Tim, please tell me the exact meaning of 'Sun Tzu' first and I'll prepare the gif file for you. I rather think it's the meaning 'grandson' ®]¤l, isn't it? What style do you prefer?

Since some time ago, the topic had been discussed in this forum not to post queries before having searched for it by oneself on the net, I just want to mention this: Most part of people asking for Chinese characters cannot look for them in virtual dictionaries because they don't have software necessary for 2-byte-character display (and also do not want to download Chinese fonts for just this single purpose). I highly appreciate your interest in Chinese culture and writing, so you're welcome getting the graphic files from me by e-mail, do not hesitate to ask for it in this forum. But please understand that perhaps you'll have to wait for a while, since - in contrast to all appearences - my real job is elsewhere than in front of my Macintosh :((

Alfred

http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
Traces of Butterflies' Dreams - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry

M. Lam asked: "Could anyone have a nice to teach Chinese to a ten years old boy?"

Lam, to begin with, you could have a glance on my "Quileute School Project" (see URL below) to get some basics and then look at Prof. Pei's "A is for Love" on this site (China the Beautiful) to learn some more Chinese words and characters through the alphabet.

Sal from South Africa is wondering whether the sound "Lay-la" is Chinese and what's its meaning:

Sal, if it's *not* Arabic (and meaning something like 'night'), it most probably is Chinese as Prof. Pei has already told you. In Chinese, this sound is most common so you can hear it very often in conversations. It's composed by the word 'lai2' (2nd tone - with the meaning 'to come', 'to bring' etc. ¨Ó) and a suffix '-le' (pronounced somehow like 'la' in English), a prefective particle, giving a shade of completion to the preceding verb (because in its main form 'liao3' meaning 'to finish', 'to complete'). Thus, e.g. the sentence "Ta lai-le" ¥L/¦o/¥¦¨Ó¤Fcan be translated with "He/she/it came/has come".

BTW, dear Ming, for me as a Bavarian, the grammatical function of '-le' ¤F in a Chinese sentence like e.g. "Wo jiu qu le" §Ú´N¥h¤F is quite interesting, because in this case giving a touch of near future (I am about to...). In Bavarian dialect there also exists kind of set phrase (nowadays seldom heard yet) with perhaps the same linguistical background: Sometimes people would say "I'm gone/left already!" to indicate that they were at the very point of leaving (within the next seconds/minutes etc.).

Have a good day!

http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
Traces of Butterflies' Dreams - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry

M. Lam asked: "Could anyone have a nice to teach Chinese to a ten years old boy?"

Lam, to begin with, you could have a glance on my "Quileute School Project" (see URL below) to get some basics and then look at Prof. Pei's "A is for Love" on this site (China the Beautiful) to learn some more Chinese words and characters through the alphabet.

Sal from South Africa is wondering whether the sound "Lay-la" is Chinese and what's its meaning:

Sal, if it's *not* Arabic (and meaning something like 'night'), it most probably is Chinese as Prof. Pei has already told you. In Chinese, this sound is most common so you can hear it very often in conversations. It's composed by the word 'lai2' (2nd tone - with the meaning 'to come', 'to bring' etc. ¨Ó) and a suffix '-le' (pronounced somehow like 'la' in English), a prefective particle, giving a shade of completion to the preceding verb (because in its main form 'liao3' meaning 'to finish', 'to complete'). Thus, e.g. the sentence "Ta lai-le" ¥L/¦o/¥¦¨Ó¤Fcan be translated with "He/she/it came/has come".

BTW, dear Ming, for me as a Bavarian, the grammatical function of '-le' ¤F in a Chinese sentence like e.g. "Wo jiu qu le" §Ú´N¥h¤F is quite interesting, because in this case giving a touch of near future (I am about to...). In Bavarian dialect there also exists kind of set phrase (nowadays seldom heard yet) with perhaps the same linguistical background: Sometimes people would say "I'm gone/left already!" to indicate that they were at the very point of leaving (within the next seconds/minutes etc.).

Have a good day!

http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
Traces of Butterflies' Dreams - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry

The Chinese New Year is celebrated on the second new moon (Lunar)
after the Winter solstice (Solar).

Dear friends, here is one of the Sung poems of my anthology I tried to transfer to German. I like it very much! Maybe you could add some notes on it, as you are much more familiar to this poetry than I ever will be.

