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Contents
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Qingming Poem by Du Mu with an MP3 Recording
Friday, April 3rd, 2009Yesterday, I posted the poem Qingming by the poet Du Mu (803 – 852) that mentions the Qingming Festival (also called Ching Ming). I asked my friend Ray Lee about it. He grew up in Hong Kong and I wanted to hear his impression about the poem and also my translation of it (below). Here’s what Ray wrote:
This is indeed a very well known poem. We were taught this poem when we were in school. I don’t know if they still teach this in school. Even if they don’t, the school kids are bound to hear it from their parents or on TV or read about it somewhere.
The translation you have is pretty good. I am not sure about the second line though. I have always thought it said, “pedestrians on the road are like ghosts,” because of the rain.
Below you can find the Chinese text, the Pinyin and an English translation I had done of the poem Qingming plus an mp3 of Qingming being recited…
Ching Ming
It’s raining hard at the time of the Ching Ming Festival,
The mourner’s heart is overwhelmed on the road upland.
May I ask where there’s a tavern to drown my sorrows?
The shepherd boy points to Xinghua Village in the distance.清 明
清 明 时 节 雨 纷 纷，
路 上 行 人 欲 断 魂。
借 问 酒 家 何 处 有，
牧 童 遥 指 杏 花 村。
qīng míng shí jié yǔ fēn fēn
lù shàng xíng rén yù duàn hún
jiè wèn jiǔ jiā hé chù yǒu
mù tóng yáo zhǐ xìng huā cūnRay later wrote to me about the second line:
There is another translation on the Internet that is somewhere between my translation and yours. This one says something like travelers all look gloomy and miserable.
Thanks, Ray, for letting us know more about this poem!
The poem was read by Jia Zhou for Librevox.
If anyone would like to comment about the translation, please feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below or to email me at lisa@mamalisa.com .
Below you can read posts about the Chingming Festival…
-Mama Lisa
The Dragon Boat Festival
Monday, June 9th, 2008
The Dragon Boat Festival falls on the fifth day of the fifth moon (month) in the Chinese New Year. This year that’s today!
According to Andrew Sullivan, it falls on this day, “in remembrance of Qu Yuan, a patriotic poet who committed suicide in the Miluo River on the day in 221 BC.” Depending on which story you follow, Qu Yuan was either protesting the corruption of the government, or was so depressed by it, that he killed himself!
The legend is that the villagers raced out onto the river to try to save Qu Yuan, but it was too late. So they threw rice into the river to keep the fish from eating his body. They also beat the water with their paddles to scare away the fish. This race in search of Qu Yuan’s body became the tradition of the dragon boat race.
Every year on the fifth day of the fifth month the villagers threw rice in the river to feed Qu Yuan’s spirit. According to the legend, the spirit of Qu Yuan appeared one night and told the villagers that he was eaten by the river dragon. He said the river dragon was eating the rice they were throwing into the river. So he asked them to wrap the rice in silk and tie it with different colored strings before throwing it in (this became known as zongzi). The colors will scare away the dragon and he won’t be able to untie the strings. He said they should also throw in loose rice. The loose rice would be to feed the dragon and the zongzi would feed Qu Yuan. Today, the tradition is to eat zongzi for the Dragon Boat Festival. Nowadays, zongzi is typically made with rice wrapped in bamboo leaves.
The Dragon Boat Festival is known as the Duanwu Festival in China and Taiwan. It’s known as the Tuen Ng Festival in Hong Kong and Macau.
The Photo is from Dragonboat Racing Festival in Macau 2005 by Iidxplus on Wikipedia, and was slightly edited by Mama Lisa.
The Custom of Eating Dumplings for the Chinese New Year
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about symbolic foods that are eaten around the world for the New Year.
There are symbolic foods that are eaten for the Chinese New Year too. This year, the Chinese New Year celebrations start on February 7th. (It will be the year of the Rat!)
Dumplings are one customary food that’s eaten for the New Year. One reason is that they resemble the old gold money used in China. Thus, dumplings symbolize the hope for prosperity in the coming year. Usually the dumplings are filled with meat.
In parts of Northern China, they even insert a coin into a couple of dumplings. It you’re lucky enough to be served one of those, it’s thought you’ll acquire even more wealth!
Lin wrote to me about the custom in Tianjin, a city that’s southeast of the capital of Beijing, China:
As the Chinese New Year is coming up, there’s something interesting to note here about New Year’s food. In Tianjin, China, people will make vegetarian dumplings, apart from the meat ones for the New Year’s Eve. They eat the vegetarian ones especially at midnight, usually with the fireworks going outside the windows. The vegetarian dumplings signify a coming year which is very clean, with no accidents, no serious affairs, etc.
