From the IHT: “Teachers across rural China, many long retired or forced from classrooms, have joined a recent surge … to demand better treatment and denounce official privilege.”
China Law Blog describes recent changes to Chinese business law that are making a difference to foreigner businessmen in China. It’s not that the laws on the books changed, but some of the factors determining how laws are applied have, and that makes a difference ‘on the ground.’ It’s an interesting example of how law is applied, or not applied, in China, and why.
Mutant Palm lists websites of historical online image collections.
Because laowais can never learn enough karaoke hits! (More songs here.)
梁山伯与茱丽叶/ liáng shānbó yǔ zhù yīngtái
Liang Shanbo & Juliet
The title and lyrics of this song allude to two classic tragic romances: Romeo and Juliet and the “butterfly lovers” Liáng Shānbó and Zhù Yīngtái, often considered Romeo and Juliet’s ancient Chinese equivalent.
Like the Shakespeare play, Liáng Shānbó (the guy) and Zhù Yīngtái (the girl) want to get married but the families won’t cooperate so they end up dying. But unlike Romeo and Juliet, the butterfly lovers become butterflies and fly away together after Zhù Yīngtái jumps into Liáng Shānbó’s tomb while on the way to her arranged marriage. Obviously, such a story was destined for the Chinese pop charts.
Here’s the KTV version, lyrics and guitar chords below:
Here’s the mp3:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Lyrics & Guitar Chords
Download: LiangShanboYuZhuliye.pdf (lyrics & guitar chords with pinyin/English cheatsheet).
歌词 / gēcí / Lyrics (the English is a little overly literal):
我的心唱首歌给你听 / wǒde xīn chàng shǒugē gěi nǐ tīng
My heart sings a song for you to hear
歌词是如此的甜蜜 / gēcí shì rúcǐ de tiánmì
The lyrics are so honey-sweet
可是我害羞我没有勇气 / kěshì wǒ hàixiū wǒ méiyǒu yǒngqì
But I blush, I don’t have the courage
对你说一句我爱你 / duì nǐ shuō yījù wǒ ài nǐ
To say to you the words ‘I love you’
为什么你还是不言不语 / wèishénme nǐ háishì bù yán bù yǔ
Why do you still not speak?
难道你不懂我的心 / nándào (shì) nǐ bùdǒng wǒde xīn
Could it be you don’t understand my heart?
不管你用什么方式表明 / bùguǎn nǐ yòng shénme fāngshì biǎomíng
No matter whatever style you use to make it clear
我会对你说我愿意 / wǒ huì duì nǐ shuō wǒ yuànyì
I will say to you I’m willing
千言万语里 / qiān yán wàn yǔ lǐ
A thousand words in ten-thousand languages
只有一句话能 / zhǐyǒu yījùhuà néng
Only these few words are able
表白我的心 / biǎobái wǒde xīn
To vindicate my heart
千言万语里 / qiān yán wàn yǔ lǐ
A thousand words in ten-thousand languages
只有一句话就 / zhǐyǒu yījùhuà jiù
Only these few words
能够让我们相偎相依 / nénggòu rang wǒ men xiāng wēi xiāng yī
Are enough to let us cuddle each other close
Chorus:
我爱你 你是我的茱丽叶 / wǒ ài nǐ nǐ shì wǒde zhūlìyè
I love you, you’re my Juliet
我愿意变成你的粱山伯 / wǒ yuànyì biànchéng nǐ de liáng shānbó
I’m willing to become your Liáng Shānbó
幸福的每一天 / xìngfú de měiyī tiān
Happiness every single day
浪漫的每一夜 / làngmàn de měiyī yè
Romantic every single night
把爱 / bǎ ài
Hold love…
永远 / yǒngyuǎn
…forever
不放开 / bù fàngkāi
Don’t let go
I love you
我爱你 你是我的罗密欧 / wǒ ài nǐ nǐ shì wǒde luōmìōu
I love you, you’re my Romeo
我愿意变成你的祝英台 / wǒ yuànyì biànchéng nǐde zhù yīngtái
I’m willing to become your Zhù Yīngtái
幸福的每一天 / xìngfú de měiyī tiān
Happiness every single day
浪漫的每一夜 / làngmàn de měiyī yè
Romantic every single night
美丽的爱情 / měilì de àiqíng
Beautiful romance
祝福着未来 / zhùfú zhe wèilái
Blessing the future
Related Posts:
Susan Brownell analyzes China’s Olympic P.R., arguing that “China’s ability to communicate a positive international image was hindered by the domestic political structure.”
