bezdomny ex patria

Or perhaps that should be Three Shots. I certainly think Three Shots would be a better English title than the official one. Still, I guess the official English title contains a reference to the films inspiration.

I was standing on the corner of that big, fancy mall on the northwest corner of the Shuangjing intersection waiting for my wife to finish sifting through overpriced clothes so we could go watch the film. I knew which of the buildings around me were old and which new- indeed, I remember when the spot I was standing on was a fancyarse lawn scarred with pathways leading into the sales office for the complex which was then little more than a hole in the ground. But somehow all the buildings looked the same age, as if the norwester had finally put the upstart new buildings in their place. It seems we have a habit of going to the cinema on blustery, dry, cold December days to see the latest blockbuster. Indeed, last time we’d gone to the cinema was almost exactly a year ago (indeed, we’re ony 3 days short), and the coldest December day in Beijing since 1951. That day we saw Feng Xiaogang’s 《非诚勿扰》. This time, when lzh emerged from the clothes shop, we wandered up to… oh, no “Wait, we’ve still got time, let’s go check out those discounted shoes first, you need new sandals for when we go to New Zealand”. grrrr. And it wasn’t any kind of shoes we bought, but a new pair of thick longjohns for me, me having discovered unfortunately late yesterday afternoon (when I really needed to be getting out of barbeque-reeking clothes and making myself respectable as presentable as possible) that the top half of my other set of thick longjohns was MIA. And then back to the cinema to see Zhang Yimou’s latest film, 《三枪拍案惊奇》/A Simple Noodle Story.

I have a love/hate/like/why can’t he get back to realising his full talent? relationship with Lao Zhang. I love his early work. I hate his martial arts epics. 《千里走单骑》/Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles was good, but not as good as his early films. 《三枪》 I don’t yet know how to rate.

I suppose I should note that the version we saw at UME Shuangjing was Mandarin soundtrack (obviously) with Chinese subtitles. Those whose Chinese is not up to following a film entirely in Chinese should either look for a cinema showing it with English subtitles or a DVD with more subtitling options than the cinema allows.

First impression was that the volume knobs on UME Shuangjing’s amplifiers must have a Number 11, because the three shots that bring the opening credits to a close really were one louder. Or to put it slightly more directly: If those three shots hit you with such force that you wonder if somebody hasn’t just put three bullets in your forehead, then perhaps somebody should turn the volume down just a tad. lzh spent most of the film with fingers firmly planted in ears, and yet didn’t miss a line.

Based on what I’d seen on TV, I went in expecting some form of comedy, probably of the rather silly kind, some Lao Zhang’ed cinematic errenzhuan [that is perhaps the worst wikipedia stub I've ever seen, but at least it gives you a brief description], perhaps. I also did not have high hopes from the film, having heard that it wasn’t all that good. Second impression was that the expectation the TV promotional stuff had given me was right, but the comedy was good. I certainly would never have expected to see 饼 (Chinese pancake type thing) given the same treatment as one of those errenzhuan kerchiefs and spun around till it became a pizza base so huge it’d have the Kro’s Nest pizza chef putting three shots into his own head for shame. It was a lot of fun to watch, but at the same time not a total surprise considering that 3 of the 4 actors playing the noodle restaurant staff (Xiao Shenyang, Mao Mao, Cheng Ye, with Yan Ni the only exception) came up through Zhao Benshan’s errenzhuan circle.

Third impression was that this was most certainly a Zhang Yimou film. Only Lao Zhang could possibly make a desert look so incredibly lush.

There’s also something incredibly discordant about this film. It’s set somewhere way out in Northwest China along the Silk Road, but most of the actors spend most of the film in costumes more appropriate for an errenzhuan stage in Liaoning. Was a time when Lao Zhang was making Northwestern films with distinctly Northwestern vibes, but if you closed your eyes and listened only to the dialogue, you’d think this one was set somewhere on the black earth of the Northeast. Anachronisms litter the script like drug dealers on the streets of Sanlitun of a weekend evening. And I couldn’t help but feel those anachronisms hid a lot of knitting needle jabs at modern Chinese society.

Before too long, a certain darkness crept into the film. It acquired an undertone and atmospherics so black you’d swear it was filmed by a Kiwi. Lao Zhang’s lusciously filmed desert turned all gothic, with ever-passing stormclouds looming, threatening. Sun Honglei’s soldier turned into a psychopath who did everything possible to empty the noodle restaurant boss’ safe. Yan Ni’s 老板娘/Boss’ Wife was so keen to buy the Persian Merchant’s gun because she had suffered ten years of horrific abuse at the hands of the Boss (Ni Dahong). And the Boss is quite a piece of work: Abusive, with a penchant for cutting the fat baby’s face out of New Year paintings and forcing his wife to put her face in the hole as he quietly, calmly tells her off, then slams burning tobacco into the small of her back. Self-centred, manipulative, and tighter than a Scotsman’s arse. While the errenzhuan actors seem to spend most of the film on the errenzhuan level of comedy, Yan Ni’s Boss’ Wife takes a wild, bipolar ride between brave face, slapstick comedy, and Greek tragedy, with Xiao Shenyang’s Li Si desperately trying to figure out what’s going on and how he’s supposed to respond to it all. But can this 娘们唧唧的/Big Girl’s Blouse man up and John Wayne their way out of this mess?

