It’s weird coming to Korea when one is only familiar with the food through the context of China. I know the names of several classic dishes in both English and Korean, but have no idea what it would be on an English menu.
部队火锅 (bu4dui4 huo3guo1 “army hot pot”) is a dish that I always assumed the Chinese were taking some liberty with their translation. The Korean for which is 부대찌개 (budae jjigae), so one would be forgiven for thinking that 部队 (bu4dui4) is just a sound loan, while 火锅 (huo3guo1) is a slight improvement over jjigae (a general term for stews) since it is cooked on the table. I always figured the “army” aspect of it described the way that a lot of people could eat from the same pot.
In truth, the 部队 refers to American troops, who apparently introduced the key ingredients during the Korean War. Though the ingredients vary depending on the “flavor” you order, they almost invariably contain hot dogs and spam (or other off-brand processed “ham”). America’s contribution to Korean cuisine. I didn’t realize how popular Spam is here, but I have seen several stores selling gift baskets of Spam.
…and after.
This particular pot was kimchi flavored of course.
Getting a haircut on the street near the Worker’s Gymnasium
Getting one’s haircut in a foreign language is hard, especially when there is a swirling mass of overlapping vocabulary. To begin with, how does one even say hair? Chinese distinguishes between hair on one’s head and hair on one’s body. The first is 头发 (tou2fa, literally “head hair”) while the second is 毛 (mao2, “hair/feather/down”). Don’t get 发 (fa4 “hair”) confused with 发 (fa1 “send out”), the two characters are only the same because of simplification. Also, note that fa4 loses its tone in the 头发 construction.
To cut one’s hair, the operative word is 剪 (jian3 “scissors*”) and one could say 剪头发 (jian3 tou2fa). However, one doesn’t usually just cut one’s hair in China. It is pretty standard to get a 洗剪吹 (xi3 jian3 chui1 “wash, cut, blow”) where you get a shampoo first, haircut, rinse, and blow dry as a package deal. In smaller shops, you can save a buck by opting for a haircut only: 单剪 (dan1 jian3 “single cut”).
Gender also comes into play in Chinese between the pair of words 理发 (li3fa4 “tidy hair”) and 美发 (mei3fa4 “beautiful hair”), much like the distinction between a barbershop and a beauty salon. Both words can add a 师 (shi1 “master”) to the end to refer to the person holding the scissors (e.g. 理发师，美发师) or a 店 (dian4 “shop”) to the end to refer to the room where it happens (e.g. 理发店，美发店). Prices in salons tend to rely on the “experience level” of a hairdresser, and there is a whole lexicon of terms given them important sound titles, which I won’t go into here, because I always seek out the cheapest options.
In parts of China (even Beijing) where there are lots of old people still making up a community, you may find in public parks or on the street side an old barber with a pair of sheers. Give him a try.
*To refer to scissors, one needs to add 刀 (dao1; “knife”) to the end. By itself, 剪 typically functions as a verb meaning “to cut as scissors do,” so the full term 剪刀 (jian3dao1) could be literally thought of as “knife which cuts like scissors,” i.e. scissors.
I was working Korean in Duolingo and I came across the following:
공공칠가방 gong-gong-chil ga-bang
I immediately recognized the root 가방 as “bag” (which in my semantic space is centered around the prototypical schoolbag) and since it was a Numbers lesson, the first three syllables correspond to 0-0-7. So, a “James Bond bag,” or a briefcase.
Chinese, unfortunately, is not so creative in its description of briefcase, the two main ways of saying which are 公文包 (gong1wen1bao1) and 皮包 (pi2bao1). 包 works in Chinese as a general term for bags or anything with wrapping (e.g. see the Oscar nominated animated short Bao), and the modifiers work by describing what is stored in the bag (公文, “public documents” or briefs if you will) or what the bag is usually made of (皮, “skin” i.e. leather).
I really like the word 皮包 (pi2bao1) because it is also used in the compound word 皮包公司 (pi2bao1 gong1si1, “briefcase company”). As one can imagine, a company based out of a briefcase may not be the most reliable, so it refers to fly-by-night operations. Do be careful with 皮包, however, if you reverse the order of the characters, you refer to a portion of the male anatomy that is removed in a circumcision.
包 (bao1) is an extremely productive character making up 288 words in my master list of Chinese words. Ironically, however 包 is not used to describe luggage, which is 行李 (xing2li5, “travel plum(?)”). 李 is a strange character. Its base meaning is plum, it is a very common surname, and it shows up in the word 行李.
Qian2 (钱, “money”) does not exactly merit “Word-of-the-Day” status, being a high frequency character and level one HSK word, but it has been on my mind a lot recently with 6 visits to the bank in the past week in order to convert some RMB into other currencies.
If you don’t already know, Chinese people refer to their money as “the People’s Money,” i.e. 人民币 (ren2min2bi4, “People Money”), much like it is the People’s Republic of China, the People’s Liberation Army, and the People’s Park. The money is denominated in yuan (元, second tone, “dollars”), jiao (角, third tone, literally “horn” but meaning a tenth of a yuan), and fen (分, first tone, “fraction” and meaning one hundredth of a yuan). Paper currency comes in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 yuan and all feature the Great Helmsman*. Exchange rates fluctuate, but a “Pink Mao” is generally worth about 15 bucks American. There are 1 yuan coins and an assortment of coins and tiny paper bills for 1 and 5 jiao, as well as fen, although fen are seldom used. Its cheaper for a supermarket to round down than to deal with things worth a fraction of a penny.