If my Chinese homework could speak:
‘How do you spell that in Chinese?’ 哈哈哈！ Silly language student! You don’t spell anything in Chinese! You just suffer!
Bring some cheese, I’ve got the whine! But I promise this post is more than just a pity party cry-in for Mandarin students… it’s also a shameless attempt to provoke sympathy from everybody else. ;)
Actually, I’m curious to hear how other Mandarin students approach Chinese characters, and what their literacy goals are. For many Mandarin language students, Chinese characters are one of the most novel and intriguing — yet also the most disheartening and infuriating — aspect of learning Chinese.
Why Chinese is… ‘special’
You people who aren’t studying Chinese should understand why most people can’t learn Chinese as fast as Spanish or French or some other historically-related-to-English language with a spelling system. Behold! …from the Chinese themselves:
…each character has a unique form, but if you know the form you cannot necessarily read its pronunciation, and if you can read its pronunciation, you cannot necessarily write its form, and if you can read, write, and pronounce it, you don’t necessarily know its meaning, and only when you exhaustedly memorize each character’s form, sound, and meaning can you truly say that you know the character. Also, the strokes of characters are quite complicated.
And that just talks about characters; they haven’t got to words yet, which are often combinations of two or more characters. They should have included: “And even if you know the pronunciation and meaning of all the individual characters in a sentence, you don’t necessarily know what the words are in the sentence, since Chinese words are formed by characters both in isolation and in combination. Only when you’ve memorized the possible character combinations and can you deduce the appropriate usage from their context in the sentence.” And there’s all the 多音字 — characters with more than one pronunciation, never mind all the characters with more than one meaning.
There’s a misleading idea often thrown at Chinese language students that says you only have to know 2000 (or whatever number) characters to read the newspaper, because they did studies and apparently 90-something percent of the characters in daily news are the same 2000. But it’s possible to recognize all the characters in a sentence and still not know what it says. Multiply that number several times over for all the character combinations in daily use and you have a better idea of how much meaning you need to memorize.
Characters pose a special hurdle for Chinese language acquisition, and they know this. Frog in a Well translated an excerpt from a booklet discussing language reform legislation in 1956 (partially quoted above) and the special problem that characters posed to China’s development. According to the booklet, the government saw problems in education and industry due to the relatively long time needed for literacy and the unwieldy nature of a non-alphabetical language. The idea of ditching characters altogether apparently did cross their minds, and they were talking about difficulties Chinese characters pose for native Chinese speakers, never mind foreigners coming to learn Chinese as a second language!
Can you imagine how much Spanish we’d know if we’d spent the last two years in Mexico doing nothing but studying Spanish?
Language Study Goal Disagreement
Chinese takes longer to learn because it’s less accessible (on bad days, I feel like the culture as a whole is less accessible, but that’s beside the point). That doesn’t mean it’s inaccessible, just that there’s more work and time involved. But not everyone believes it’s worthwhile, or even possible, to learn to write Chinese characters.
Among the Chinese learners and teachers with whom I’m acquainted, there’s disagreement regarding what Chinese language students ought to aim for. Ultimately it boils down to (a) each individual’s language learning goals and (b) reality, but opinions for what long-term language learners (people who plan to live and work for several years in Chinese) can hope to accomplish range from “don’t learn characters, just learn pinyin” to “pinyin is not Chinese” and “if you can’t write characters then you don’t really know Chinese.” Many foreigners seem to settle for a compromise: working hard to recognize lots of characters, but not investing much time in learning to write them.
I personally lean toward valuing characters and the ability to write them, and I’m still hoping that over the long haul I’ll eventually be able to call myself literate. But I do have my doubts; maybe that’s simply not a realistic goal for an average-but-hard-working adult language learner. Still, I’m not giving up yet! And now that we’ve all had a good cry, I’m curious to hear what other Mandarin students’ language goals are.
Related Articles:
China Geeks takes a look at a Chinese lesson on cohabitation in China, and the somewhat unique reasons increasing numbers of Mainland couples are opting out of legal marriage.
Five reasons why China intending to spend $7 billion USD on a global news service could be a good thing.
“As he envisions it, there should be a Nigeriatown in China just the way there’s a Chinatown in Nigeria.”
They threw a shoe at President Bush and America was entertained. They threw a shoe at Prime Minister Wen and China was… less than impressed. See here and here – both have comments and video.