All three shots in the gun sold by the Persian Merchant are put to very good use, with the second being sidesplittingly, laundryman’s-going-to-be-busy hillarious. But I’ll say no more than that the Boss’ Wife gets what she needs, but at a cost of Shakespearian proportion.

Beware, within this beautifully-filmed, light-hearted comedy are hidden a myriad of ragged shards of glass. But it’s a great film. Watch it.

Oh, and for the “Some People Are Just Too Damn Talented For Their Own Good” file: Xiao Shenyang sings the song that animates the final credits (the first of his songs which is not a pisstake of other singers?), a song in which all the dead bodies come back to life and join in the dance. It isn’t just that Xiao Shenyang can act errenzhuan and more widespread forms of drama, and sing and dance (uh… errenzhuan), but Sun Honglei also turns out to be a pretty decent dancer.

All Saints’ Day. I wake up a bit after 7, properly awake, no way to get back to sleep, so I get up. My wife was still sleeping, so I left her in peace, wandered in to the lounge room, open the curtains, and

SNOW!

It’s snowing! I knew it had suddenly got cold yesterday, but yesterday was dry, clear blue sky, and I didn’t realised it had suddenly gotten that cold. And snow on November 1, isn’t that a little early?

So I fire up the computer and start brewing tea. I sign into Kaixin001 and see Guoan won the championship, Chen Lin is dead, and a video of a Chinese guy (Sun somebody) who plays football in England making a most impressive save, sprinting back and getting a foot to the ball just in time to prevent the goal.

lzh woke up and asked if it was raining. No, I say. Don’t lie, she says. Go look for yourself. Snow! But Ma and Ba haven’t sold the apples yet! Will snow freeze the apples? I don’t know. So she phones home and her dad says it’s only sleeting up in Yanqing. That I do not understand. Yanqing is colder than Beijing. If it’s snowing here, how could it only be sleeting up there?

And then I learn a new word. lzh is still much perturbed by the snow, and asks maybe if it’s some kind of 冤情. What? 冤情. Yeah, but what’s that? Eventually I get an answer, and she tells me a legend of some guy who died in June, and so it snowed, apparently the snow being Heaven’s tears. Fine, but what does 冤情 (yuānqíng) mean? Nciku says it’s “Facts of an injustice”, while CNKI says simply “grievance”. The dead tree dictionary next to me agrees with Nciku.

And what’s this legend? I try searching Baidu Baike. No luck. Baidu Guoxue. Still none. Well, I’d only just started looking when lzh says she’ll find me the story, and here it is on Baidu Zhidao. And that rankles. My students know from long and repeated experience that if they ever suggest Baidu Zhidao as a possible means of researching their essay topics, I will immediately respond 百度什么都不知道 (Baidu knows nothing)! Oh well, at least I can read the story, now, assuming of course that the answer Baidu flags as best is accurate. Anyway, it’s the story of a young woman who was unjustly executed, and as a result, it snowed in June. Something like that.

And I learn another new word: 昭雪 – to exonerate or rehabilitate. Interesting.

Meanwhile, the snow changes from the usual Beijing-style tiny little flakes to gigantic, fluffy snow, and the paths, which still had too much heat for the snow to settle on them, seem to have cooled enough to allow the snow to start piling up there, too. The usual low rumble of buses passing along Xidawang Lu is only a faint whisper.

Maybe I should’ve snuck a recording and submitted it to the good folks at Beijing Sounds…. Anyways, my wife just said:

愤青儿

Yes, with a full, classic, and entirely natural, uncontrived, Beijing 儿化音 (rhoticization? is that the right word?) on the end. And so, naturally, one wonders what the R means here? Is it some kind of diminutive? Indicating what? Familiarity? Or is it perhaps a little belittling?

And what sparked this off was the need to explain ‘misanthrope‘ to her- a word I know only in English and French (a word which would be the same, just pronounced differently in those two languages).

Why? Because I’ve been in a rather misanthropic mood today. Well, alright, “misanthrope” is my default setting, but I haven’t had the energy to keep up any pretence of sociability today.

Anyway, lzh seems to equate ‘misanthrope’ with ‘愤青’ (angry youth) – an equation that does not sit well with me. Misanthropes may be often grumpy and generally prickly round the edges, but in my experience they tend to be highly rational individuals. The angry youth, so far as I can tell, don’t do reason or logic very well, placing the emphasis on irrational outbursts of anger. I still haven’t managed to figure out what that anger is about or where it comes from, as they seem to be generally from affluent, urban backgrounds.

