤é¡A«á¥À»P¦ç¡A¦ç¤¤¹êĪªá¡Aª¬¦ü«p¦Ó¤£·x¡C
Please enjoy!
FROM:R. CHIANG <CHIANGR@LYNX.BC.CA>
CANADA - Saturday, January 16, 1999 at 09:45:31 (PS
Historians generally agreed that Silk Road was first founded around 200 B.C. during the Han Dynasty. It reached its height of popularity and usage in Tang Dynasty ( around 600 B.C. ) and it was abandoned during Ming dynasty around 1400 A.D.
During these periods, Chinese words or characters were already well developed. Chinese calligraphy can be written in different forms or stypes. There is no such thing as one kind of calligraphy attributed to the Silk Road. Scholars and travellers who left any calligraphy while passing the Silk Road during those days could very well use any written form of calligraphy. ( There are 4 or 5 or more written forms of Chinese calligraphy. ) From the scrolls unearthed along the Silk Road, we know there was no big difference between the words written at that time from what we are using today as we can read them without great difficulty.
There are many good calligraphy sites in the net that you can find examples how words were written during those periods. You can go to the Silk Road page and Calligraphy page of this site to get some ideas. Or you can go to this site http://ts-www.he.cninto.net/htdocs/ar3/main.htm
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Friday, January 15, 1999 at 07:30:03 (PS
It is nice to see you posted some guidelines for posting. I believe you should have the authority to screen messages to maintain a high quality forum, free from spams and irrelevance. To such extent, it would be necessary even to "de-contaminate". Only then can meaningful discussion be conducted. I am pleased to help out people who have genuine interest in learning about Chinese culture.
FROM:S. L. Lee <sllee@asiawind.com>
Columbus, OH USA - Thursday, January 14, 1999 at 14:55:16 (PS
Silkroad trading was active during a long period of time between Han and Tang dynasty. The calligraphy style evolvement was also most active during this period of time (almost 1000 years). So, depending on the exact period you are interested in, different style should be used. Some of the calligrpahy styles are presented on my calligraphy site. I would be interested in providing you with further information on this subject as I am interested in classical chinese music and calligraphy. The music in Han was also very different from Tang dynasty when a lot of foreign instruments were introduced. Please send me an email.
S. L. Lee
FROM:SL Lee <sllee@asiawind.com>
Columbus, OH USA - Thursday, January 14, 1999 at 14:42:51 (PS
It is not the primary function of this forum to run an "information desk" to serve the general public. We don't have a staff of reference librarians waiting to answer questions or assist people with their research. Nevertheless, people do write in with their questions. If the questions are reasonable, and the person who inquires has made an effort to search the Internet as well as this website, but fails to find the answer, a few good souls and myself will help you and answer your inquiries. They do it out of the goodness of their hearts. I sincerely hope that people will not take unfair advantages of their generosity.
I am revising this webpage to make this clearer to everyone.
To the few good fellows who have been very generous with their time to answer inquiries, I extend my grateful thanks to them on behalf of myself and all of the readers.
FROM:Ming L. Pei <pei@chinapage.org>
US - Thursday, January 14, 1999 at 10:30:52 (PS
The National Palace Museum of Taiwan has a few Tang Yin's paintings. You should be able to get books or prints of them if you contact the bookstore. Give it a try.
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Wednesday, January 13, 1999 at 15:14:52 (PS
The National Palace Museum has a few Tang Yin's paintings. You should be able to get books or prints of them if you contact the bookstore. Give it a try.
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Wednesday, January 13, 1999 at 15:14:07 (PS
Go to the homepage and click on the Dictionary icon and you should be able to find the Chinese words that you want.
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Wednesday, January 13, 1999 at 12:58:45 (PS
I like to learn more about ¤ý ¤h ºÕ myself as I have never heard of him. I heard of ¤ý ¥@ s instead. ¤ý ¥@ s was borned in the Ming Dynasty and many people credited him as the author of ª÷ ²~ ±ö .
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Tuesday, January 12, 1999 at 18:31:08 (PS
Take a look at the New Addition page and you will find at least 6 new entries since Novemeber 1998. You will be very impressed by the new additon of the History page. It will take me months if not years just to read them all.
Dr. Pei is trying hard to update his site and he needs volunteers to assist him to do that. Would you be able to help ?
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Tuesday, January 12, 1999 at 08:38:08 (PS
Is there a China town in your city ? If there is, I suggest you go to one of the Chinese video stores and rent a copy of the Monkey King TV series. The store owner should be able to help you find one.
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Tuesday, January 12, 1999 at 08:18:42 (PS
I have observed the posting to this forum all the time.
Many asked questions that can be (and ought to be) answered
by doing a further research some where else.
Posting of irrelevant topics and spams are starting
to increase.
I suggest the following:
1. A policy page be inserted to indicate the objective of this forum. What should and should not be posted.
2. The dictionary section be placed in a more conspicuous place for people to look up words.
This will minimize waste of the precious space.
FROM:SL Lee <sllee@asiawind.com>
USA - Sunday, January 10, 1999 at 05:40:32 (PS
Since you are living in Taiwan, you should be able to get books, prints, postcards of the painting if you visit any museum, library or large bookstores.
Give it a try and you shouldn't be disappointed.
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Saturday, January 09, 1999 at 12:30:32 (PS
They are the same person.