¤¸¤é ¤ý¦w¥Û¸Ö

Ãz¦ËÁn¤¤¤@·³°£
¬K­·°e·x¤J±OĬ
¤dªù¸U¤áÀûÀû¤é
Á`§â·s®ç´«Â²Å

Pao chu sheng chung i sui ch'u
Ch'un feng sung nuan juh t'u su
Ch'ien men wan hu t'ung t'ung jih
Tsung pa hsin t'ao huan chiu fu

Hinaus ein Jahr im Bersten der Bambusboeller!
Und Fruehlingswind bringt Glut dem Neujahrswein.
Maehlich erstrahlen Tuer und Tor in junger Sonne;
Mit Pfirsichholz am Haus zieh'n neu die Goetter ein.

Wang An-shih (1021-1086)

http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
Traces of Butterflies' Dreams - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry

In case your students do not have Chinese software on their computer, I am putting up the couplet given in Julian's earlier post here.

If you like a more elementary example, look at these two:
top bottom

The Chinese New Year is celebrated on the first new moon (Lunar) on or
after the inception of Spring (Solar).

Here is a well known story you can tell your students during the Chinese New Year.

It was said that this famous scholar ( it doesn’t matter who; some said So Tung-po, other said Gai Hei-nam ) who always wrote a Chinese couplet on the door on New Year’s eve to celebrate the event. As soon as he put them up, all the villagers copied them and hang them on their doors as well. This scholar was upset but he couldn’t stop his neighbours. So one year, on the New Year’s eve , he wrote this couplet " ºÖ µL ­« ¦Ü ¡A º× ¤£ ³æ ¦æ ¦æ ."

When his neighbors saw this couplet, they didn’t dare to copy it and they just had to go for other conventional ones.

On the next day, the New Year's Day, this scholar woke up early and he completed his couplet as follows, " ºÖ µL ­« ¦Ü ¤µ ´Â ¦Ü , º× ¤£ ³æ ¦æ ¬Q ©] ¦æ

There are many popular Chinese New Year couplets. One that I like is ¤Ñ ¼W ·³ ¤ë ¤H ¼W ¹Ø ¡A¬K º¡ °® ©[ºÖ º¡ ªù

I understand your concern about the baby rabbit you saw on the TV program.
I did not see that particular TV program, but I would venture to guess that you mis-interpreted the event.
Surely, the buyer who paid good money for the rabbit would not be foolish enough to cause suffocation of his new pet and risk bad luck for a whole year!

I saw a TV news yesterday showing the Japanese pet stores doing a booming business selling rabbits - with prices up to 500 U.S. dollars!

The Chinese don't eat rabbit meat. Here we have rabbit stews - or so I hear.

Have a happy, Beveley!

Broadcasting on foreign
cultures in Germany

Dear Siu-Leung, perhaps one really should mention that, although these broadcastings can be watched in (southern) Germany, it's due to the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation rendering outstanding good services to the public on this cultural area. I should also add the Austrian television doing a real good job. There were great series last year and the years before on the Huang Ho cultures, the 'Silk Road', the Mongols and, only some weeks ago another one on the Turkic empires (Sassanides, Ottomans etc.). These broadcastings are not meant for children, but placed in best time of transmission, e.g. saturday/sunday night at 8.15. All other German channels (private or national) seem to be similar to your American TV corporations: too much junk contributions (too many cheap crime series etc.). Three cheer for Bavaria and our Austrian neighbours!

Thanks to Rudy Chiang for the infos on calligrapher Wang To .

http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
Traces of Butterflies' Dreams - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry

Dear Siu-Leung and Julian, may I join your interesting linguistic discussion?
We can take for sure (as a base) that grape wine was imported to China from foreign countries (I also think it came from the extended Roman empire). Principally, there are two ways to verbally refer to a new (foreign) item: you adopt the foreign expression (perhaps with some specific altering due to your own pronunciation) or you invent a new expression for it in your language. (So e.g. the old Germans up to then not building windows into their houses' walls, took over the Roman expression 'fenestra' for it, calling it 'Fenster', whereas the Anglosaxons took a word of their own language calling it 'wind-ow' (wind eye, i.e. a hole in the wall, because they initially had no panes).
I have no idea which foreign (latin?) expression the old Chinese could have taken over to 'sinisize' it as p'u t'ao. I'd rather assume they invented a word for this foreign plant from their own language. Everybody dealing with vines (I'm growing my own white grapes in front of my house - yet too few to make wine from ; ( ), easily can realize that wine is a creeping/climbing plant. Wouldn't it have been quite natural and obvious to refer to this plant using the descriptive Chinese attribute «m p'u2 (creep etc. - not only on hand and legs, but also in reference to creepers, e.g. in the sense of 'creeping stems of plants' as in «m°Ë²ô)? Since the foreign plant's bearing berries like the ®ç tree, wouldn't it be 'near' and appropriate to call it «m®ç? So, this might have been the original Chinese expression for this beautiful and tasty mediterranean plant giving us a divine drink so much better than beer.