Still, it seems to me that developed countries in general have an overabundance of irrationally angry young people, so perhaps we should take the emergence of the angry youth as a sign of China’s development?

Whatever, I was just surprised and intrigued to hear ‘angry youth’ given the Beijing R-treatment.

And so I survived lesson 1 in book 1 of BLCU’s Classical Chinese series. Three short texts taken from Han Feizi. Two of them were completely new to me, but one of them… hey, hang on a minute, I know this story! It’s the one about how 矛盾 (spear-shield) came to mean contradiction!…. oh, well, yeah, it’s that story, but of course Han Feizi wasn’t telling it to coin a word, but to mock people who defy all logic in their boasting.

See, there was this guy in the state of Chu who sold spears and shields, and he used to boast that his shields were so strong that nothing could pierce them and that his spears were so sharp there was nothing they couldn’t pierce, so somebody piped up and said, “Well, what if I use one of your spears on one of your shields?”

And of course there were comprehension questions, which I took about as seriously as I ever do. And a grammar section. I’m not entirely sure I understood that too well, but it’s early days yet.

So I’ve set a rule for myself: 10 o’clock every morning get offline, turn off the computer, and study for at least two hours. Managed that alright this morning, now all I’ve got to do is continue. Afternoons I intend to spend on a variety of stuff. I really should get out more, for starters, spend a bit more time in other parts of the city. I have plenty of reading material- in fact, I’ve lost count of the number of books I have on the go- and a fair portion of that reading material counts as study. And of course, some afternoons can be spent at least partially on extra study.

Still, 10 am was painful this morning. There’s a huge stack of vocabulary to be learnt/relearnt, and a lot of it is stuff I know from modern Chinese, but which just doesn’t seem to work the same way in Classical. But once I got into the swing of things, working through the texts phrase by phrase, noting down words, nutting out the grammar, it started to feel good. Two hours flew by. I added an extra hour early this evening, and that’s it, lesson 1 done. Sure, I’ve only just started, but lesson 1, at least, was considerably less painful and much more enjoyable than I expected. I’ll do lesson 2 tomorrow, which takes its readings from the 山海经 (English name? Classic of the Mountains and Seas?).

Well, it wasn’t an entirely fruitless trip. Almost, but not entirely.

One of the things I’ve been wanting to do with my summer is start studying a little Classical Chinese. I’m not happy knowing that, Tang poetry, as just one example, is supposed to be amazingly beautiful without being able to appreciate it myself. And I’m seeing more and more throwbacks to Classical in the stuff I read- y’know, odd little choices of phraseology and that kind of thing. And I guess there are probably other reasons, too. It might be nice to approach Chinese from a new angle, for example.

Of course, a book will be necessary.

Yesterday afternoon was supposed to be a much-delayed bookshopping trip, but I found myself looking for excuses, and then something came up at the office which put me on call and unable to travel further than a ten-minute walk, and so I wound up hanging out with Roubaozi under the trees in the courtyard of the neighbouring hotel. Anyway, I was thinking it would be more fun to go bookshopping with my wife.

Then today lzh went off to visit a friend, leaving me home alone. The weather was just too good and I’m far too conscious of how little I get out these days, and so I was getting more and more restless. At about half past two I quickly googled a couple of books I’d been recommended way back when I first realised I need to study a little Classical Chinese, settled on the BLCU series as the most likely prospect, then sent a message to the Mrs saying I’m off bookshopping, got my stuff together, and ran.

I mean, there are only so many days that can be spent vegetating in front of a computer, and they ain’t many.

So I walked up to Pingleyuan then along to the bus stop. No. 52 along to Dongdan Lukou Xi, then walked around to the Wangfujing Bookstore. Nothing. I mean, absolutely nothing. Brilliant. That meant I had to wade through the crowds of tourists all the way to the other end of the Wangfujing pedestrian street to try the Foreign Languages Bookstore.

Somehow I wasn’t accosted by any of the tour guide/teahouse/art gallery scammers.

But there’s something fundamentally unsound about a bookstore that sells part 2, and only part 2 of a three-part series (somehow ‘trilogy’ just doesn’t seem to fit language textbooks). The way I see it, Classical is a different, albeit closely related, Sinitic language, distinct enough from Putonghua that I need to start from the very basics. I may well be wrong on that, but I’m just not comfortable starting on book 2. I mean, if I were to study Portuguese, Spanish or Italian, I certainly would not presume to skip straight to book 2, no matter how easy book 1 may be. When I was in Norway, although I could understand the gist of average newspaper articles with neither dictionary nor friend’s translation, I borrowed a beginner’s level Norwegian textbook from the local library because that was precisely the level I was at. My knowledge of Classical Chinese is at pretty much the same level as my knowledge of Norwegian, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese or Italian, so of course I want to start with book 1, if for no other reason than my own peace of mind. But the Foreign Languages Bookstore had only part 2 and the staff did not seem to understand that a person holding part 2 and asking if they have part 1 probably wants them to go check out back or wherever it is they store their books.

