This 4 character Chinese proverb is most often used in circumstances where it is thought that saying nothing is preferable to speaking. It can also used to describe the meditative thoughts of a person, that emptiness in the mind, which is useful or 'golden'.

In China reputation is extremely important. This proverb tells us not only is reputation important in humans but for everything to be. Face here is used metaphorically as in not loosing face (social custom). The Chinese, value reputation highly, thus creating this proverb.

You might use this proverb when someone behaves dishonorably (once or repeatedly), it can be said directly to that person giving advice or a warning in order to rectify or avoid something more.

I keep finding the odd phrase which when said makes me smile. It isn't that it is actually funny, nor that it sounds funny when in English, or that it is one of the funny things you will have seen written down.

It is just a nice sounding phrase that makes me smile, much like the previous post where I talked about my favourite sounding phrase, here is another one that similiarly is nice to my ears.

我是老师
wǒ shì lǎoshī

It means, I am a teacher. Funnily this week I got an email from someone telling me how much they had learnt through this site, and made me proud that I am making a difference to other people, (and not just helping myself motivate and learn Mandarin). So I guess in fact, wǒ shì lǎoshī. I am a teacher (of kinds). Though I still have a hell of a lot to learn myself, and thank everyone that has bee helping me along the journey so far.

-I am also not as good looking as the picture of a teacher that I found. :D

The way that phrase flows is what makes me smile. I think it must be the two third tones, followed by the homophone 'shi' that makes it so pleasant. To my ears, the third tone is still one of the best things about the language. Which is something I really struggled to get to terms with intially, but have grown to love it already. I will continue to post here my favourite phrases, and hopefully some of them will be better than this one.

This proverb is about how an animal, and by implication a person, will only do what it/he wants to do.

你可以牵着马去找水，但你不能强迫它去喝
nǐ kě yǐ qiān zhe mǎ qù zhǎo shuǐ, dàn nǐ bù néng qiǎng pò tā qù hē
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink

This proverbial saying is used to describe someone who is selfish and greedy. This idiom originates from Mencius, and is used in stark contrast to the philosophies of Yáng Zhū (杨朱) which according to Mencius is very much ‘Each for himself’.

一毛不拔
yī máo bù bá
'Stingy'

楊子為我, 拔一毛而利天下, 不為也.
Yáng Zǐ wéi wǒ, bá yī máo ér​ lì tiānxià, bù wèi yě .

Yang Zhu teaches to do things purely for the benefit of oneself. If plucking, bá (拔) ,a single feather, yī máo (一毛), would benefit the world, he would not, bù (不), do it.

- He is a stingy person. Don’t even think about asking him to lend money to help someone.

There is only one real formal way to say hello in Mandarin Chinese, and whilst you can translate literal meanings from many English greetings the only one that is used is 你好 (nǐ hǎo). Below are some introductory sentences, greetings, how to introduce yourself and how to say bye. There is a lot to take in here, but I hope it useful. Please suggest ways to continue conversations below in the comments.

I am...
我是...
wǒ​ shì​...

How are you?
你好吗
nǐ hǎo ma?

How are you doing?
你怎么样?
Nǐ zěnme yàng?

How are you today?
你今天好吗？​
nǐ jīntiān hǎo ma?

Did u sleep well last night?
昨晚睡得睡的好吗?
zúo​ wǎn shùi de hǎo ma?

I am Good
我很好
wǒ hěn hǎo

And You?
你呢？
nǐ ne?

Good Thank You
好谢谢你.
hǎo xiè​xie​ nǐ.

Nice to meet you!
幸会
Xìng huì!

The weather is nice today, isn't it?
今天的天气真好,是不是?
jīn​tiān​ de tiān​qì​ zhēn​ hǎo​, shì​bù​shì​?

Saying Hello at Different Times of Day


Good Morning
早上好
zǎo​shang​hǎo​

or

早安
zǎo ān
(literally 'early peace')
- mainly used in Taiwan

Good Afternoon
下午好
xià​wǔ​hǎo​

or

午安
Wǔ ān
- mainly used in Taiwan

Good Night
晚上好
Wǎnshàng hǎo

or

晚安
Wǎn ān
- mainly used in Taiwan


Saying Goodbye in Mandarin


I have to go now.
我必须走了。
wǒ bì xū zǒu le.