BTW, just now, this evening, Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation began broadcasting a Japanese TV production on China called 'China, 5000 years of civilization' (in cooperation with Beijing and Taipeh palace museum) . It's great, beginning this evening with Yangtse culture Liang Chu, and Shang °Ó, Chou ©P there will be a series of more than 20 parts until May. One can see lots of bronze vessels and oracle bones and their beautiful inscriptions.

A.W. Tueting
http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
Traces of Butterflies' Dreams - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry

There is no connection.

It is a standard practice to translate foreign country and city names phonetically. Thus, Portugal is Pu Tao Ya, and Spain is Xi Pan Ya. The fact that Chinese grape wine is called Pu Tao Jiu is merely coincidental.

In the Chinese grocery stores and restaurants around New York City I see sea bass fish labelled as "Xi Pan" fish. Surely, it is not "Spanish" fish, even though the same words are used.

Since it is an old Chinese tradition that fish must be served at a New Year's banquet, so it would be fitting that we shall gether together (virtually) for a meal of steamed sea bass and a bottle of grape wine :-)

Grapes were cultivated in Near East 6000 years ago. Wine making from grape was recorded by Egyptians 2500 BC (Ency. Britannica). Since the Romans came to China through the Silk Road during Han dynasty, I believe they brought grape wine to China. Wine making in China was traditional from cereals (rice, Gaoliang). Even today, grape wines are not that popular in China.

¤ý¿« ²D¦{µü

¸² µå ü °s ©] ¥ú ªM

±ý ¼ µ\ µ] °¨ ¤W Ê

¾K ª× ¨F Þ´ §g ²ö ¯º

You have answered all Peter's question regarding Pu Tao Jiu. You said the original term should be »Z®ç instead of ¸² µå . I

I would like to know more on the origin as I always thought the latter is the correct term. The term goes back hundred of years and it is also common that we make wine out of grapes. Hence the term ¸² µå °s

To end this discussion, I copy this famous poem here.

The title of this work, 'Lin Wang Hsien Chih T'ieh' Á{¤ýÄm¤§©«, simply means "Study of work of ¤ýÄm¤§".
It is the long tradtion folowed by all of serious students of calligraphy, to practise by copying the past Masters' works, to imitate their styles,methods, strokes, etc. I suppose that this is like the student-painters paint copies of the masters in the Louve Museum.
Á{ means "to copy", and "©«" means "a work of calligraphy."

http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
Traces of Butterflies' Dreams - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry

http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
Traces of Butterflies' Dreams - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry

I do not know of any site in English about Qianlong. In the "History" page of this site, there is the full text of the official chronicles of the Qing Dynasty - but it is in Chinese.

When you put together the history, won't you post it for us to read?

I went to your site, and the calligraphy of Chu Yun-ming file cannot be found.

Some days ago, a net friend downloaded a piece of Hsing shu-style calligraphy from my site to use it as a desktop background on his computer asking me about the brush writing's details. Although since long being very fond of this calligraphers' personal style, I don't know too much about him. I wonder if someone also can tell me the exact meaning of the sentence (I'd imagine somebody enquiring about someone's - the prince's? - health, maybe after recovery). The graphic is here to look at!
I'd appreciate your informations.

Alfred
http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
"Traces of Butterflies' Dreams" - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry Site

In Chinese literature, orchid is a hermit detached from the society. While lotus is a gentleman involved in the society without being contaminated, as the flowers emerged from dark mud in a pond. (see ©P´°À[: ·R½¬»¡)¡C

In fact, lotus is also honored because of its multiple uses. Like the pig as a domestic animal, every part of the lotus is used for something:
flower - for appreciation, a typical topic for artists.
leaves - improvise as umbrella, as package (to wrap rice and other food).
rhizome and roots - medicinal food, stop internal bleeding
fruit - medicine, alkalinating, "cooling"
seed - medicinal food. tonic. The embryo part is very bitter, containing alkaloids, and used as sedative for kids.

Alfred

BTW, in my own translations' preface, I tried to express the tremendous difficulties facing this task.

http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
"Traces of Butterflies' Dreams" - ½º¹Ú²ª
My Poetry Site

For more about the poet and his poems, go to the Qu Yuan [Chu Yuan] page The poem quoted by Rudy is, I believe, #29.

BTW, he died in 278 bc, so he must be 65 years old when he died by jumping into the river.

While lotus is a favourite flower for the Chinese New Year, it is by no means the only flower that Chinese like to buy and display during the festival. In fact, I think ®ç ªá may be a more popular flower in the New Year. There are many flower markets at the end of the year for the public and you will find all kinds of flowers on display. They are mainly seasonal flowers and depending on the various areas in China, some are more popular than the others.