Category: Chinese

WOTD: 戕害

So, I was waiting for a coffee and killing time on WeChat and saw a Xinhua news article pinned to the top of my feed. It was a white paper issued by the State Council’s New Office regarding the “struggle to combat terrorism and remove extremism in Xinjiang while preserving human rights.” It would almost both worth taking it line by line because these things can be quite fun to read. About four lines in, I come across a character I swear I’ve never seen before: 戕 (qiang1 “kill”) in the construction 戕害 (qiang1hai4, “injure or harm”).

The depths of literary Chinese are unfathomable, but 戕 just looks like an ancient relic. It’s definitely low frequency (expect it to occur 1.12 times per million characters), but is included in the general purpose character list (of 7,000). 戕 has a straightforward radical structure with 戈 (ge1, “halberd” or some sort of ancient weapon) on the right and 爿 on the right as the phonetic signifier. It’s easy to miss 爿 as a functional radical because it was simplified to 丬 in the most common characters, such as 状 (zhuang4)、妆 (zhuang1)、and 将 (jiang1).

Anyways, the full sentence is:

恐怖势力通过暴力、破坏、恐吓等手段，肆意践踏人权、戕害无辜生命、危害公共安全、制造社会恐慌，严重威胁世界和平与安宁。

恐怖 (kong3bu4) = terror[ist]
势力 (shi4li) = force
通过 (tong1guo4) = by means of
暴力 (bao4li4) = violence
破坏 (po4hui4) = destroy; damage
恐吓 (kong3he4) = threaten
等 (deng3) = etc.
手段 (shou3duan4) = means; method
肆意 (si4yi4) = wantonly; recklessly
践踏 (jian4ta4) = tread on; trample
人权 (ren2quan2) = human rights
戕害 (qiang1hai4) = harm
无辜 (wu2gu1) = not guilty
生命 (sheng1ming4) = life
危害 (wei1hai4) = harm
公共安全 (gong1gong4 an1quan2) = public order
制造 (zhi4zao4) = make; manufacture
社会 (she4hui4) = society
恐慌 (kong3huang1) = panic
严重 (yan4zhong4) = serious; critical
威胁 (wei1xie2) = threaten
世界 (shi4jie4) = world
和平 (he2ping2) = peace
与 (yu3) = and
安宁 (an1ning2) = peace

In other words, “Terrorist forces use violence, destruction, and intimidation, among other means, to wantonly trample human rights, harm innocent lives, disrupt public order, and create panic in society. This seriously threatens world peace and tranquility.”

It’s both impressive that not a single word is repeated through the sentence and that verbal jujitsu is deployed to argue that the terrorists are the real abusers of human rights

찜닭: “Steamed” Chicken

Pure comfort food

찜닭 (jjim-dalk, literally: steamed chicken) is a marvel of Korean ingenuity. Chunks of chicken (with or without bones) are braised in a spicy (or not) soy-based sauce along with onions, potatoes, carrots, dumplings, rice cakes, and glass noodles. The cheese topping is optional, but worth it.

The whole dish is reminiscent of 大盘鸡 (da4pan2ji1, literally: big plate chicken), a Uighur dish from northwestern China where hunks of chicken are braised together with peppers, Chinese scallion, and potatoes in a flavorful spicy red sauce and served on a plate of broad wheat noodles. The jjim-dalk sauce, ignoring the baseline spiciness common in Korea, reminds me of 三杯鸡 (san1bei1ji1, literally: three cup chicken), a Taiwanese* dish so named for its use of a cup of soy sauce, a cup of rice wine, and a cup of sesame oil in its preparation**.

*: Sanbeiji originated in Jiangxi province, but it is currently most strongly associated with Taiwanese cuisine.
**: There is some debate as to the exact ingredients referenced by the three cups. As there is also a lot of sugar in the sanbeiji, many reasonable people assume that one of the cups refers to a cup of sugar. Baidu’s Wikipedia-clone says the original recipe used a cup of lard (instead of sesame oil).

