My Adult Literacy Problem...

[khiemtran]

One of the other aspects of travelling in China (for me at least), is suddenly losing the ability to read...




Okay, so I can recognize or guess at maybe two hundred characters (out of ten thousand or so), and that's enough to get by in a lot of situations, but every now and then I get completely stumped.

This is a restaurant I went to on my second night, that I presumed sold Hunanese or Sichuan food, judging from the amount of chillies in the pictures (I was fairly sure it also specialized in chicken...).

I could recognize the first and third characters in the big sign. 香 is xiang or "fragrant" as in xianggang ("Fragrant Harbour" i.e. "Hong Kong"). 土 is tu or "earth" as in tudou ("Earth bean" i.e. "potato").

I might have recognized the second character (鍋) if it had been written in its simplified form instead of the traditional one. It's guo or "pot" as in guotie ("potsticker").

Likewise, the fourth character would have been obvious in simplified form (鸡). It's ji or "chicken".

So, why the traditional characters? Well, there's a clue in the other four characters on the far right of the picture (the same four also appear in handwritten form around the picture of the rooster). The last one (味) is wei or "flavour" as in weijing ("msg"). The rest took me all of this morning with various dictionaries to decipher, and I'm still not certain I've got them right. In traditional characters, I think it reads "Taiwanese local flavour". So, apparently, a Taiwanese restaurant after all (which makes sense because there are lots of other Taiwanese businesses in Fujian and they still use the traditional characters in Taiwan).

And the name of the restaurant? Well, if you put all five characters together (the last (城) is cheng or city (I knew the word, but not the character). So, you get "Fragrant Pot Earth Chicken City" as a literal translation. I'm still not sure if I'm missing a pair of characters in there somewhere with a different meaning.

Of course, when I showed this picture to a friend and native-speaker at work, he was able to read it in seconds (although he did mistake "chicken" for "goose" because of the traditional characters).

So, does it matter? Well, in the end, I went in there and I had a great meal and I greatly entertained the staff there with my dodgy Chinese. One of the nice things about China is that everyone is usually so horrified by the idea of someone travelling alone that they'll often come up to talk to you rather than leaving you to suffer by yourself.

And, sure enough, the chicken was excellent (if not, alarmingly big for one person - it seemed to feature an entire chicken, and I mean every part - I saw the head and I saw the feet and every part in between). They asked me what I felt of the food and I said it was delicious but possibly too big for me to finish. They just grinned and said Man chi! ("eat slowly!"). And, by the end, if I couldn't claim victory, I could at least claim an honourable draw...

Comments

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

In Japanese, 風味 means "flavor" but has the connotation of a special, top-quality flavor. I don't know if Chinese has that meaning, though.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Yes, could be. CCDict gives "local flavour/local style", but Pleco says "special flavour; local colour (or flavour)" and gives an example where it's used to describe a "balladic" air.

What's the reading in Japanese? Kaze aji? Fuu aji?

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

Fuumi

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Wow, there are some very nice on-line resources for reading kanji now. The Chinese ones (that I've found anyway), look a bit primitive by comparison.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And in Japanese, that last character would be translated as castle or fortress, rather than city.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes! It does look like "castle", doesn't it? With the earth radical and the halberd and I guessing that's "strength" in there as well.

I was about to say I've never been to a castle in China, and then it occurred to me that I have been to a "long castle" (长城) before! Is it called that in Japanese? It's funny, I knew it was called changcheng and that the cheng was pronounced the same as the modern word for city, but I never made the connection until now. I guess this is what you miss when you can't read...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

長城 is actually how you say "Great Wall"! As in Great Wall of China. So if you've been to a restaurant called 長城 , you've been to a Great Wall restaurant :D

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

So if you've been to a restaurant called 長城 , you've been to a Great Wall restaurant .

Oops, I meant to say I've been to the Great Wall. Only I didn't realise the characters could be read as "long castle" at the time...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Haha--we're coming at it from opposite directions :-)

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

In Chinese the first meaning is 'city wall', given that each and every city in China was walled, the semantic shift to 'city' was easy. :)
'Castle' in Chinese is 城堡 chengbao, bao is 'fortress', 'stronghold'.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

makes good sense!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I find the thought of tackling written Chinese a bit daunting, but as we have just booked to go to Korea, I will having a go at learning to recognise at least some useful words. I remembered you saying that it wasn't as complex as it first appeared and a quick glance on the web confirmed that it seems doable.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

When are you going to Korea (and where)? There's a chance I could be back there this year.