They did have another Classical Chinese textbook, but entirely in Chinese and traditional characters and perhaps a level or two above me. There was also one titled something like Classical Chinese for Modern Use, also from BLCU Press, but glancing through it didn’t quite seem to meet my needs.

So I left my name and cellphone number, as they said they could call me if part 1 came in, maybe even reserve a copy for me. Fair enough. I suspect, though, that a trip out to Wudaokou to buy the book (books, perhaps, I might as well get all three if I can) direct from the BLCU bookstore may be in order. I think perhaps finding their phone number and checking up over the phone may be a good idea, though. It’s an awful long way to go only to find they don’t have the books. Still, lzh reminds me that tomorrow she has work to do… from home… on my computer… yes, my computer… ok, our computer… so perhaps a long trip out northwest might be a good idea. And if BLCU’s store is out of stock, there’s always BeiDa and Tsinghua and other bookstores in the area.

Anyways, after not finding part 1, I had a short browse around the Chinese language and culture side of the first floor of the Foreign Languages Bookstore. I had noticed one book during my search for the book I wanted, another in the same series, but titled 《中国人文地理》. I was a little curious, so picked up and flipped through. Too easy. Glancing through the texts I did not see any unfamiliar characters. That makes me feel good- a second-year level textbook from BLCU doesn’t challenge me. Nice. Still, I shouldn’t be challenged by books at that level, not after all these years.

More browsing raised one point all would-be authors would do well to remember: Don’t patronise your audience. I picked up a book on calligraphy, a subject I have been mostly unmotivatedly interested in since my earliest days in China, only to see phrases like “You may even have learnt a few Chinese characters” or “There are too many famous Chinese calligraphers for a beginner to remember them all”. And so I think when I finally do get myself motivated to practice calligraphy, I will continue to stick with materials produced for Chinese students. Really, what an utterly ridiculous attitude to take towards your potential readers.

So then, after a bit of dithering, I thought this outing can’t be thrown away so easily and strode off northwards up Wangfujing, past the cathedral, right up to where the street fades into a narrow hutong. Then right and down 钱粮胡同/Qianliang Hutong (hey, cool, I was curious about the name, and it turns out 钱粮 is a word). Then up a bit and across what must’ve been Dongsi Nan Bei (hmm… ditu.google.cn is centred on Xuanwu District) by that point, then eastwards along Dongsi 7 Tiao, thence up again onto Dongsi Shi Tiao and eastwards to the nearest bus stop.

It was an interesting little stroll through the hutongs. Most of the houses were in the ramshackle, rundown state you expect of any hutong in Old Beijing off the tourist trail, but a lot of them were being fixed up and more than a few actually looked pretty nice. Qianliang Hutong even sported a couple of trendy-looking cafes, a very large siheyuan whose average-height walls were extended with a forest of barbed wire suggesting it was home to somebody Very Important, and another Siheyuan that lacked the barbed wire but looked like it, too, had been taken over and fixed up by somebody with both money and taste (a rare combination, indeed). Not only that, but a lot of work was being done on a lot of siheyuan, work that looked, through the attitudes and actions of the labourers, more like renovation, or at least rebuilding, rather than the mindless destruction that precedes some fancy, but soulless and far too often horribly tacky apartment block.

So I didn’t get the books I wanted, but I got out of the house and got a decent walk, at least.

Well, it reads a bit much like advertorial, and it’s going to stretch my medical vocab (in both English and Chinese), but here’s an odd little article boasting of Beijing’s ability to produce H1N1 vaccine on a large scale:

北京有能力大规模生产猪流感疫苗

Beijing has capacity for large-scale production of swine flu vaccine

北京已具备大规模生产猪流感疫苗的能力，疫苗年产量可达2000万支。记者昨天从北京科兴公司获悉，该公司的大流行流感疫苗生产线可针对最新出现的H1N1型猪流感病毒，迅速采用以该毒株为模型构建的生产用毒种进行疫苗生产，无需重新进行疫苗的研发和临床研究。

Beijing already has the capacity for large-scale production of a swine flu vaccine, with annual production of up to 20 million vaccines. This reporter learnt from the SINOVAC Biotech yesterday that the company’s pandemic influenza production line can respond to the latest strain of H1N1 swine flu to appear, quickly using this strain as a model for using this strain, using the virus to undertake vaccine production. There is no need to carry out new vaccine research and development or clinical studies.