“Su”, as vegetarian, implies something simple, calm.
The contrary is “Se” as in colour/lust, or “Rou” as in meat/flesh/therefore lust.Interestingly, in other parts of China this habit is not often observed. Not even in Beijing, as far as I can determine, though it’s just 120 kilometers away.
I mentioned this custom to Ray Lee, who was born in Hong Kong. Ray said:
Yeah, that’s interesting. I’ve never heard of it. But then, China is a big country with a lot of different local customs. I am sure there are a lot I haven’t heard of. I remember we would eat a certain kind of vegetable around the New Year simply because its name sounded like “getting rich”. The name of the vegetable is “Fat Choy” (it’s a long black sea moss), which as you may recall sounds just like the “fat choy” in “kung hey fat choy”!
“Kung Hey Fat Choy”, means “Congratulations and Be Prosperous”. It’s something that people say to each other in Cantonese during the Chinese New Year.
To all of you celebrating the Chinese New Year, “Kung Hey Fat Choy”!
-Lisa
Here’s a post I wrote last year about how Yuan Xiao is eaten for the Chinese New Year.
Feel free to comment below about foods you eat for the Chinese New Year!
Multilingual Kids Books on the Web
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008I’ve been asked twice in the past week for free multilingual books.
Here’s a link I found called Books in Multiple Languages. They have English children’s books with translations in Spanish, French, Polish, Italian, Romanian, German, Chinese, Finnish, Swedish, Maori, Greek, Dutch, Farsi (Persian), Afrikaans, Croatian, Turkish, Russian, Japanese, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew, Pennsylvania Dutch, Sloven, Indonesian, Malaysian, Hungarian, Dari, Hindi and Filipino.
If anyone knows of any other good multilingual book links, feel free to let us know about it in the comments below.
Someone was also looking for children’s books with animal sounds around the world. There’s one called Who Says a Dog Goes Bow Wow? by Hank de Zutter. You can click the link to see it on Amazon.
-Mama Lisa
I Need Help with the Chinese Text for a Kids Song called “Count Ducks”
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007I received a wonderful Chinese children’s song recently called Count Ducks. The text I received is a scanned in image – I had a hard time making it look crisp and clear. If anyone can send me the computerized text in Chinese, I’d be grateful. Here’s the graphic, followed by an English translation.
Count Ducks
(English)In front of the
Door under the bridge there are ducks.
Come on count them
Two four six
Seven eight.
Quack, quack
So many ducks.
Countless ducks.
Countless ducks.
Grandpa with a white beard
Chases the ducks away,
Sings in the local
Opera and tell jokes.
Kids, kids, go to
school quickly,
Don’t get a duck egg* on your exam and
Come home with it.
Don’t get a duck egg on your exam and
Come home with it.*This is using a duck egg to represent a score of zero.
Many thanks to Hanchao for contributing and translating this song. Thanks also to Ray Lee for help with the translation.
If anyone can provide the computerized Chinese text for this song, please email me. Thanks! – Lisa
The Chinese New Year – The Year of the Pig
Friday, February 16th, 2007February 18th is the first day of the Chinese New Year. This coming year will be the year of the Golden Pig. It’s considered to be a very lucky, prosperous year. The pig is considered the symbol of fertility. People born in the year of the Pig are thought to be honest, lucky and warm-hearted.
Here’s some info about writing Happy New Year, Pig and Good Luck in Chinese characters…
Happy New Year in Chinese characters is:
You pronounce it in Cantonese as Kung Hey Fat Choy, and in Mandarin as Gong xi fa cai. Both sayings mean “Congratulations and Prosperity!”
Here is the symbol for good luck:
In Mandarin it’s pronounced “fu” and in Cantonese it’s pronounced “fook”. It’s often hung on doors on a red diamond shape banner. Some people hang it upside-down. That’s because the word for upside-down in Mandarin sounds like “dao”, which also sounds like the Mandarin word for “arrive”. So it’s like saying – let good luck arrive.
The Chinese character for Pig is…
Here’s a link with an animation that shows how to write pig in Chinese
Pig is pronounced as “zhu” in both Mandarin and Cantonese – You can hear how to say pig in Cantonese!
You can find more about how to say Happy New Year in Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Korean in my post from last year.
Here you can hear the pronunciation of Happy New Year in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Many thanks to Ray Lee for help with the Chinese characters!
