If anyone can advise me of other versions of the below (or advice as to which version is the most useful) please let me know:
Oral:
善有善报，恶有恶报，不是不报，时候未到
or
Written:
善有善报, 恶有恶报，不是不报，时辰未到
I also don’t really understand the 未到 at the end.
关于“阝”，如果在左边是阜，在右边是邑。
[Feel like you’ve read this before? I’ve brought this old post back to the front of the blog because I’ve added a new idiom to the list.]
I’d be interested to hear from anybody who knows of Chinese idioms which correspond with events or stories from the Bible.
Examples are:
肉中刺
Paul’s thorn in the flesh, 2 Corinthians 12:7.
开天辟地
The creation of the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1:1.
良莠不齐
See the parable of the weeds, Matthew 13:24-30.
泥足巨人
See Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, particularly Daniel 2:31-35.
把珍珠丢在猪
Do not cast your pearls before swine, Matthew 7:6.
I don’t know whether these idioms actually originated from the Bible or not. But there is definitely an uncanny similarity.
Before getting hold of this book I thought it was a survey of the pros and cons of the various Chinese dictionaries available. It’s not. It is a discussion of the language from a lexical point of view. Or of Chinese “lexis”.
Aside from an analysis of Chinese words themselves, this book serves as a fantastic collection of lists of vocabulary, which can be learnt together in sets, aiding memory.
As with many Chinese books of this nature, it may be necessary to annotate it yourself, noting whether any given word is still used in China, especially the area you are in or are planning to travel to.
For a less comprehensive vocabulary guide, but much cheaper if you can find it, is An Introduction to Modern Chinese Vocabulary, published by Sinolinghua, Beijing.
Asher likes this song:
小燕子穿花衣，
年年春天来这里。
我问燕子你为啥来，
燕子说这里的春天最美丽。
小燕子告诉你，
今年这里更美丽。
我们盖起了大工厂，
装上了新机器，
欢迎你长期住在这里。
It’s about a beautiful little swallow. The strange thing is that the child singing the story to the swallow is telling it that the area in which they are situated will be even more beautiful when a new factory is built there.
Unless I’m misunderstanding the story, which is always a possibility.
To watch a flash animation of the song, see here or here.
re: 盖起, it’s gàiqǐ r.v. build up (wenlin). For this usage of 起, see Q188 on p112 of Rohsenow.
There’s a website out there which is chock full of materials for learning Chinese.
It’s called Sinosplice.
There’s a page on there which includes an mp3 rap by a flight attendant venting her frustration about her lousy job:
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2004/12/19/rapping-flight-attendant
Check it out.
I’ve just discovered how to embed YouTube videos into the site (I know, I know, about 3 years behind everybody else). So I can see myself going a little crazy with the embedding. This one’s for Asher to watch later. I hope he doesn’t ask for some cake as a result!
We asked a fine young Chinese guy called Calvin to come around to our place on a paid basis to play with Asher and strictly use Chinese.
Calvin works locally, and I got chatting to him and offerred that he come around and teach Asher. It turns out that Calvin is from Wuhan, where we lived for six months last year.
It worked very well. I expected much worse, but Asher was very willing to play and converse in his beginner’s Chinese. Of course Asher did a poo as soon as Calvin arrived, and needed a nappy change. And towards the end of Calvin’s stay there was a bit of a temper tantrum. To be honest I didn’t think Asher would put up with the whole thing at all. He’s only a bit over 2½.
We’re having Calvin over again on Friday. Looking forward to it.
Last night on SBS there was a worthwhile documentary called Traders’ Dreams. It was about Ebay, its popularity, competitors and some profiles of a few of their valued key merchants (valued because of the money they make from them).
Major competitor, Alibaba, is a Chinese company which is resisting Ebay’s dominance, mainly because of their inability to escape their English/German box and a refusal to adopt new business models.
Anyhow. One of the interviewees from the Alibaba side used the Chinese idiom 知彼知己, which means “know your enemy and know yourself”. I checked this out in another dictionary, which switches the second and fourth hanzi, thus 知己知彼, meaning “know yourself and know your enemy”.
I’d appreciate any input as to which version of this idiom is the most common. (I’ve since been advised that the correct version is 知己知彼, and that it is followed by (方能?)百战不殆.
知己知彼方能百战不殆.
I also think this idiom is not entirely incompatible with Christianity. Jesus tells us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48), but he never actually denies that we do have enemies. A liberal minister once tried to pull the wool over my eyes with this idea, it leads nowhere.
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