Yes, Korean script is very easy. Most people could probably learn to read it in a day, if they really sat down to it. The only trick is the pronunciation rules, but that should only take you a week... If nothing else, you'll have fun over there trying to match the hangeul script with the English on the bilingual signs.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

We are going to the International Conference for Mathematical Creativity and Giftedness in which is in Busan.

http://www.mcg7.org/main/

We have booked flights to Seoul and plan to go by train to Busan. We've added a few days onto the period of the actual conference, in which we will hopefully do more sightseeing. Being at the conference means that we will be taken out on excursions on the final day and one evening there is always a "banquet" of traditional food with added music and dancing.

The excursion plans have not yet been finalised, but amongst other things it is likely to involve a trip to this temple, which seems to be dedicated to the Korean version of Kuan Yin. It will be interesting to visit a real Buddhist temple, built and frequented by people brought up on the faith. I have only previously experienced our Western approximations of Buddhist temples.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a great trip!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Also learning the pronunciation rules will be useful too, because without knowing them, you won't be able to pronounce the romanized names correctly.

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

Boy, don't I know that feeling!:)

土 can also mean 'local', so maybe 'local chicken',it has also a connotation of 'home made' 'rustic', I'll be tempted to say 'raised on the ground'(i.d. 'not in cages')but I don't know if it is used in that context in China.

I remember my first encounter with chicken feet in Taiwan: it felt strange to see the feet sticking out of the pot, but I was a guest at an engagement banquet with no way to back off and so had to smile and eat, they were actually very tasty, I ended up looking for them when I could.

BTW (I don't know if you know it already), 'man chi' literally means 'eat slowly', but the actual meaning is more 'enjoy your food!', 慢走 (manzou) 'walk slowly' is for 'Take care', 'Goodbye' (according to my dictionary it is more polite/formal than 再见 zaijian).

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

土 can also mean 'local', so maybe 'local chicken',it has also a connotation of 'home made' 'rustic', I'll be tempted to say 'raised on the ground'(i.d. 'not in cages')but I don't know if it is used in that context in China.

Thanks! I was guessing it might have been trying to imply "stone pot" or "clay pot", but the 土 seemed to be in the place. If it's something like "free-range" chicken, it might make more sense...

I remember my first encounter with chicken feet in Taiwan: it felt strange to see the feet sticking out of the pot, but I was a guest at an engagement banquet with no way to back off and so had to smile and eat, they were actually very tasty, I ended up looking for them when I could.

I'm actually quite fond of chicken's feet at yum cha. It's all about the texture for me: the different layers and skin and fat and sinew.

BTW (I don't know if you know it already), 'man chi' literally means 'eat slowly', but the actual meaning is more 'enjoy your food!', 慢走 (manzou) 'walk slowly' is for 'Take care', 'Goodbye' (according to my dictionary it is more polite/formal than 再见 zaijian).

I knew it, but do you know what to reply if someone says "manzou" and they're staying behind (ie. not going anywhere)?

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

"free-range"

Thank you! I was racking my brain for the proper English expression and could't remember it.


I knew it, but do you know what to reply if someone says "manzou" and they're staying behind (ie. not going anywhere)?

I usually go with "谢谢，再见!" I'm not one hundred percent sure it is the standard answer but it seems to work well. Now that you made me think of it, I'll ask about it the first chance I get(tomorrow or the day after).

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'll usually say "zai jian", but sometimes I'll just automatically echo back "manzou" and then wonder if it makes any sense. (In Korean, for example, you can say "Go safely!" and "Stay safely!" depending on the situation.)

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

*nods* yes, I think there must be an equivalent of "Stay safely" in Chinese too, I'll let you know as soon as I find out.
I love the Chinese for "Safe travel!": " yi lu pinggan" " May your entire road be at peace" :)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Looks like you were right on the money with "free-range" for 土鸡 . I had a chat with a friend today and he said it was "a big place with lots of free-range chickens" (i.e. something like "Free-range Chicken City", maybe in English it would be "Free-range Chicken World").

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

Thanks for letting me know. :)

No news on the answer to 'manzou', no Chinese braved the weather to come to my office today, and tomorrow is a school holiday.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

You're a damn sight more literate than me. I got 'Earth' and I'm damn proud of _that_!

'Fragrant' is a word I've heard in connection with Szechuan pepper, but I have no idea whether that's the same word.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

It might be. It's quite commonly used when describing food.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

You've got about two hundred more characters under your belt than I have!!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

It's not as much as it sounds, unfortunately. The real catch is using a dictionary. With many languages, all you need to do is learn the alphabet and then you can look up any word. With Chinese characters, while they're still made up of letter-like elements, it's sometimes a bit of a guessing game to pick which one to look them up under, and how many strokes they're made up of (口 for example, has three strokes).