The foolish old man who wanted to move mountains

Dave asked recently where the name 花崗齋之愚公 (Hua Gang Zhai zhi Yu Gong) comes from. In the old days, it was not uncommon for scholars to name their studio or office where they wrote. Usually the name had some connection with the location or had a classical allusion. I chose Hua Gang (Granite) Zhai (Studio) for two reasons. One, I’m a native of New Hampshire. Two, the term granite (hua gang yan 花岗岩) also can mean stubborness or obstinacy to the point of stupidity (ahem).

Yu Gong (愚公) is an allusion to the story of a foolish old man who moved a mountain that was blocking the path from his home…one rock at a time. His children told him that he would be dead before he moved it. The old man instructed them to continue his work after he was gone, replying, “My line will go on and on, but the mountain can never get taller or bigger–what do I have to worry about?” If you’ve ever worked on a dissertation, there’s something about this guy you love. There just is.

The chengyu 愚公移山 (yu gong yi shan) is a rough equivalent to the English saying, “Where there’s a will,

October 17th, 2006

On-line dictionaries and other ways to waste time in the Chinese language

(I jest. It’s amazing how much more productive we historians should–emphasize: should–be with all of the amazing tools now at our disposal.)Guoyu Cidian 国语词典 is a great on-line dictionary with multiple definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and decent examples. Not quite as good as the CD-ROM version of the Hanyu Dacidian 汉语大词典, but a nice site for quick checks of those hard to place phrases.The Dictionary of Chinese Idioms is a useful searchable database of chengyu and allows you to search for phrases containing a single character. The database is also searchable by English words if you’re writing that Valentine’s Card, Dear John letter, or nasty retort to your boss and you want to find just the right four-character phrase to drive the point home.

Converting dates between the Western and Chinese calendars used to give historians ulcers. Now, thanks to Academica Sinicia, it’s a website. Simply input your Chinese date (reign title/year/month/date — either numerically or according to the stem/branch system) and click and it will give you the corresponding date in the Western calendar. Below that is a converter that does the reverse, just in case you cared that on the 19th day of the 5th month of the 41st

October 10th, 2006

TPD: Messrs. Wade and Giles

Over at TPD, guest host Lisa has a great post from Salon (Andrew Leonard, “Choosing Giles over Wade” 9/29/06) on the tangled history of the Wade-Giles system for romanizing Chinese. For those unfamiliar, it’s the difference between “Mao Tse-tung” and “Mao Zedong” or “Teng Hsiao-p’ing” and “Deng Xiaoping.” Attempts to find roman letter equivalents of Chinese sounds has a long history, and not just for westerners. Some early May Fourth reformers advocated ditching Chinese characters in favor of Roman letters to improve literacy. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a brief revival of the movement and on posters from that period (see right), you can see pinyin written underneath the Chinese characters. While pinyin never did replace Chinese characters, in the last 20 years it has emerged as the dominant form of romanization except, of course, in Taiwan.

In our UC classes, we almost always use pinyin if only because it has become the standard romanization for the major journals and university presses as well as the standard in most English-language journalism about China. We have a few profs who still put both spellings on the board, but the textbooks all use pinyin.

Like most people who commented over

October 3rd, 2006

Thoughts on learning Chinese whilst hanging in France

I love to complain about France, but the truth is…I kind of like it here. True, I rarely have to DO anything while I’m here. The times when I’ve worked in the archives or watched as YJ tried to find an apartment or negotiate the bureaucracy of the local university makes me really glad that my usual purpose is here is ‘vacation.’ But such is.

YJ’s apartment is on a quiet street near Place Gambetta and—this is shocking—adjacent to Bordeaux’s main shopping district. The streets are all cobblestones and are lined with stores, both small shops and international chains, interpolated nicely with the occasional café or restaurant. As is usual in France, we’ve stopped trying to find “French” cuisine and instead take advantage of the cosmopolitan nature of French cities to enjoy cuisine d’outre-mer. Yesterday it was Indian food. Today we walked about 15 minutes to a vegetable market tucked into a narrow street and surrounded by African markets. And if all else fails, the local Mickey-D’s is three blocks away and we can order a “Royal avec Cheese.” (No metric system, you know.)

I’ve spent the day working, but not really: mostly reviewing Chinese. Fifty

August 24th, 2006
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