Goodbye
再见
zài​jiàn​

Byebye
拜拜
Bàibài

See You Later
回头见 jiàn
huí​tóu​

or

待会儿见
dài huìr jiàn

I need to go to sleep
我需要睡觉
wǒ​ xū​yào​ shuì​jiào​

See you Tomorrow
明天见
míng​tiān​ jiàn

A Chinese boy has stunned medics with his ability to SEE in pitch black with eyes that GLOW in the dark. Nong Youhui’s dad, Ling, was always concerned that Nong's eyes weren't 'normal'.

“They told me he would grow out of it and that his eyes would stop glowing and turn black like most Chinese people but they never did,” said Ling.

Medical tests conducted in complete darkness show Youhui can read perfectly without any light and sees as clearly as most people do during the day.

Experts believe he was born with a rare condition called leukodermia which has left his eyes with less protective pigment and more sensitive to light. The precise cause of leukodermia is very complex and not fully understood. It is known that as a result of this auto-immune disorder, eyes are more sensitive to light and without as much protective pigment as would be found in normal eyes.

Although this proverb brings up thoughts of English King 'King Canute' who tried to stop the tide by ordering it to. Although tide in this case refers to a period of time, remember the saying 'good tidings', the same is of course true of the sea, unless as a man your job is to build sea defences... in which case you could be said to be stopping the tide.

This proverb relaes to the idea that something is easily forgotten or dismissed as unimportant if it is not in our direct view. I have started to write down my goals more often so that I can regualrly remember what my goals are, and achieve them. I don't like letting myself down.

Qixi Festival (七夕節 qī xī jié) literally "The Night of Sevens" is also known as Magpie Festival or in more modern times Chinese Valentine's Day. It falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month on the Chinese calendar, which this year happens to fall today.

On the Chinese Valentine's Day, people in love like to go to the temple of Matchmaker and pray for their love and the possible marriage in China. People still single will do the same thing to ask their luck of love in the Matchmaker temple.

The Chinese Valentine's Day is also called The Daughter's Festival. Long ago, Chinese girls always wanted to train themselves having a good handcrafting skill like the Weaving Maid. The skill is essential for their future family. Young girls traditionally demonstrate their domestic arts, especially melon carving, on this day and make wishes for a good husband.

According to Chinese legend the love story is about the 7th daughter of Emperor of Heaven (织女 zhī nǚ) and an orphaned cowherd (牛郎 niú láng). They were separated by the Emperor. The 7th daughter was forced to move to the star Vega and the cowherd moved to the star Altair. The beloved couple, a cowherder and a weaver, are allowed to meet only once a year in heaven on this day.

In true Chinese style where superstition of numbers is incredibly strong; In Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, a large-scale festival will be held at the Huaqing Pool. Residents have been invited to contribute love stories, with 77 pieces, representing the seventh day of the seventh month, being read aloud. 77 couples will participate in a collective wedding ceremony, Tang Dynasty style.

Qixi Fesitval (七夕 qī xī "The Night of Sevens") sometimes called Chinese Valentine's Day, falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month of the Chinese calendar
and thus its name. The traditions of the Qixi Festival day follow this legend:

On the night sky of the late summer days the stars Altair and Vega are high in the night sky and the Chinese tell the following love story, of which there are many variations:

A young cowherd named Niu Lang (牛郎, "the cowherd", the star Altair) happens across seven fairy sisters bathing in a lake. Encouraged by his mischievous companion the ox, he steals their clothes and waits to see what will happen next. The fairy sisters elect the youngest and most beautiful sister Zhi Nü (織女, "the weaver girl", the star Vega) to retrieve their clothing. She does so, but since Niu Lang sees her naked she must agree to his request for marriage. She proves to be a wonderful wife, and Niu Lang a good husband, and they are very happy together. But the Goddess of Heaven (in some versions Zhi Nü's mother) finds out that a mere mortal has married one of the fairy girls and is furious. (In another version, the Goddess forced the weaver fairy back to her former duty of weaving colorful clouds in the sky because she could not do her job while married to the mortal.) Taking out her hairpin, the Goddess scratches a wide river in the sky to separate the two lovers forever (thus forming the Milky Way separating Altair and Vega).

