Translation of Chinese Dishes

It becomes urgent for the Beijing government to draft a standard for the translation of the Chinese dishes, which becomes a great problem for the coming Olympic Games.
Some of my friends from America told me that it was a great problem for them to order in the restaurant, as they didn’t know the content of the dishes simply by reading menu, not to mention that they didn’t know all the characters on menu. Some adventurous would like to take the risk and have a try. Some less humorous tend to find a western food restaurant or going to a Chinese restaurant with their Chinese friends.

The debate is heated in Beijing now. Someone suggested put the content of the dishes directly. I don’t think it’s a good idea. If we translated 宫爆鸡丁 into something like “spicy chicken dices with peanuts”, that would be ridiculous. However, if translated the Chinese character directly into English, that would be also funny. A famous snack in Beijing is 驴打滚, which is actually a kind of cake made of rice with red bean paste as the stuffing. Directly translated, the name would become “donkey roll”. The people from other countries would mistake it as the meat of donkey. 东坡肘子 is also a problem. It is actually chunks of pork cooked with sauce, and the recipe is said to have been invented by 苏东坡, a great poet in Song Dynasty. If directly translated, it would become something like “Elbow of 东坡”? That would turn all Chinese into barbarians.

I don’t agree to make a fuss over that the westerners don’t know the real content of the food from menu. I don’t know the content of the dishes in pizzahut from their English names,either. I think no one knows what is 宫爆鸡丁when it first appears in America, but now it is widely accepted as KongPao Chicken. People could learn when they are in a different culture. Just be patient.

Use pictures and let people from other cultures learn what name goes with which dish. This will add flavor to the food, I believe.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

It costs me almost one and a half weeks to finish reading it. Actually I’m wondering whether it is a “short story” or not. My teacher puts it into category of feminism and would like us to talk about it in the persperctive of women.

I don’t think it is feminist writing, for the problem faced by Mrs. Pontellier(The protagonist in The Awakening by Kate Chopin) is not the problem of women. Surely freeing women from the housework and the binding of the family can be called feminism. Unfortunately, I don’t think the story is about the “freedom of women”. I’d rather take it as the clashes between individuals and their marriages. The problems in marriage can’t be called as the problem of husband or wife. Both of them share their responsibilities if they marriage fails to last.

The question I’m wondering is whether a woman like Mrs. Pontellier should get into marriage or not. She is a woman with the heart for freedom. But the marriage itself means some responsibilities and to sacrifice part of your freedom. “You are no longer lonely”, in other words, mean that “You are no longer free as a single person”.

I guess out the outcome of Mrs. Pontellier before I reading the last chapter. As the surroundings are pressing her so hard, and she is no longer bind spiritually by her marriage and wants to enjoy her freedom. The only justified outcome is to free herself from all the responsibilities forever.

I sympathize her in the sense that the society at her time desires a women to be devoted to her family totally, I mean, physically and spiritually. What’s more, she chooses wrongly, since her husband and she are of different types. She can’t even talk the problems out as he can’t understand her at all.

However, she does go to extremes. I think her husband is not so bad after all as he’d like to leave her some space to solve her problem. If she takes her children as burdens, why does she get into marriage in the first place? If she were forced by her surroundings, I’d pity her. If she got into marriage to get rid of her loneliness, I’ll look down upon her. This is the point hard to judge, for I’m not Mrs. Pontellier, I’m just an outsider of the story.

Pressure

A recent discussion of the cost of living in Beijing shows that every one living in this big city endures great pressure. All kinds of trouble prick them now and then.

The greatest problem is where to live. The price of the house has been experiencing a shooting growth during the last ten years. If I earn 4000 yuan a month (a relatively high salary, I think) when I find a job, I can only buy half a square meter outside the “third circle”, which is large enough for me to build a toilet. To risk thirty years in a person’s life for a place to live is not the habit of the old generation. However, at present, if you don’t risk it, where do you live then? With your parents? It is simple to explain why lots of girls are willing to choose a boyfriend who has a house already.

Another one is the medical system and the secure system. I mean, the city leaves a person no chance to have a serious disease. The amount of money spent to cure the disease will quickly make a well-off family fall to pieces. It seems the only good way to solve the problem is to go to the media and arouse the sympathy of people watching the TV, desperately begging them for the money to cure the disease. The old men face great problems, too. After retirement, their sons or daughters could no longer accompany them or take care of them as the earlier generation has been, for their sons or daughters have already shouldered the pressure of work, of house, of kids.

The biggest problem facing the younger generation is to find a job and survive in this big city. Too many people from other provinces want to find jobs in Beijing. However, there is no reason to stop them as everyone has the right to pursue a better life. But the fact is too many people in the city make it very hard to find a job. The right of choice is in the hand of employer. If an employee feels unsatisfied, it’s easy for the employer to find another one. People is not the thing China lacks.

Is it a difference between us and the savages in Stone Age? We are all struggle to survive.