“自猪流感疫情出现以来，我们一直密切关注疫情的发展，也积极与相关国际组织取得联系，争取获得更多的资源和信息以分析进行疫苗研发的可行性。”科兴公司 有关负责人透露，目前已获得相关部门的反馈信息，并设置专人负责与中国疾控中心、国家药监局以及相关国际组织保持沟通，以确保在国内有需求时，能第一时间 获得毒种进行疫苗的制备。

“Since the appearance of the swine flu epidemic, we have been paying close attention to its development and actively developing contacts with related international organsations, striving to obtain more resources and information to analyse the feasibility of carrying out vaccine research and development.” The relevant person in charge at SINOVAC revealed that they had already received feedback from the relevant departments, and had assigned a person to take charge of maintaining communications with the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Food and Drug Administration, and relevant international organisations to ensure that virus seed for vaccine production can be obtained as soon as it is needed in China.

目前，世界卫生组织正在积极从人感染猪流感患者体内分离毒株，进而通过筛选制备出可供生产新疫苗的毒株，该毒株制备时间大约需要1个月左右。记者了解到， 一旦获得可供制备疫苗的毒株，科兴公司便可以按照特别审批程序，在国家药监局批准后立即启动生产。从获得新毒株到拿到疫苗批签发合格证书，大约需要4个月 时间。

At present, the World Health Organisation is actively separating the strain of virus from samples taken from victims of human swine flu, and after screening will prepare a strain which can be supplied for new vaccine production. About one month will be needed for preparation of this strain. This reporter learned that as soon as a strain for vaccine preparation is obtained, SINOVAC, according to special procedures for examination and approval, after the approval of the SFDA, immediately start production. From obtaining the virus strain to issuing the standard certificate will take about 4 months.

北京科兴公司曾为“非典”和禽流感研制生产疫苗，该公司研制的大流行流感疫苗已经于2008年4月获得生产批件，并承担了北京奥运会及国家储备的任务。此 前在国家发改委等部门的支持下形成了年产2000万支大流行流感疫苗的生产能力。这意味着北京科兴公司已经具备了生产大流行流感疫苗的技术条件和生产能 力。

SINOVAC has developed vacciines for SARS and bird flu, and received its production licence for the pandemic influenza vaccines it develops in April, 2008, and has assumed responsibility for the Beijing Olympics and State stocks. With the support of the State Development and Reform Committee and other departments it has formed and annual production capacity of 20 million doses of pandemic influenza vaccine. This shows SINOVAC already has the technological conditions and production capacity to produce pandemic influenza vaccines.

Right, so there’s a few of the more convoluted and/or technical sentences that I have definitely fluffed, so as always, corrections are welcome.

And as I said, it reads to me a bit much like advertorial, something put out there to reassure the populace that we’re all perfectly safe… But I’m not sure I feel reassured by that “no need to carry out new vaccine research and development or clinical studies” in the last sentence of the first paragraph.

Oh, and SINOVAC’s website seems to have more relevant information here, especially the stuff in red.

Update: I attempted a little polishing based on saiweng’s superb comment. Thanks saiweng.

Another update: Saiweng is proving awesome in his comments. Thanks saiweng.

So according to 新京报/The Beijing News, some books that have been lost for 2000 years have been rediscovered. Yeah, I saw that and thought the same thing. Clearly this warrants further investigation:

失传两千年《尚书》重现

Lost for 2000 years, Book of History reappears

Book of History? Well, I flipped through nciku looking for a standard translation of 尚书. The immediate result was useless for an English translation, but in the Chinese-Chinese side did inform me of an alternate name: 书经. That got me the English title Book of History and a more detailed Chinese explanation. It’s also called simply 《书》. Anyway, TBN’s Guo Shaofeng informs us:

多篇《尚书》在失传两千多年后重新面世。昨日，清华大学出土文献研究与保护中心主任李学勤教授宣布，在对“清华简”的研究中还发现了周武王的乐诗，弥补了学术史上的空白。

Several copies of the Book of History have reappeared having been lost for over 2000 years. Yesterday, head of the Center for Excavated Texts Research and Protection, Tsinghua University [CETRP] Professor Li Xueqin announced that during research of the “Qinghua Bamboo Slips” music and poetry of King Wu of Zhou were also discovered, filling an historic gap in learning.

Wah. Looks like I’ve bitten off way more than I can chew. First of all, couldn’t find an English name for “清华大学出土文献研究与保护中心“. Then there was “周武王的乐诗“. Clearly there are big gaps in my own knowledge, but it would also be nice if dictionaries and the internets actually helped me when I asked them. Clearly the Red Hot Chilli Peppers aren’t helping, either. Perhaps I should swap them for some Tang Dynasty? Nah, nowhere near old enough for these Western Zhou types I’m wrestling with here.