Sweet and Sour Pork

It should be a given that what passes for Chinese food in America is light years away from “authentic” Chinese food, but there is one dish that bridges the gap. I remember the first time I had sweet and sour pork in China and thinking it tasted exactly like Panda Express (in a good way). The same can be said for Korea, as despite their versions of Chinese food being bizarre to my sinified palate, one invariant served at pretty much all Chinese restaurants in Korea is a dish called tang-su-yuk (탕수육).

I can’t imagine a less appetizing looking dish

It doesn’t take a linguist to realize that tang-su-yuk sounds an awful lot like tang-cu-rou (糖醋肉 “sugar vinegar meat”) or more properly 糖醋里脊 (tang2cu4li3ji3 “sugar vinegar pork loin”), although the Korean dictionary says that the hanja (Chinese characters) behind tang-su-yuk are actually 糖水肉 (tang2shui3 rou4, “sugar water meat”). Though, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

To the best of my knowledge, China has at least three distinct schools of sweet and sour pork. There is the Cantonese style centered around Guangdong and available at every Hong Kong cafe (港式茶餐厅); there is the southern (江南 jiang1nan2, a.k.a. south of the Yangtze) style centered around Hangzhou; and there is the northern style, which I associate most strongly with Dongbei (东北 “Northeast” a.k.a. Manchuria), though technically speaking Dongbei food is based on Shandong cuisine.

In Hong Kong, one orders 咕咾肉 (gu1lao3rou4 in Mandarin), which I assume has some meaning in Cantonese. The meat is chopped pork ribs (排骨 pai2gu3) that are lightly coated in flour or corn starch to create a very crispy, but thin outside texture. Bell peppers, onions, and pineapple are briefly stir-fried in, though the vegetables usually retain a bit of their raw edge. Needless to say, the dish is heavy on the sweet.

In the lower reaches of the Yangtze river, one orders 糖醋里脊 (tang2cu4 li3ji3), where the name is a literally description of the ingredients: sugar and vinegar. 里脊 means tenderloin, so there are no bones in the dish. Relatively lean, elongated pieces of pork are thickly battered and served in a brownish sauce. Much like McDonald’s failed launch of mozzarella sticks, there is often a moment of disappointment when you bite into what looks to be a big chunk only to find there is barely any meat inside.

In northeastern China, you order 锅包肉 (guo1bao1rou1, literally “pot wrapped meat”) whose name probably has an interesting origin story associated with it. This dish batters large, thin slices of lean pork and better restaurants add a bit of shredded ginger to the sauce. Unlike the other two forms of sweet and sour pork, the pieces are not bite sized. Though there is still a lot of breading hanging off the pork it is usually fried very crispy on the outside and chewy inside.

All in all, I probably prefer Guobaorou, but they are all good in their own rights. Just hope that the kitchen is able to walk that fine line between sweet and sour to achieve the perfect balance.

WOTD: Quality

God, that’s depressing

Living in China definitely warps ones internal calibers of what qualifies as quality (both in terms of product or service quality and envornmental conditions), though living on the periphery of China can be just as bad with the common fallacy of “China is polluted, here is not China; therefore, here is not polluted.”

I live and die by my apps which report the air quality index (AQI)–空气质量指数 (kong1qi4 zhi4liang4 zhi3shu4). The word is a fairly direct translation, with 空气 meaning air, 质量 meaning quality, and 指数 meaning index. “指数” is an easy word to remember because its individual characters mean “point [as in, to point with your finger] + number,” but my focus today is on quality.

“质量” can be broken down into 质 (zhi4), meaning the nature or character of something, and 量 (liang4), referring to the quantity or amount. Though 质量 is the highest frequency word containing 质, the characters base meaning is probably best exemplified by 素质 (su4zhi4) or 性质 (xing4zhi4), both of which mean quality in a more abstract sense, and are worthy of full discussions in their own rights.

The “opposite” of 质量, i.e. quantity as opposed to quality, is 数量 (shu4liang4, literally “number amount”). However, if we are speaking about research, e.g. qualitative and quantitative, the respective terms in Chinese are 定量 (ding4liang4) and 定性 (ding4xing4), where 量 and 性 are serving as shorthand for “number” and “nature” with 定 functioning as “to determine.”