China’s neighbors to the east also use yuan, though in their language systems it gets rendered won and yen, respectively. Korean Won are simply called 韩元 (han2yuan2, “Korea Dollar”, e.g. 원) and Japanese Yen are simply called 日元 (ri4yuan2, “Japan Dollar”, e.g. 円) in Chinese. (Pro-tip: 円 is in your Chinese IME under “yuan.”) Though US dollars and Euros also get the yuan treatment, not all currencies are “yuan.”
So, as for why I went to the bank nearly every day for a week, Chinese has extremely onerous controls on foreign currency. Non-citizens are limited to converting the equivalent of USD 500 per day. The self-service “smart” terminals that some banks have introduced (i.e. ICBC) are basically limited to Chinese ID card holders, meaning one has to wait up to an hour to see a teller, after which it takes another 20 minutes to make several photocopies and pictures of your passport and have a manager sign off on the transaction. Oh, and they make you wait two days before releasing the cash.*
*The current design of renminbi was introduced in 1999, and though anti-counterfeiting measures have been added, the basic design is consistent. See Lethal Weapon 3, which revolves around counterfeiting Chinese yuan for a glimpse of the previous design. **Actual conditions depend on the city and bank.
Swimming (游泳 “you2yong3”) is one of those words composed essentially of “swim-swim” to refer to the activity in general. However, the two characters break off to form rather interesting collocations on there own.
游 (which I can never remember how to write without looking at it) has a much broader semantic space than “swimming.” It’s original meaning has something to do with rivers, which can still be seen through the words upstream and downstream (上游 “shang4you2″ and 下游 “xia4you2” respectively), while its use in 游戏 (you2xi4 “game” and 旅游 lv3you2 “travel”) occur an order of magnitude more often than 游泳.
泳, on the other hand, pretty much exclusively related to swimming and is a sticky morpheme (meaning it shouldn’t be showing up alone). If you are watching the Olympics on CCTV Sports, you’ll see it show up in the names of the various swimming styles, such as 仰泳 (yang3yong3, face up-swim, i.e. backstroke), 蛙泳 (wa1yong2, frog-swim, i.e. breaststroke), and 蝶泳 (die2yong3, butterfly-swim, i.e. butterfly stroke); in swimming accessories, such as 泳衣 (yong3yi1, swim-clothes) and 泳帽 (yong3mao4, swim-hat); and for special types of swimming, such as the word of the day.
冬泳 (dong1 yong3, winter-swim) is literally what the hanzi suggest it means: swimming in the winter. It’s quite a popular activity in China, among old men, who swear by the daily ritual as a way to stave off colds.
馅 (xian4 or xian4r) is the general term for the filling or stuffing in all kinds of dumplings (such as the 水饺 [shui3 jiao3, boiled dumplings] pictured above). The word is typically erhua‘d, meaning that it is pronounced like “xiar”.
An interesting thing about 馅 is that the meaning has drifted to encapsulated ground meat as sold in the supermarket. I am fortunate to live near a supermarket where the butcher section has ready-to-buy ground beef and ground mutton, which I find myself buying fairly regularly to make chili, meatballs, and tacos.
The word for “grind” is 磨 (mo2) and that works for grinding grains, spices, and coffee, as well as meat. If you need something to be ground on-demand, you’d ask for it to be 磨成粉 (mo2 cheng2 fen3) or 磨成馅儿 (mo2 cheng2 xian4r) if the end result is a powder or meat filling respectively.
So, this isn’t exactly a word that you would find in the dictionary or a text book vocabulary list, but it did happen today. The typical formulation is actually 寻人启事 (xun2 ren2 qi3shi4; “search person announcement”), though it works to substitute other nouns for the missing. For example. Pleco uses 物 (wu4 “material stuff”) for a general posting about missing items and dog lovers should keep their eyes open for 寻狗启事 (xun2 gou3 qi3shi4). The massive BCC Chinese corpus only lists 寻人启事 as a lexical item.
“启事” itself is an interesting construction and not the usual term for notice/announcement (including: 通知 tong1zhi1, 布告 bu4gao4, and 海报 hao3bao4). The 启 morpheme typically signifies opening, starting, or enlightenment, while 事 is one of those super productive characters in Chinese, but can generally be glossed as matter/affair.
Randomly picking a word (uniform distribution) from my database list brings us a fun little chengyu about self-medication.
The literal construction means “borrow alcohol to pour on worries,” though Pleco renders it much more poetically as “to drown one’s sorrows.”
Though “borrow” and “lend” are the main meanings of 借 (jie4), a less frequently used gloss of “by means of” is being utilized in this expression. 酒 (jiu3) is straightforward. The use of 浇 (jiao1) is quite interesting because it is most commonly used in gardening contexts with 浇水/浇花 (to water), thus evoking stronger imagery of pouring alcohol on one’s worries. There is a variant of the chengyu where 浇 is replaced by 消 (xiao1, meaning “disappear”). Finally, 愁 (chou2) can function as a noun or a verb, but usually pairs with 发 (fa1) as 发愁 to mean “to worry.”