由校友捐赠，清华去年7月入藏这批竹简，并称之为“清华简”。经11位权威学者专家鉴定,这批竹简应是战国时代简册，涉及中国传统文化的核心内容，是前所罕见的重大发现。

Through donations from alumni, Tsinghua added this set of bamboo slips to its collection last July, calling it the “Tsinghua Bamboo Slips”.  Having been appraised by 11 authoritative scholars and experts, this set of bamboo slips should date from the Warring States period and involve core content of China’s traditional culture and are a major discovery rarely seen before.

“前所罕见“? I’m really not having much luck this morning.

昨日，李学勤表示，经过几个月初步释读及研究，最终确定清华简共2388枚。

Yesterday Li Xueqin said that after several months of preliminary research, it has finally been decided that there are 2388 Tsinghua Bamboo Slips.

李学勤说，“清华简”可确定是书籍，“如果按经史子集分类，多是‘经史’，最突出的是《尚书》”。秦代焚书使《尚书》大多佚失。清华简中已发现有多篇《尚书》，有些篇有传世本，但文句多有差异，甚至篇题也不相同，其中有16篇是现在《尚书》所没有的。

Li Xueqin said that it can be confirmed that the “Tsinghua Bamboo Slips” are books. “If we classify them according to the four traditional categories, most are Classics and Histories, the most prominent being the Book of History.” Most copies of the Book of History were lost to the burnings of books of the Qin period. Several copies of the Book of History have already appeared among the “Tsinghua Bamboo Slips”, some of which, some of which have been handed down, but they have many differences in wording, to the point of having different titles, among which 16 titles don’t appear in the modern Book of History.

It’s still not getting any easier. I’m still having to guess too much. “篇题“?

李学勤说，由于当时的书都是手抄，传抄的过程中肯定会有差别。西汉晚年以来，今古文《尚书》的争辩一直没有结束。“清华简”有望让人们看到失传2000多年的“正版”《尚书》的庐山真面目。

Li Xueqin said that because at the time books were all hand-copied, differences naturally arose in the copying process. From the latter years of the Western Han up to today, the debate over the “new and old texts” of the Book of History has not ended. Hopefully the “Tsinghua Bamboo Slips” can let people see the true character of the “genuine” Book of History lost for over 2000 years.

My brain hurts. “今古文“?

So scanning through it I thought, yeah, I get this, I could translate it, and it’s been so long since I translated anything…. Then I sat down to do it, and there are so many phrases I just can’t get my head around, and I can’t find anywhere near enough help either online or in dead tree dictionaries. Guess I shouldn’t have attempted it. Oh well, I’ll put it out there in the hope somebody can come along and help me make more sense of this.

Oh wait, I forgot the subtitle…. nah, forget it. Oh, and there’s a brief introduction to the Book of History and followed by a little exposé the first of those books that Tsinghua managed to put back together. But if you’ll excuse me, the main article gave me enough trouble, and I hear lunch calling.

Update: so polished a little thanks to saiweng, but I’m still not confident. What else up there needs improving?

So this morning I did drag my lazy arse offline and finally opened up one of the two cool new books I acquired a couple of weeks back. This one was 汉语方言学/李如龙著。-2版。-北京：高等教育出版社，2007.2, which back then I roughly translated as ‘Chinese Dialectology, (2nd edition) by Li Rulong, published in Beijing by the Higher Education Press in February 2007.’ I took it up to the village with me, planning to make use of the ample time and my cunning stash of dictionaries hidden away up there to learn me a few things about Chinese dialects. And then, of course, I spent all of Saturday online…. Saturday being the only day we could spend in its entirety up there. Oops. But this morning I hit the internet wall, got offline, and opened it. Starting, naturally, at the beginning, with Chapter 1: 方言，方言差异，方言特征- Dialect, Dialect Differences, Characteristics of Dialect, and section 1: 方言.

I only got about halfway through before I had to clear the books away for lunch (although I was quite pleasantly surprised with the speed I was reading and the ease with which I seemed to understand- I took so much time because I was noting down new words and then going back and reading it all over again), but I read one very interesting paragraph on page 2:

方言是自足的体系， 在一定的地域，它可以是无往而不利的唯一交际工具。就这一点说，方言也就是语言。 但是作为科学术语，语言通常指的是民族语言。现代的民族语言总是包含着民族共同语以及分布在不同地域的方言。就这一点说，语言大于方言，是方言的 “上位” 概念。方言是民族语言的组成部分，也是民族语言的地域变体。所谓 “现代汉语”，指的是现代汉民族的语言，应该包含着现代汉民族共同语 （普通话） 和各种现代汉语方言。现代汉语方言是现代汉民族共同语的地域变体。有些教 “现代汉语” 课、研究 “现代汉语” 的人所理解的 “现代汉语” 是不包括汉语的方言的，这实在是一种很大的误解。朱德熙先生说： “研究现代汉语的人往往只研究普通话，不但不关心历史，把方言研究也看成隔行。 画地为牢， 不愿越雷池一步。 这不管对本人说， 还是对学术发展来说， 都不是好事。” （朱德熙， 1985）

