kick starting

I’ve been meaning to revive my Chinese study blog for a while, and have fiddled around with it a bit, but the most important part is actually doing the study, and I haven’t been so good at that. Well, here’s me trying to kick start it again.

So I was reading 《活ç?€ã€‹/To Live again this afternoon. Those who know the book will realise soon just how little progress I’ve been making despite all the promises I made to myself to get back into the study over the summer holiday. Anyway, I got to this passage which reminded me of this excellent post at Paper Republic (if only I had the Paper Republicans translation skills) about the scatological nature of the Chinese sense of humour:

我爹是很有身份的人，�他拉屎时就�个穷人了。他�爱在屋里床边的马桶上拉屎，跟牲畜似的喜欢到野地里去拉屎。�天到了�晚的时候，我爹打�饱�，那声�和�蛙�唤差�多，走出屋去，慢��的���的粪缸走去。

My dad was a man with high status, but when he took a shit he was like a poor man. He didn’t like to take a shit on the bedpan beside the bed inside, like livestock he liked to go into the wilderness to shit. Every day when dusk came, my dad burped, a sound that was like a frog croaking, went outside, and slowly wandered towards the excrement vat at the village entrance.

What the hell is a 粪缸 in English, anyway? The word is descriptive enough, but I can’t find an English word to match the image in my mind. Anyway, it continues:

走到了粪缸�，他嫌缸沿�，就抬脚踩上去蹲在上�。我爹年纪大了，屎也跟��了，出��容易，那时候我们全家人都会�到他在��嗷嗷��。

When he got to the excrement vat, he suspected the edge of the vat was dirty, so he lifted his feet, stepped up and squatted on the top. My dad was getting old, and the shit was getting old with him, it didn’t come out too easily, at that time everybody in the family could all hear him at the village entrance crying out “Ow, ow”.

几å??å¹´æ?¥æˆ‘爹一直这样拉屎，到了六å??多å²?还能在粪缸上一蹲就是å?Šæ™Œï¼Œé‚£ä¸¤æ?¡è…¿å°±å’Œé¸Ÿçˆªä¸€æ ·æœ‰åŠ²ã€‚我爹喜欢看ç?€å¤©è‰²æ…¢æ…¢é»‘下æ?¥ï¼Œç½©ä½?他的田地。我女儿凤霞到了三四å²?，常跑到æ?‘å?£çœ‹å¥¹çˆ·çˆ·æ‹‰å±Žï¼Œæˆ‘爹毕竟年纪大了，蹲在粪缸上腿有些哆嗦，凤霞就问他：

“爷爷，你为什么动呀？�

我爹说：“是风�的。�

My dad shat that way for dozens of years, even when he was into his sixties he could still squat on the excrement vat for ages, those two legs of his had the strength of birds’ claws. My dad liked to watch the sky slowly darken, covering his land. When my daughter Fengxia was about three or four she would often run out to the village entrance to watch her granddad shit. My dad was getting old, after all, so squatting on the excrement vat his legs would tremble a little, and Fengxia would ask him:

“Granddad, why are you moving?”

My dad would answer: “It’s the wind blowing me.”

So there you go, another rough-arse translation, and, as always, constructive criticism is most welcome, but I think you’ve got an idea why reading 《活ç?€ã€‹/To Live is a much more fun way to study than any textbook.