The Influence of Word System to the Chinese Characters

Many of my friends and classmates who are English majors have expressed the same opinion that as English majors, they find their Chinese fly away from them before their mastery of English. Actually there are many reasons. One of the reason is that the use of the word system. In word system, we are supposed to type out every single character of Chinese using a letter system as medium. The direct consequence is we forget how to write Chinese characters, especially those difficult ones. As my handwriting gets worse and worse, even myself don’t want to see it anymore. And it’s easier for the younger generation to confuse those characters of the same pronunciation. Chinese Character is a combination of meaning and sound, though the sound has changed a lot during the time, but through the formation of a character, usually we can judge the meaning of it. However, in American where the word system is created, the meaning of a word has nothing to do with the order of the letters. Two words seldomly pronounce the same in English, but in Chinese, as many characters share the same sound, the only difference is their meaning and their position in context. The use of the word system leads to the emphasis of remembering the sound of a character, not the meaning (i.e. formation) of a character. If a pupil only remembers the pronunciation of a character, the probability for him to confuse the character with others rises for sure.

The consequence of using the word system has already been shown in Chinese society, especially in the language used on the internet. I wish we could find some remedy before much more damage done to the Chinese language.

Do we really have the say in our own lives?

Recently, I have greater and greater feeling that we don’t really have the say in our own lives. One might have just a very simple desire towards life, for example, you simply want to see the beautiful scenery over the “hill”, but when you want really go near, you find the “hill” is a high mountain touching the sky. What’s worse is that it might be just the same after you reach the other side of the mountain, or even worse. However, as you’ve already reached the foot of the mountain, you have no choice, but to start climbing the mountain at once. This story is just an exact reflection of my present situation.

If what I’ve done is meaningless, then why should I spend such time and energy?
Maybe it’s wrong to discuss the meaning of life after all. Compared to a logical deduction, life is much more like a drama of absurdity.

Butterfly Effect 2

This one is not so good at the first one, but it’s ok. The protagonist in the first movie(Butterfly Effect) changes his life again and again to save the life of those people he loved. However, things never get right. At last, he kills himself to avoiding facing the life. But Nick in the second movie(Butterfly Effect 2) changes his life largely due to his own ambition. He is searching for a better life in his expectation, but just to make things worse again and again. First he changes the result of the traffic accident to save the life of Julie, his girlfriend. But when they lived "happily together", he wants a better job and a better life. When he changes his life to gain this, he loses Julie as a price.

The first one in a sense is a man who can’t control his own fate, and it’s full of pessimistic tone, for no matter how hard Evan tries to change his life, he can’t avoid the tragedies in life. He wants a peaceful life, but he fails. The second one is the man tempted by his own desires, and a coward who doesn't dare to face the problems in life. He thinks other kinds of life would be better than the present one. Both of the movies are tragedies, but in different senses.

The second might seem more real to us, for Nick is a reflection of us. Does others’ lifes really better than ourselves? It’s hard to say. One sentence in Zhuangzi might be a wise explanation to such a situation: 人有能游，且得不游乎；人而不能游，且得游乎？It means that if you are not happy in one situation, for instance, in school, then you will not find happiness in another place, e.g. in a company. For in another place you might find other problems.

I don’t dare to say that everyone’s life is a tragedy, but I’m sure that everyone’s life is full of problems of his own.

By the way, we can access to wikipedia at last. I'm so happy!

National Day and Mid-Autumn Day

Logo of Google in Mid-Autumn Day ->

In this year, the National Day and the Mid-Autumn Day come together. It’s a pity that the seven-day holiday doesn’t last longer for this reason. National Day is our legal holiday which is written in our law, but the Mid-Autumn tends to be more like a traditional holiday.

The Chinese National Day is not much like the Independence Day in America, which has a historical meaning to American people in the process of founding their country. Surely our National Day has its political meaning that our Republic is founded on that day, but surely the founding of our country can be at October the second or some day else. Partly it is a decision of the government, and the October the first might sound to be a good start. But who cares? The most important is the seven-day off from work. In another point of view, such a long holiday equals a disaster. Many employees in companies take the time to travel around the country. The result is every tourist sites and shopping centers are flooded with thousands of people. Only to think about the people would appear in Tian’an Men Square and Wang Fu Jing, I would feel sick. So I tend to just stay at my pit for these seven days, but I have to visit my grandparents anyway.

Talked about the Mid-Autumn Day, it might be the most important traditional holiday which survives after many years, but it is commercialized. Most of the traditional holidays have been commercialized into something related to eating. The special food for Mid-Autumn Day is moon cake. Actually, I hate this food for certain reasons. It’s too sweet, and for it has been commercialized, a piece of moon cake is expensive as a cake made of gold. It is no longer a food just for home eating. It partly becomes a kind of gift, not simply for eating. I believe if you have to eat the same food for the next half-year after the holiday, you would hate the food, too. It seems that other things related to the holiday have already disappeared, I’ve read in A Moment in Peking that they used to eat crab during the Mid-Autumn Day and the whole family gathered together to enjoy the sight of moon. But I don’t think we could see the moon today. The pollutants have covered the sky. There are also some other things related to the holiday that I had never heard of before, like the “Rabbit Grandpa”. It might be just another thing that can bring benefits to those merchants after all.