Another interesting aspect of 质 and 质量 is the physics-specific meanings. 质 can mean “matter” or “substance,” though that is more clear when paired with 物 in 物质 (wu4zhi4, “matter; substance”), and 质 is the building block of all matter as a proton (质子，zhi4zi3 [Note: the zi3 is not a neutral tone]). In physics, 质量 means mass, which makes it much easier to distinguish between mass and weight (重量, “zhong4liang4,” literally “weight amount”) because mass is intrinsic to the substance while weight depends on gravitation.

My Chinese Learning Story, Part 3

Read PArt One
read Part Two

As I reflect on my experiences learning Chinese (especially within the context of trying to cram Korean into my brain), I keep remembering new details to add.

So, I do consider myself self-taught, but that isn’t 100% true. I did have lessons with private tutors (though for only a single session and three sessions, respectively), and I did take a semester of Chinese lessons at Shenzhen university on my way out. I saw the first tutor because she was pretty, but she was a terrible teacher. The second was because I was prepping for the HSK 6 and wanted some targeted help on my writing. She bluntly told me I would never pass the HSK 6, so I dropped her and passed by a wide margin. I did prepare for the spoken portion by chugging a flask of erguotou.

I had finished a year of formally teaching at a international high school and while transitioning to “the next phase,” I enrolled at Shenda on a lark. After years of bumping into students studying formally and being amazed at how sucky their Chinese was, I wanted to get some first hand experience. I was placed into the highest level classes (“Business”), but dropped out after two weeks, not because it was too hard, but because it wasn’t the right learning environment. Firstly, the class was too small, the pacing too slow, 3 out of the 4 teachers had thick regional accents, and one of the teachers who also happened to be the dean constantly talked a bunch of BS about the CCP.

The “Advanced” class was a lot more lively and I got along with the teachers better. Again, I had access to a library full of textbooks, and worked heavily on those. So, the main take away was high-volume self study, working on pronunciation with some friends, and a bit of writing practice with homework.

Around that time, I “graduated” to my first literature in Chinese — a collection of short stories by 三毛. After leaving Shenzhen, I spent six months on the road, couch surfing and staying in hostels. At one point I picked up a martial arts novel by 金庸, but I never got into it. I had a textbook or two with me, and I recall spending hours going through a database of short news articles on my computer while training myself on word segmentation. [Chinese is written without spaces between words].

I stopped “studying” Chinese when I began my PhD at Beijing Language and Culture University, but I was attending graduate courses taught in Chinese and working my way through textbooks written in Chinese. I was proud and defensive of my Chinese level. I joined a speech competition at the university in my first year and was shocked to not win.

I had basically hit the pinnacle of what I could achieve in Shenzhen, and I was expecting Beijing to magically infuse me with a flawless accent. As I poured myself into written, academic Chinese, my spoken ability actually declined significantly. It probably didn’t help that my social circle in Beijing was mostly anglophone.

I started reading literature again, alternating between original works in Chinese and translations of world literature, including Norwegian Wood, Love in a Time of Cholera, Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, 《三体》（全集），《复眼人》、《活着》、《酒国》、and some book about a code breaker whose name I cannot recall.

I am extremely fortunate to have been the 大师兄 at my research group and had a classmate who helped me edit a few conference papers. Though in the end, when it came to writing the beast of my dissertation, some sections got native speaker edits, but most of it was entirely on my own. The defense committee made noises about it not being perfectly written, but there wasn’t exactly anything I could do about that.

So, what’s next for my Chinese? I don’t have any interest in performing and 相声, singing competitions, or dating shows (though in my younger days, I may have fancied the attention). I would like to continue expanding my vocabulary, especially along the literary lines. The highest possible achievement I can envision would probably be to publish some poems or 随笔 (informal essays) in Chinese.

WOTD：Ramen

That’s not Korean

Much like the commonalities of dumplings across east Asia, ramen presents an interesting case for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparison. Let’s begin with the word and then talk about the actual food item. As pictured above on the lantern, “ramen” is written with the Japanese kitakana script, which suggests–despite its entry into English from the Japanese–that it is in itself a loan word. The beauty of blogging is that I can posit wild speculations without actually doing any research to verify this.