Zhi Nü must sit forever on one side of the river, sadly weaving on her loom, while Niu Lang watches her from afar and takes care of the two kids (his flanking stars β and γ Aquilae).

But once a year all the magpies in the world take pity on them and fly up into heaven to form a bridge (鵲橋, "the bridge of magpies", Que Qiao) over the star Deneb in the Cygnus constellation so the lovers may be together for a single night, the seventh night of the seventh moon.

Picture Source: AsiaThings

This is a guest post from my Dutch friend Guus. This is his experiences of learning Mandarin. Guus runs a Mandarin school in Singapore and has been learning Mandarin himself for about 3 and a half years. I wanted to add a new perspective to the blog, to give new learners like myself an idea of the stages of transition that you are likely to go through learning Mandarin. Guus also runs a blog about learning Mandarin with tips.

My journey of learning Mandarin

This proverb asks of you to think before you say things. Prompting the realisation that words have tremendous power. With a sentence you can change someones perception and in some cases lives have been changed with little more than a sentence. Yet other examples of how powerful words can be, are dimplomatic relationships between countries which can disintergrate with nothing but words.

A 20 year old Chinese farmer, Jiuxian Town, Songxian County, Henan Province, China has created his own Helicopter. Wu Xizhao, ever since he was a child, dreamed of flying so he wouldn't need to climb mountains anymore. It would appear that he realised his dream using principles that he learned in middle-school physics and other knowledge found by surfing the Internet on a mobile phone to create this helicopter.

The blades are 1.8m-radius propeller made from Elm tree wood, and a 150CC motorcycle engine provides the power. The frame is reinforced with steel pipes, and he claims that his single-seat copter can fly up to 2,600 feet. I am guesing that it 2600 feet length not height...


His father, Wu Xizhao, said his son had spent less than £1,000 on developing the helicopter.

"He loves machines. At one time or another, he has taken apart and put back together every gadget in the house," he said.

The trail flight of the villagers helicopter in Jiuxian Town, Henan Province, China was on August 1, 2009. It drew many villagers out to watch the contraptions trail flight. Sadly, the Chinese government won’t let Wu fly for safety reasons, which I guess is a sign of our times.

At 20 years old, this whole story does make you wonder what you are doing with your life? He has invented and built a functionable helicopter realising his dream.



What do you do?

This is a proverb which transcends all struggles, with the notion that if you want something enough, you will find a way to make what you want happen. If we have the determination to do something, we can always find the path or method to do it.

有志竟成
yǒu zhì jìng chéng
Where there's a will, there's a way

You might say "where there's a will there's a way" to someone who says that something

1. can't be done
2. shouldn't be done
3. will be done immediately

Photo Source
Flickr

China View today reported that 44 Chinese Characters (many of which are in common use) are likely to be amended. This has caused widespread criticism from Chinese nationals who think the change is "瞎折腾" (blind torment: meaning similar to a ‘pain in the neck’) Whilst some complain that one billion people will have to learn Chinese characters anew.


However ministry officials and some experts said the revisions would only target 44 characters printed in the Song typeface on publications, in other words, the revised characters would only be used by computers and printing machines. These changes from the governments perspective is that it will unify the typeface and printing standards of Chinese characters, whilst not affecting the Chinese public too badly.

These 44 characters are to change from the Kai typeface to the Song typeface, most often in these cases a slight change of only one or two strokes are changed. "The characters printed in our textbooks adopt the Kai typeface, and we don't need any change. But students would be easily confused by the revised characters on other publications," said Wang Jiayu, a Chinese language teacher at a primary school in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.