"Rabbit Grandpa" picture from Here

Other information related to Mid-Autumn Day, click Here.

“Italian Art·Italian Life” Series Exhibitions form Italy

My friend Maggie and I are fans of art. But I prefer paintings and everything related to paintings. Her interest area also includes music. She is a greater piano player and she often goes to concerts (Maybe because she is richer than me.) Naturally we’d like to choose the National Art Museum as our meeting place.

What we want to see are the “Italian Art·Italian Life” series Exhibitions from Italy. The series include three exhibitions separately: The Italian Art Works in 20th Century, the gold artifacts from Italy, and the Italian design in the recent fifty years.

Lots of people don’t like the modern art. I think I like some of them, for I can use my imagination freely. When I look the modern art works, sometime it is quite amusing when you notice what the artist trying to say. For example, in the art exhibition, there’s a work call “the bell of the church” or something. Actually the artist writes all kinds of words like “ding, dong, rrrrr,”etc all over his works. Another is about the birds. Maggie asked me where the birds are? I pointed to the little yellow “v” shape at the corner of the canvas and said, “That’s the birdie and the old one is feeding it.” I felt I have a strange relationship with those art works, in that I could understand the intentions of the artists. It is an amusement to me to think what the artist would feel when they know me see through their disguises, discovering their real intentions hidden in the artworks.

A good design of the daily used things in our life is not only an enlightment to the eyes, but also an enjoyment in our life. It’s a pity that those awesome sofas in the design exhibition are not allowed to be sit on. The legs of a small bronze table are the legs of a crane. The shape of a dress hanger is that of a tree. The owner of such a dress hanger must have lots of green clothes to make the “tree” looks healthy!

The gold artifacts are also very good, but I don’t have too much interest in them. I think they are burdens in life for their own value, and some of these artifacts are too much complex. It’s hard to imagine when a real person wears such a thing on her neck. A crown inscripted with such words: “Authority intoxicated” attracts my eyes. Another thing worthy to mention is the sofa inside the exhibition room. The shapes of them are drops of water.

Most of the artworks are hard to describe, so it’s better for you to have a look by yourself.

What’s the use of my English blog?

It is an unavoidable problem I faced. Actually I don’t want to tell too much about my daily life in my English blog. I feel freer to write that in the blog of my native language. Something about daily life is very difficult to be expressed in a second language, and most of my friends are Chinese, some of them would feel great headache if they open a page full of letters.

Actually a blog is quite different from a diary, in that it has a small group of direct readers and they will comment whatever they’d like to say. Comments are very important. Sometimes it can be part of the motive for a writer to continue his blog. Say, if no one read my blog, I would have less interest in it, I think. Readers’ responses sometimes also affect the contents of my blogs.

When my English blog was in a Chinese server, surely it was facing thousands of English learners in China. Then my responsibility is to introduce something about English speaking countries that I know of, as an English major. However, when my blog moves to an English server, it is totally different. If I tried to introduce something that I know only in surface to the people who are too familiar with them, it sounds foolish. I don’t want to become an Encyclopedia, either. What’s the meaning to introduce something that can be found anywhere else?

I think I’ll just write something related to my own English study and something related to Chinese culture and language—what I’m working hard to learn more at present.

Problems Bothering Me

Recently I’m in a low mood, and all of these are related to my present situation, my future and the confidence towards myself.

I think about my future a lot recently. My parents ask me whether I would like to be a teacher in the future. I like this job, and in several work experiences, my role as a teacher seems to be quite successful. But if I really make up my mind to be a teacher, then I should think about taking the entrance exam for Doctor’s degree, for a Doctor’s degree is the necessity to be a teacher. On this I couldn’t make up my mind. If I start working for a Doctor’s degree, then the chance for me to enter other work fields would be greatly reduced (That means if I find I’m not suitable for this job at last, I might end up in no one wants me to work for them.) A Doctor’s degree is too much for companies or government organizations. A teacher also means lots of research work, but I have no confidence in this, either. This also related to my recent situation. I felt less interests in my study compared to undergraduate days due to lots of reasons. One of the most important reasons is I felt frustrated with most of my teachers. Few of them could tell me something that I really care about or even think important. My father told me to study all by myself, not relying on my teachers. But I should say when I feel frustrated of my teachers, their courses lose lots of attractions they should have. Did I make the wrong choice one year ago?

Thus I feel really bad when I couldn’t decide. Maybe I think too much, as some of my friends pointed out. However, if I don’t know where to go, then I don’t know what should I do.