恭喜發財!
Can You Help with a Mandarin (or Cantonese) Chinese Children’s Song?
Thursday, January 18th, 2007Linda wrote:
Dear Mama Lisa,
I spent two years in Taiwan and three in Hong Kong as a child. I was taught a song, I believe in Mandarin, that began as follows:
Gu gu ba ba jung wei da
een ya za wo ja
way gwa
chu dong dong
dong bing
shou ha haI learned this about 40 years ago, so I know things are not right! My friend is adopting a Chinese baby from a province that speaks Mandarin and has asked if I remember any of the language. I would love to be able to teach this little girl a song in her native language. Could you please help me with the proper wording?
Thanks you so much!
Linda McCreedy
If anyone can help out with this song, please email me or comment below.
Thanks!
Lisa
P.S. I asked my friend Ray, who speaks Cantonese, if it sounds Cantonese (just to check). Here’s what he wrote:
It’s probably in Mandarin. “wo ja” sounds like “my family” spoken in Mandarin. In Cantonese it would be “ngor ga”.
Still, the whole thing doesn’t make much sense to me and my co-worker, to whom I forwarded the song. The first line seems to say, “My brother and my dad are great”.
“Dong bing” sounds like “become a soldier” in Cantonese. But then that contradicts with my earlier observation. It would be very helpful if there’s a recording of a person singing this song!
If anyone else can help – or if you can send a recording Linda – that’d be great!
-Lisa
Please Send An Endearing Term for Grandma and Grandpa in Your Language
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006Kathy wrote me…
Dear Mamalisa,
I was delighted to find your website and will be using it in the future. I am researching translations for the word “grandma” in various languages. I am most interested in the familiar, sweet terms children might call this individual. I am aware that in some cultures this would be a different word for the mother or the father’s side of the family. I have spent hours on Internet, through many websites as well as your website and links. I have thus found: Cajun, Hawaiian, Ukrainian, Italian, Scottish, Irish, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, French, Spanish, and Farsi. I am not clear about Russian or Greek since I am not completely sure of their letters. Now I am certainly not expecting you to do hours of research for my project. But I thought you might be familiar with an easier way for me to accomplish my task.
For example, I happened on a page called “I Love You” in Various Languages and found 18 pages for “I love you”. Wow! Anyway, whatever help you can give me would be much appreciated.
Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Kathy
If anyone knows any endearing terms for “grandma” and “grandpa”, including any in those languages listed, please comment below.
Thanks!
Lisa
Greetings and Hand Gestures for the Chinese New Year
Sunday, January 22nd, 2006The Chinese New Year is on January 29th, 2006. It’s the Year of the Dog.
The Chinese New Year is called Sun Lean in Cantonese.
To wish each other a Happy New Year, the Chinese characters are æ?喜發財.
The New Year’s greeting in Cantonese is Kung Hey Fat Choy, which means Congratulations and Be Prosperous. When the New Year’s greeting is said, there is a specific hand gesture. Here’s a picture of the correct hand gesture made for the Chinese New Year.
You shake your hands up and down slightly while making this gesture.
My cousin James, who lives in Shanghai, China, wrote me about what’s said in Mandarin for the Chinese New Year. He said…
Xin nian kuai le means Happy New Year in Mandarin, and is normally said to a young person.
Xin = New
Nian = Year
Kuai le = HappyXin nian jian kang is normally said to an elderly person.
Jian Kang = Good Health
Xin nian hao is normally said to someone you don’t know on the street.
Hao = Good
Gong xi fa cai can also be said for the New Year.
Gong xi = Congratulations
Fa cai = ProsperityXin nian kuai le!
In Vietnam, the New Year is called Tet Nguyen Dan. The Vietnamese New Year’s greeting is Chuc Mung Nam Moi meaning, Happy New Year. (Tet refers to the first morning of the first day of the New Year).
In Korea the New Year is called Sol or Seollal. In Korean they say, Say-hay boke mahn-he pah-du-say-oh, which literally means, Please Receive Many New Year’s Blessings.
Many thanks to Ray Lee for sending me the photo of the correct hand gesture to use for the Chinese New Year, and for help with the Cantonese, and to James Yannucci for help with the Mandarin.
Happy New Year!
Lisa
Come Visit Mama Lisa’s Chinese New Year Page for more about the Chinese New Year.
Come visit the Mama Lisa’s World China Page for Kids Songs from China and
The Mama Lisa’s World Taiwan Page for more Chinese Children’s Songs
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