So, Korean uses a similar word as fitted to its phonetic system: 라면 (ra myeon). We should remember from the post on zhajiang mian that “myeon” is a functional morpheme in Korean for noodles and related to the Chinese character 面.

In China, ramen is rendered 拉面 (la1mian4), but this word is better translated as hand-pulled noodles and is most associated with the northwestern (read: Muslim) parts of China. Most notably, 拉面 pretty much also refers to freshly made noodles, while the instant packs are called either 方便面 (fang1bian4 mian4, “convenient noodles”) or 泡面 (pao4 mian4, “soaked noodles”).

So this is the key difference. We tend to associate “ramen noodles” as cheap stuff college students live on, while there is really a major difference between that kind of ramen (inspired by pulled noodles) and the real pulled noodles. To the best of my knowledge, in Japan ramen refers exclusively to fresh noodles (though the real star is the soup stock with every region of Japan claiming to make the best kind), while China uses different words, and in Korea, ramyeon either refers to the instant noodles or the kind served at a Japanese restaurant.

HSK

This may be the coldest take on the internet, but the HSK (standing for Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, i.e. “Test of Chinese Level”) is a flaming pile of garbage. In general, language proficiency tests are a good thing. Schools and companies need them to make sure the entering students and workers can effectively communicate in the language, and learners of languages can set the test as either a benchmark of progress or a concrete external motivation. I have plenty of friends in China who often speak vaguely of needing to sign up or study for the HSK 4. It also seems to be level 4, which indicates a decent level of proficiency but not crazy about it.

Having taken both the old HSK and the new HSK, which at this point has completely replaced it (so no hopes of “HSK Classic” coming back), the main problem with the HSK is that it is skewed too low. This is readily encapsulated by the follow slide from a lecture:

Vocabulary sizes for “equivalent levels” of various language proficiency standards

Because the HSK divides into 6 levels (which, I’ll admit makes more sense than the 3 test — 11 level system of the old version), China insists on it corresponding to the Common European Framework (the A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 levels). This is complete bullshit. In truth, a level A2 speaker of Chinese would have a decent chance of passing the HSK Level 4, while the hardest test only corresponds to the borderline between B2 and C1.

So why produce so many distinct, super easy exams? The official dogma is that foreigners (outside of China) only spend a couple hours a week studying the language and it would be too discouraging to have to study for two years before being good enough to take the test. The truth is its all a scam. The HSK is quite pricey, and by having a separate test for each level, a potential test taker is going to be sucked into taking the exam multiple times over the course of their study.

So, should you take the HSK? If you want to, why not. But I would steer clear of the first three exams. The level six may seem daunting, but it is really not. They use the same voice actors for the listening section as every textbook in China, so they speak slowly and clearly in perfect Mandarin. The reading section questions are so easy, that you can figure out the answer without even reading the passages, and finally, though it is hard to write a full essay by hand without being able to look up how to write some characters, you have ten minutes to read the passage you are tasked with summarizing, so you can cram the essential characters.

WOTD: 痞霸

When I was walking around Weihai last month, I was stopped in my tracks by the sign (pictured above) because I had never encountered the last word before：痞霸 (“pi3 ba4”). It isn’t listed as a word in Pleco, but it roughly means “hooligan tyrant” or possibly gangster. 痞霸 is the name of a criminal offense on the law books in China, where the key attribute is that there is a degree of collusion or organization to the criminal activity.

痞 has medical roots (which one can infer from the illness radical), referring to a lump in the abdomen or constipation, though it’s extended meaning encompasses ruffian, behaving like a hooligan, and rascally. It’s a low frequency character (#4093), but part of the list of general purpose characters. The phonetic radical, 否, is a bit misleading since 否 is more common as “fou” (negation) than “pi3” (wicked).

霸 (“ba3”, tyrant or hegemon) is a much more common character (#1838) and included in the HSK and common character lists. 霸 most frequently occurs in the words 霸权主义 (“ba4quan2 zhu3yi4”, hegemonism), 称霸 (“cheng1ba4”, dominate), and 霸王 (“ba4wang2”, despot).

