oh no…
 Update: Nobody panic. I guess I just ran into heavy traffic this morning. You know what Beijing’s traffic is like. It’s all back to normal now.
Wikipedia is going really slowly today. I hope it’s just some technical problem.
春桃
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on July 19, 2007
We watched 春桃/A Woman for Two (what a silly English name) last night. Jiang Wen rocks. But I thought, judging by the style, technique, colour, technology, etc, it must be really, really old, like 1950s, and I couldn’t figure out how Jiang Wen could be so old as to have starred in such a film. Actually it was made in 1988. Anyway, it was a good film, highly recommended. Kind of complex and confusing, nothing patronisingly simple like too many modern films, but also not ridiculously ornate and overblown like the rubbish Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige have decided to waste their talent on of late. Pretty rubbish is still just rubbish. No, Chun Tao got it right. And it managed to end the film leaving it wide open, no facile, saccharine happy ending like the shite that comes out of Hollywood. Good film, in other words. Watch it.
I also tried to watch 黄土地/Yellow Earth, but we had a visitor and conversation which made it too difficult for me to follow the film. Old film in Putonghua only with no subtitles, English or Chinese, means I need space and peace and quiet to concentrate on it. Anyway, it certainly looks good, or at least, what I did get to see looked good, so I’ll have another look some time when I can concentrate on it.
grrrrrr
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study on July 18, 2007
One thing I’m really starting to dislike about this scholar tree in Hongdong is it changes its birds like it changes its underwear. First it was sparrow hawks, then crows, then back to sparrow hawks, and now cranes all of a sudden. Just pick a bird and stick with it. Really.
ocean tuber
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study on July 18, 2007
lzh and I watched 《美丽的大脚》 a few days ago and it was on CCTV 6 again last night. I first thought it was filmed in northern Shaanxi, but no, it was actually filmed in Ningxia. Anyway, the village in which the film is set produces one major crop: Potatoes. Thing is, they call potatoes 洋芋, which the dictionary marks as dialect, and which I was surprised shows up so quickly on this IME. This 芋 character is defined as taro or tuber crop in my big dictionary, but only as taro in the Xinhua Zidian. It’s also used in 山芋, meaning sweet potato. I would also guess that the inclusion of æ´‹ in 洋芋 shows that the potato was introduced by evil Western imperialists, but I could be wrong on that.
just ignore me
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on July 18, 2007
The last two days I’ve been waking up early. Too early, this morning, as in I was already wide awake when the alarm went off for lzh to get up and go to work. The result: I want to be trying to finish off that article about the Great Scholar Tree (I have got to go to Hongdong one of these days. I have to see what all the fuss over this tree is about), but I feel like I should be in bed asleep but I can’t get to sleep. Oh well, I’ll get over it.
The good thing about this morning is the rain, though, which seemed to start with a heavy downpour sometime in the wee small hours when the sun’s first rays were trying to poke their way through the cloud and humid murk that have shrouded Beijing the last few days weeks months. It was that first downpour that woke me up, although I did manage to doze off for a while afterwards. Not long enough, though. Unfortunately the rain had stopped by about nine, and although it’s still overcast and there’s a chance it could rain again some time today, I suspect where back to that rainless constant humid murk.
So far this has been one of the most frustrating summers I’ve ever seen. Constant humid murk and the constant promise or even threat of rain, but very little rain actually falling. And very little sunshine, either. What’s the point in cloudy, humid weather if it’s not going to rain? What’s the point in not raining if it’s not going to be bright and sunny?
eerghhh
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study on July 17, 2007
Well, first of all, I translate too slowly. Something to do with my lack of character knowledge and reading skills.
I’ve been translating that article lzh sent me on the Great Scholar Tree of Guangji Temple in Hongdong County, Linfen, Shanxi. I’m only about halfway through. It’s not even that long an article, but it’s just taking me ages to slog through it. Well, one problem is holes in my dictionary. It’s hard to patch the holes in my knowledge when there’s holes in the dictionary identical to the holes in my knowledge.
But one thing that has struck me as I’ve been reading about Yanqing and Shanxi the last couple of weeks is the constant movement in Chinese history. I mean, people, far from doing the stereotypical thing and staying very close to home and family, have been almost constantly packing up and moving far away. Well, not constantly, but the view of Chinese history I’ve gotten the last couple of weeks has involved a whole lot of mass movements of people, not too dissimilar to the Spring Festival rush, but more permanent. For example, Hongdong’s Great Scholar Tree is so important because it marks the jumping off point for the huge number of people the government moved out of southern Shanxi in the early years of the Ming dynasty. But not long before then, towards the end of the Yuan dynasty, vast hordes of people moved in to southern Shanxi to escape the floods, famines and wars plaguing Yellow and Huai valleys in Henan, Hebei, Shandong and parts of Anhui. And then, of course, the southern Xiongnu settled in the Linfen area during the Eastern Han. And fast forward to the early twentieth century and lzh’s great grandfather put his two kids in a bucket each, slung them on a carrying pole, and hiked over to Yanqing. Mass migration and refugees and generally movement of people seems to be as much a part of Chinese history as settlement.
Well, that’s the impression I’ve been getting recently, anyway.
And another question all this study has raised is: What the hell is ethnicity, anyway?
bloody scholar bloody trees
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study on July 17, 2007
And so a perfectly ordinary æ§?, or Chinese scholar tree or pagoda tree had to go and become a 汉æ§?, for which I can find no definition. So I’m just going to stick with Chinese scholar tree.
so…
I just noticed Baidu has a å›½å¦ search service thingy. “å?ƒå¹´å›½å¦ï¼Œç™¾åº¦ä¸€ä¸‹.” Right. Must try it some time.
grr
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study on July 17, 2007
I’m trying, but so far not really succeeding, to find out if the 红巾军起义 has an established, accepted English name. Wikipedia was not helpful. My history books are all up in the village. Google seems to think I only want search results written entirely in Chinese. I think I’m just going to have to make up my own English name and hope somebody comes along to correct me.
hmmm
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study on July 17, 2007
One dictionary says � is the Chinese scholartree (why is scholartree one word?), the other says it is Sophora japonica (pagoda tree). Wikipedia only confuses the issue with this:
Styphnolobium japonicum (L.) Schott, the Pagoda Tree (Chinese Scholar, Japanese pagodatree; syn. Sophora japonica), is native to eastern Asia (mainly China; despite the name, it is introduced in Japan), is a popular ornamental tree in Europe and North America, grown for its white flowers, borne in late summer after most other flowering trees have long finished flowering. It makes a broad, spreading tree to 10-20 m tall and as much broad.
Still, it seems that the Chinese scholar tree and pagoda tree are one and the same.