A dialect is a self-contained system, in a fixed area it can the only tool for successful communication. That is to say, a dialect is a language. But as a scientific term, Language usually means a national language. Modern national languages always include the national common language as well as the dialects spread over different areas. That is to say, Language is bigger than Dialect, it is Dialect’s “epistatic” concept. Dialects are component parts of national languages, and are the local variants of national languages. By “modern Chinese” we mean the language of the modern Han nation, and this should include the modern Han nation’s common language (Putonghua) and every kind of modern Chinese dialect. Modern Chinese dialects are the local variants of the modern Han nation’s common language. What some people who teach or research “modern Chinese” understand by “modern Chinese” does not include Chinese dialects, and this is a very big misconception indeed. Mr Zhu Dexi says: “More often than not, people who research modern Chinese only research Putonghua, and not only reject history, but see the research of dialects as a separate profession. They box themselves in, unwilling to put even one foot over the line. This isn’t just bad for the researchers, it’s also very bad for the development of the field.” (Zhu Dexi, 1985)

Wow. There are several interesting concepts and assumptions buried in that one little paragraph.

Well, first let’s deal with some translation issues:

1. I’d be surprised if anybody reading this blog doesn’t know, but just in case: Putonghua is the official standard Mandarin, what is taught in schools and is used on national TV and radio.
2. I really hate translating 民族 as “nation” or “nationality”, and expend obscene amounts of effort stamping that habit out of my students, but I feel that that is the best translation in this context, meaning “nation” in it’s somewhat synonymous with “ethnic group” sense. Still, it irks me.
3. I can’t think of any way to keep consistency in the translations of 语言 and 方言 while keeping the meaning clear.
4. That “上位” had me really confused, but every entry on nciku led to some form or another of ‘epistasis‘, which is an entirely new word to me. So be it. Update: John adds some ideas on what was meant. I’m not sure how (or if) to alter my translation, but do check out his comment for more enlightenment.
5. Oh, and before I forget: “Dialect” is stretching it a bit. In a previous paragraph, Li had a fair bit to say about the meaning of ‘语言’ and related words like 次方言，土语，次土语, and the apparent “European” equivalents of ‘dialact’, ’sub-dialect’, ‘patois’ and ’sub-patois’, as well as words with similar meanings. He concluded that whether you’re referring to a speech variety of one small village or of ten provinces, or whether you’re referring to Cantonese or its local variants spoken in Hong Kong, Macao, Guangdong and Guangxi
6. Update: Last sentence was amended thanks to some help from the Ji Village News.

I think that’s about it.

Now, where to start?

The idea of ‘Language’ meaning a national language and ‘Dialect’ meaning some local variation seems pretty sweet. I mean, Japanese is the language of Japan; French of France; German of Germany; Korean of Korea; English of England; and of course, all the local variants of those languages are dialects. Easy, right? But wait… Although it’s easy enough to explain that the Koreans or North and South Korea and China all belong to one nation in the ethnic sense of that word, and I’m sure you could construct an argument to show the same is largely true of the German-speaking peoples of Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and slices of neighbouring countries like Belgium, tell me, what nation is it that speaks French? Or English, Spanish or Portuguese? These languages are spoken as native or near-native languages by a huge variety of people from many different racial, ethnic, national and cultural backgrounds.

In fact, we need to ask: What, precisely, is a 民族? What is a nation? What is an ethnic group? I have yet to come across a satisfactory definition of any of these words.

And we’ve all heard more than enough discussions on the proper meaning of 汉语 and mutual intelligibility, or lack thereof, between the “dialects”, and comparisons with Spanish and Portuguese and other pairs of mutually intelligible “languages”, and the unintelligibility to all but native speakers of certain English dialects, and so on, and so forth.

Anyway, I found that paragraph interesting and thought I’d throw it out there for your viewing pleasure. But now, it’s getting late, and I have class early tomorrow morning. Good night.

That was an awesome trip! A whirlwind, sure, and I got to see far less of either Linfen or Yuncheng than I would’ve liked, but so be it, what I saw leaves me keen to get back out there, next time with wife in tow and a plan to make it out to Hongtong’s Great Scholar Tree as well as checking out Yao’s Temple and all the other cool reallyreally ancient hsitoric stuff. One thing I learned in Taiyuan and this trip reconfirmed is that when it comes to history, Shanxi kicks Beijing’s and Shaanxi’s arses.

Of course, the timing of the trip leaves me a bit behind on the news from home, and the news looks, well, mixed at best. But this I don’t like the look of. It seems National and ACT can form a coalition with a clear majority, but Labour, Greens and Maori fall short. It was expected, and hopefully it will do some good by forcing Labour to dump the deadwood and get an injection of fresh blood and ideas. lzh rightly assumed this meant I would be in even less of a hurry to go back to New Zealand. Damn straight. With a government like that I’m staying right here where the Centre has its head screwed on right. But I told her it’ll only be three years, the Tory bastards will fuck up the economy, and NZ will vote Labour back in. Trying to be optimistic, you see.