The whole sign– 高举法治利剑，铲除黑恶痞霸–is quite interesting, meaning “Raise high the sharp sword of rule by law, eradicate underworld gangsters.” 黑恶 (“hei1 e4”, black+evil=criminal) is pretty common on police propaganda as is 铲除 (“chan3 chu2”, shovel+remove=eradicate), though the phrasing is usually shortened to 扫黑 (“sao3 hei1”, sweep+black=crack down on crimes) or 除恶 (“chu2 e4”, remove evil), which can be seen in the name of the sponsoring office.


WOTD: Dumplings

Whether called jiaozi, baozi, wontons, mandu, or gyoza, dumplings are delicious

Of course they are stuffed with kimchi

Dumplings are universal. To the best of my knowledge, every culture has some food item which consists of a starchy outside stuffed with filling. If we adopt a broad enough definition, everything from samosas and empanadas to ravioli and pierogi are types of dumplings. Needless to say, China has a ton of menu items that defy translation more specific than “dumpling.”

饺子 (jiao3zi) and 包子 (bao1zi) make up the core concept, though I consider jiaozi to closer to the Platonic ideal of a dumpling. 包, as we covered before, is a general term referring to the wrapping, while 饺 is a specific character for the food item. Jiaozi tend to be sorted by their method of cooking and filling (a.k.a 馅儿, “xian4r” covered here). Boiled (水饺 shui3jiao3, literally “water dumpling”), pan-fried (煎饺 jian1jiao3), or steamed (蒸饺 zheng1jiao3). Pork is the most common stuffing, especially paired with a single vegetable, though one can also get pure beef or lamb stuffed dumplings.

Jiaozi have thin skins while baozi are bread-y, but that distinction gets confused by regional specialties like 小笼包 (xiao3 long2 bao1 “small basket dumpling) from the lower reaches of the Yangtze (Nanjing through Shanghai) and 薄皮包子 (bao2pi2 bao1zi “thin skin dumpling”) from Xinjiang. Of course, we cannot forget wontons (rendered 馄饨 hun2tun), which are always served in soup and have extra skin hanging off them.

I suppose I could have complained that they were a little burned…

Dumplings in Korea and Japan are very similar to the prototypical 饺子, though Japan tends to fry their dumplings more often than China. Linguistically, Japan uses the kanji-equivalent of 饺子 (pronounced gyoza in Japanese). The relation is quite obvious. Korean, on the other hand, uses 만두 (mandu) as its general word for dumplings. This is also related to Chinese, except it derives from 馒头 (man2tou, a steamed bun). This is ironic because mantou are best described as baozi without any filling, which would exclude them from the dumpling family. Finally, I don’t know how widespread it is, but the fried dumplings I ordered (pictured above) had “야끼 교자” provided as explanatory text. Sounding that out, “Yakki Gyoja” sounds just like a transliteration from the Japanese (yaki being that super common element of Japanese grilling cuisine names: yakitori, teriyaki, teppanyaki, okonomiyaki, etc.).

WOTD: 自助餐

自助餐 (zi4zhu4can1), literally “self service meal,” is the Chinese word for buffet. Buffets in China are universally found in 5-star hotels and are similar to how we treat buffets in the US. Among the specialty restaurants that provide unlimited food, they adopt a number of limitations to make sure that they still turn a profit. For example, time limits are generally imposed (typically in the range of 90 to 120 minutes) and complex rule systems penalizing wasted food. The best items are nearly inaccessible behind a long queue where the food is either only served for brief intervals or limited to one portion per person.

Buffets in Taiwan, specifically the vegetarian buffets, are a different beast altogether. One fills up a plate as one wishes, but pays according to the total weight of the food. That also happens to be how 串串香 (chuan1chuan1xiang1, a type of Sichuan hotpot with skewers) is calculated, where it is easier to weigh the pile of skewers than count them.

While on the topic of unlimited food, free refills is 续杯 (xu4bei1, literally “supply more cup”), while if one is getting unlimited alcohol as part of a meal special or happy hour, the term is 畅饮 (chang4yin3, literally “free drinks” meaning “to drink one’s fill”).

Finally, the Korean for all-you-can-eat is 무한리필 (muhan ripil) which combines Chinese with English. Muhan based on 无限 (wu2xian2, “unlimited”), while ripil is a sound loan of “refill.”