Among the 44 characters in question are:

琴 (qín) violin,
征 (zhēng) musical instrument,
魅 (mèi) demon/magic,
籴 (dí) buy grain,
褰 (qiān) to lift clothes,
巽 (xùn) part of the trigram,
瑟 (sè) Se (type of harp),
琵琶 Pipa (lute),
亲 qīn parent、
杀 (shā) kill、
条 (tiáo) ribbon 'item'、
茶 (chá) tea 、
新 (xīn) new、
杂 (zá) miscellaneous、
寨 (zhài) camp / village,
恿 (怂恿) (sǒngyǒng) instigate,
瞥 (piē) glimpse,
蓐 (rù) mattress,
溽 (rù), muggy,
缛 (rù), elaborate,
褥 (rù) mattress (again),
耨 (nòu) hoe 'weeding tool',
薅 (hāo) to weed,
唇 (chún) lip,
蜃 (shèn) mythical sea creature, and
毂 (gǔ) hub.

Another 55 characters are considered allogeneic (异体), and to be recovered or unified in some way, among them 淼 (miao, flood), 喆 (zhe, same meaning as 哲), and 堃 (kun, same meaning as 坤, female).

There is always conservatives and moaning regarding any change, especially with regard to unification where some people feel they are loosing identity through the changes. However this small amount of changes are unlikley to cause any real loss of identity and arent anywhere near as big as the simplification in 1965 to the Printed General-use Chinese Character Table. (the proposed changes are just 0.57% of all the characters in the ‘Printed General-use Chinese Character Table')

The changes being made to the Song typeface are a technological based upgrade as Song is a typeface thats origins are from when block printing flourished in China. Because the wood grain on printing blocks ran horizontally, it was fairly easy to carve horizontal lines with the grain. However, carving vertical or slanted patterns was difficult because those patterns intersect with the grain and break easily. This resulted in a typeface that has thin horizontal strokes and thick vertical strokes. To prevent wear and tear, the ending of horizontal strokes are also thickened. Song typeface is characterized by design with thick vertical strokes contrasted with thin horizontal strokes; triangular ornaments at the end of single horizontal strokes; and overall geometrical regularity. This typeface is similar to Western serif fonts such as Times New Roman in both appearance and function.

This is different to the Kai (Kaiti) typeface which is more even with the strokes looking more like the caligraphy that we are used to with both horizontal and vertical strokes being fairly consistant.

字型寫法比較 (Font Comparison)


Despite this criticism and controversy that surrounds this move by the governemnt to unify the print into an understandable and universally understood set of characters there seems to be a lot of confusion around it. Personally I think it is much ado about nothing, there seems to be very minor changes proposed and won't really affect people in the way that they think it might.

To me it seems that the 44 characters that are due to be 'changed' aren't really being changed so much as look slightly different in the different font. It is like us having a font where the a has a curl, and a font where the a doesnt have a curl. The differences seem to be in the majority where dots turn into strokes. For example on the bottom of 茶 (chá) the different fonts mean the symbol looking slightly different, but certainly not unrecognisable.


Maybe living in the West has adapted me to seeing lettering in different ways with the several standard fonts. Or it could be that my personal learning of Chinese has not yet given me the ability to write characters properly, nor learnt enough to see characters that are very similiar already.

What do you think about the propsed 44 character changes?

This proverb talks about the habits and peoples perception and influence.

This past week has been a tough week for me personally, I have had arguements and spent more time than anticipated doing everything other than learning Mandarin. I didn't even participate in #MandarinMonday on twitter, half as much as I had intended.

I am hoping that tomorrow I will write some more content after having spent more time getting back into the learning process. The time is an issue, because I live in a shared house, and when learning have to concentrate and lock myself away for an hour at a time.

Finding time for Mandarin is something that is becoming an issue with the amount of projects and other things that I am commited to. The arguements have stemmed from this point usually with me spending time craving Mandarin fixes, or actually writing a post for the blog or researching a recipe, when I should actually be doing work. The time that goes into this blog, news research and writing is growing as the topics I learn about and want to write about grow. And time so it seems is an ever decreasing commodity.

Anyone got any tips how to squeeze an extra half hour out of every day?

Tomorrow then, I will try and write some more posts and learn something new to share.


Charlie
Discovering Mandarin

Perhaps Confucius' most famous teaching was the Golden Rule stated in the negative form, often called the silver rule: