I learned my first Chinese “slang” character, for lack of a better term.  Apparently, this is around a year or two old.  Amazingly, it’s already part of my input method on my PC at work (it’s not on my Mac).  Anyway, the character is “Jiong” (tone 3).  It means something of a cross between unhappy and embarrassed.  Notice the character below.  All of the strokes are “legal”, for lack of a better term, Chinese strokes used for writing the script.

(above) Miss Li will make you feel “jiong”.

Here’s an update for my “Small step” post below. After studying the phrase a little more and getting clarification from a colleague, I realize that the translator of this phrase got lucky by translating it in the style of the great Chinese philosopher, Confucius. Doesn’t this sound something like, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” to you? But, is “small step makes big success” an accurate translation of the text (“Qian2 jin4 yi1 xiao3 bu4, wen2 ming2 yi1 da4 bu4″).

No!

Here’s a more accurate translation: “Small step closer, big step for civilization.” (I got lucky by discovering the word for “civilization” a few days before (“wen2 ming2″))   And there’s a good reason why it’s in front of the urinal. The intention, according to my colleagues, is “Step closer to the urinal and don’t make such a mess. That small gesture of cleanliness will do wonders for our civilization.” Big let down my first Confucian interpretation, I guess. It reminds me of the 2008 Olympics advertisements running in China. I often see them when riding on the subway. They encourage all sorts of good social behavior like sharing an umbrella, not spitting, and waiting your turn.

(above) I wonder if this was put up by the Beijing Olympic Committee.

For the guys in the audience, you are all aware of restaurants practice of displaying the days newspaper at eye-level behind glass in the men’s room, right? Well, what did I notice in the men’s room at my office today, on April Fools Day of all days, but another communist reminder of the important things in life. It’s a good message I guess, just funny that I see it every day now at eye level. I’ll have this saying, including the characters (I know all but three), down in no time:

Here’s another neat example of Chinese characters conveying their meaning through pictographs. I learned this one from a colleague and was able to apply it when visiting Tiger Leaping Gorge. The character itself is the character for “gorge” or “canyon”. Phonetically, it’s pronounced “Xia2″, the “2″ indicating a medium-pitched tone rising to a higher pitch. “Xia” is pronounced something close to “Shyah” in English. Here is the character:

The character above is actually made up of two other characters. The character on the right is “Jia1″, where “1″ is the high level tone. This character can be either a noun or a verb. As a noun, the character (most commonly with a “zi” sound after it) means “clip”, “pliers”, or something that can hold two things together with a force like a clip. As a verb, it means to “pinch” or “clip”. Here’s the character:

And, the character on the right is a simple one:

This character is “shan1″, which means “mountain” in Chinese. So, you see what happens when you put them together, you have a mountain that pinches…or a gorge. Pretty neat. Even if someone doesn’t know the character for “gorge”, they can most likely guess the meaning by the combination of characters to form a new word.

In Chinese, the word Fu2 means “Fortune”. That’s pronounced “Foo” with an ascending tone (tone 2). When you say Fu2 dao4 le, you’re saying that “fortune has arrived”. All around China, especially on the doors to peoples home, you can see a Fu character displayed upsided down. Huh? Why upside down? The reason is because the word for “upside down” is dao4, pronounced with a strong downward tone (tone 4). It just so happens that the Chinese word for “upside down” shares the same pronunciation as the Chinese word for “arrived”. So, literally turning the character Fu upside-down is a play on words that implies that fortune has arrived. Neat, eh?

This is Fu rightside up:

福

If you’re on a laptop, please turn it over right now. Maybe comments on my blog will start working. OK, now I feel strangely superstitious. Here’s a photo of my front door (yes, an upside down Fu):

Sorry for my neglect of the blog lately. There are visitors from the US in town now and I’ve spent most every night entertaining and being entertained. But, I found some time to squeeze in some fun “Engrish”. This plaque is found in the elevator of our building. All of the quotes have errors but two are especially bad. One is unintelligible to the point of qualifying as solid Engrish comedy. I need to submit it to the Engrish board.

From top to bottom:

• Don’t use lift when fire happens.
• Don’t smoking in the department and prohibit swinging acutely.
  
• Don’t touch the safety panel during shutting doors.
• Children need to be accompanied with adult.
• Press the alert call button of <bell> for help in case of trouble

And the winner is…

• Carrying cargo by lift rust make the gravity evenly and adopt the effective package.

Top notch.

Related to my “Tone up” blog post, I want to share this little nugget of Chinese character trivia too. The word for “good” in Chinese is “hao (tone 3)”. You hear this word all the time. I think it must be the most common word in Chinese. The story behind the character is innerestin’…

Here’s the character for “good”, aka “hao3″:

好

This character is made up of two components. The character on the left is “Nu (tone 3)”. Here it is in it’s non horizontally squished form:

女

The character on the right is “Zi (tone2)”. Here it is:

子

The first character, “Nu (tone2)”, means “Girl”. The other, “Zi (tone 2)”, means “Son”, or “Male”. So, put “girl” and “boy” (essentially) together and that equals “good”. So, any time anybody who speaks or reads Chinese sees the word “good”, they’re reminded of “girl plus boy”. I doubt, actually, that that is what goes through a native speaker’s head every time they see or hear “hao3″, but obviously everyone who reads the characters is aware of this. My opinion is that this is a great example of how a language influences culture. I can’t think of anything equivalent in English like this, can anyone? There are plenty of other examples of this sort of character combination or culture influencing device, but this is the most accessible. As soon as I think I’ve figured out the more complex ones, I’ll be sure to share them.

I’ll sign off with 好的 (“Alright…” )