Not that I like Labour. I loathe the bastards. But when it comes to choosing between the two major parties they’re very definitely the lesser of two evils. I mean, in the midst of a financial crisis, a party led by somebody from the “industry” [scare quotes because the "industry" in question produces nothing of any real value] responsible for the financial crisis wins the largest number of seats in parliament? Shit….. Well, they’re only preliminary results, wait a week and things might look less scary….

Anyways, it was a great trip in which, even though the destination was Linfen, and in reality I spent more time in Linfen than Yuncheng, it still feels like most of the trip in Yuncheng. Unfortunately I got almost no time to get out and explore Linfen, and really only saw the area around my hotel, the school I had a few hours work at, and the restaurants I was taken to. Yuncheng wasn’t much better: I got a walk through Guandi Miao, ate lunch at a ‘Sichuan’ restaurant (lunch may have been better had I been eating with people without a pathological fear of chilli- how you can eat Chuancai without chilli I don’t know, but whatever), hung around the railway station forecourt a short while, and spent a bit of time in the tiny, tiny airport. The rest of the time was spent on the road staring intently out the car windows taking in as much as I could under the rather hurried circumstances.

I want to write it up properly later. It is already ten, after all, and I have a full day of work tomorrow. Let’s just saw that when I heard “Linfen” I assumed something terribly rundown and filthy, looking like it had seen no maintenance since the fall of the Qing Dynasty- something like the neighbourhood I lived in in Taiyuan, for example. Instead I was quite pleasantly shocked. Yeah, the air was filthy and the walls of the buildings showed it, but there was very clear evidence of a lot of effort being put in by the various governments involved- municipal, provincial, and higher and lower. There was also evidence of a lot of effort being put into developing tourism, both of the beautiful scenery and historic sites variety, and more than a few appeals to the ancestors (see, for example, Hongtong’s Great Scholar Tree, which is my number one reason for taking lzh out there as soon as possible).

Still, there was plenty of evidence of poverty and lack of development, especially in the rural areas we drove through- well, when we were off the expressway. And there was plenty of industry in the form of factories looming out of the haze in apparently random locations.

And somehow I think I saw more factories on the Yuncheng side of the Fen River than on the Linfen side…. That must be just an odd side-effect of the route the expressway takes.

Oh, and the local people, at least those I met, were awesome, really great people.

And I got a case of Fenjiu for my efforts. Awesome.

Anyway, enough random thotting, it’s late and a proper write up will have to wait until at least tomorrow and probably Tuesday.

Here’s an interesting report on 京报网: it turns out that bones unearthed four years ago in Shandong bear the inscriptions of a very early form of writing:

中国发现早于甲骨文的早期文字

China discovers early characters that precede oracle bone inscriptions

中国考古专家最新考证表明，4年前在中国东部山东省昌乐县集中出土的100多块兽甲骨上所刻的600多个符号，结构和布局有一定的规律可循，应为距今约4500年的中国早期文字。

Chinese archaeologists’ latest discoveries show that the composition and design of the more than 600 symbols inscribed on over 100 animal bones and shells unearthed mostly in Changle County, east China’s Shandong Province four years ago, follow a regular pattern, and are probably early Chinese characters from 4500 years before present.

2004年，昌乐县一民间收藏爱好者肖广德在昌乐县袁家庄古遗址上采集陶器标本时发现，当地农民在施工挖掘时，丢弃了许多亚化石状远古兽骨，经过清理，可见上面有许多刻划痕迹明显的图案符号。

In 2004, Changle County amateur collector Xiao Guangde, while he was collecting pottery specimens in the ancient ruins of Changle County’s Yuanjiazhuang, discovered local farmers, as they were digging on a construction project, had discarded many ancient animal bones in a sub-fossilised state. After cleaning, the traces of many designs and symbols engraved on the bones could be clearly seen.

专家们研究认为，这批骨刻文字主要出土在昌乐古遗址，又被昌乐爱好者收藏，暂定名为“昌乐骨刻文”。虽然目前尚不能破译，但其发现对研究中国古文字的演变过程，复原当时的社会形态，提供了宝贵的佐证。
Researching experts consider that these characters inscribed on bone unearthed mainly from ancient ruins in Changle, collected by a Changle amateur, could be temporarily named “Changle bone inscription characters”. Although at present they have not yet been deciphered, this discovery will brought valuable assistance to the research into the development process of ancient Chinese characters and the reconstruction of the pattern of society of the time.

Now, I’m sorry, that has got to be the worst translation I have ever done. I’m sure you all noticed there were many phrases I was really struggling with. Help clarifying all that would be much appreciated.