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Friday, January 08, 1999 at 13:02:38 (PS
http://chant.ics.cuhk.edu.hk/huaxiamain.htm It is provided by the Chinese University of Hong Kong.It is still under construction. I just took a quick look at Shan Hai Jing ¤s®ü¸g, China's oldest geographic book. It even includes illustrations. From what is available, this is going to be the site for reading almost anything on Chinese classics. Wish I have more than 10 lives to go through it.
S. L. Lee, http://www.asiawind.com
FROM:SL Lee <sllee@asiawind.com>
USA - Friday, January 08, 1999 at 09:32:35 (PS
If you search §ù ¨j under Yahoo ( chinese ) , you will find links to this topic.
Good luck.
FROM:Julian Yiu <§ù ¨j >
Canada§ù - Friday, January 08, 1999 at 07:18:56 (PS
From your description of your friend's name, I guess the Chinese words are ¯\ ·ì . Note the left hand side of each word is ¥É , meaning jade. You know the meaning of these words already. If you want to know more about these words, you have to look them up in a Chinese dictionary.
Jades are precious and valuable stones. They are considered good luck charms as well. As most parents love their daughters as jades, they often name them with words associated with jades, such is the case with your friend. We can name boys with "jade" words as well, as is the case with the great general ©P ·ì .
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Wednesday, January 06, 1999 at 21:45:51 (PS
You asked two questions:
1. Why is the exchange of handkerchiefs an indication of homosexuality between Gar Bo-juk and Chang Yuk-ham.
I suppose that has a lot to do with the nature of the gifts, being the handkerchiefs. As today, certain gifts are meant for lovers only, e.g. flowers on Valentine Day and rings. Handkerchiefs are very personal items. In fact, the handkerchief that Gar Bo-juk gave to Chang was a gift from Jap Yan and we all know the kind of relationship between Bo-juk and Jap Yan. The author, by choosing handkerchief as a gift, strongly hinted that there is close relationship between the two.
Another indication has something to do with Chang’s profession and his "feminine" good looks. It is an open secret those days that many rich and powerful people seek the hand of male opera performers.
2. You asked where you can find more discussion on Hun Kau Meng. I suggest that you go to Yahoo ( Chinese ) and search under¬õ õ ¾Ç . You will find a few entries there that may interest you.
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Tuesday, January 05, 1999 at 13:13:47 (PS
Yes, I also had my problems with the ¯ó®Ñ character for zuo4 §@, but Siu-Leung
did it anyway. The mass with this writing style is that you cannot simply look
it up in a dictionary respective, so you have to guess and only then running
through your charts trying to search it. After Siu-Leung's hint, I succeeded
to find it. The character on the painting is written in a real interesting 'fluent'
hand as even the 'ren' ¤H radical consists of just one single stroke (different
from my charts'). I also checked my favorite calligrapher Chu Yun-ming's ¯¬¤¹©ú¯ó®Ñð¤H¸Ö¨÷
but had no character 'zuo4' there. I'm not too sure, but this everyday's word
doesn't seem to show up to often in ancient Chinese poetry and calligraphy.
As for the paintings symbolic content, I also was not too successful: this genre
always has a more or less hidden meaning, expressing certain (good) wishes or
even ('selfish') desires with regard to some other person. The two very beautifully
designed flowers in fact do not seem to carry too much (?) meaning in Chinese
thinking:
So, it's up to you now to imagine the 'hidden' meaning of the very beautiful and delicate painting. As for me, I guess that the Chinese artist ought have been a southerner ...
Alfred
http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
"Traces of Butterflies'
Dreams" - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry Site
Chinese calligraphy is basically 'free-hand writing' as
opposed to 'block-printing of alphabets'. Good calligraphy
is ranked as high as painting by the Chinese.
Julian and S.L. have given you the calligraphy in the
picture as text. In case you do not have the Chinese
software to read their text, I am given you the same
text in gif form,
From what I can make out, you have either a tapestry
or a print of a tapestry. Although this kind of tapestry
go back thousands of years, it is still being made and sold
widely in China today. I have no idea if yours is based
on a comtemporary or on an earlier painting.
It is beautiful, and I enjoy looking at it.
Ming
tapestry
FROM:Ming L. Pei <pei@chinapage.org>
- Saturday, January 02, 1999 at 11:52:29 (PS
Thanks.
As I have not studied ¯ó ®Ñ , I often have problem reading most of those words on painting. I can guess some of them. This is one area that I am working on now.
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Saturday, January 02, 1999 at 07:58:11 (PS
The word you have doubt should be §@ (to compose, produce, make).
FROM:SL Lee <sllee@asiawind.com>
USA - Friday, January 01, 1999 at 10:12:09 (PS
I took a look at your picture, but I couldn't make out the third word and I don't want to make a guess what it is. I rather leave this to the experts. The rest of the writings are like this.
¥ú ¦t ¡H ©ó ªF «F «È ¦¸
The first two words is the name of the painter. This is supported by the seal on the picture. The third word I can't decipher. The fourth word means at. The fifth word means east. The sixth word means pavilion. Taking together, it means the East Pavilion. The last two words means living or lodging there as a vistor. So taking the whole sentence, it means something like " I___ this while I was a vistor living at the East Pavilion." That is the best I can do, hope you are not totally disappointed.
FROM:Julian Yiu
Canada - Friday, January 01, 1999 at 09:07:39 (PS
On January 1,1999, earlier discussions for the previous month
were moved to a separate file..
To read earlier discussions, click on the button below.
Archived pages