电影:《功夫之王》/ Movie: The Forbidden Kingdom

我早上一边锻炼身体，一边看电影。
我最近看了一部电影，叫做《功夫之王》。
是关于很喜欢功夫电影的一个美国人的。
这个年轻人竟然在古代的中国醒来。
在那里他需要找到美猴王。

看电影以前，我以为故事会很好，
因为《西游记》就是电影的灵感。
虽然故事原来不太好，但是电影值得看，
因为李连杰和成龙都表演。
这是他们一起表演的唯一的电影。

In the mornings I like to watch movies while working out. Recently I saw a movie called The Forbidden Kingdom. It's about an American who really likes kung fu movies. This young man unexpectedly wakes up in ancient China. There he has to find the Monkey King.

Before seeing the movie, I thought the plot would be better than it was, because the movie was inspired by Journey to the West. Although it turned out to be not very good, the movie is still worth seeing because both Jet Li and Jackie Chan are in it. This is the only movie the two have performed in together.

我在看《西游记》。/ I'm reading "Journey to the West."

我最近忙着看一本中文书。
书就是《西游记》，可是我在读的版本是为儿童改写的。
虽然如此，我常常需要查词典 （比方说：樵夫），所以我看得很慢。
还有些地方我完全看不懂。那些地方常常是关于佛教的。

在故事我看了怎么美猴王是从石头出生的。
他游很久才找到菩提祖师。
祖师把美猴王收为徒，叫做他“孙悟空”。
我刚读的部分是关于孙悟空学会驾云的。

Recently I've been busy reading a Chinese book.
The book is actually Journey to the West, but the version I'm reading has been adapted for children.
Even so, I often need to look things up in the dictionary (e.g. "woodsman"), so I read very slowly.
And there are some parts I totally don't understand. Those parts are often about Buddhism.

In the story, I've read how the Monkey King was born from a stone.
He traveled for a long time before finding a very enlightened monk.
The monk accepted the Monkey King as his disciple, calling him "Sun Wukong."
The part I just read is about Sun Wukong learning how to fly on a cloud.

In this YouTube video of a BBC Olympics ad, you can see the Monkey King emerging from a stone and flying on a cloud. See also my post from July 26, 2008.



Language notes:
The surname 孙 Sūn is homophonous with, and resembles, the character 狲 sūn meaning "monkey."

美猴王 měi hóu wáng, which the Monkey King calls himself, is literally "Beautiful Monkey King."

奥林匹克运动会 / Olympics

虽然奥林匹克运动会在两个月以前结束了，但是在博客里我还没提到。
我的借口是我太忙着看比赛，没有时间写。

我最喜欢看的运动是跳水和体操。
但我没有料想到羽毛球那么精彩刺激的运动！

因为我用美国的电视频道看比赛，所以我不常听人说中文。
因此对我的中文来说，看奥运会没用，但我仍然觉得非常好看。

Although the Olympics ended two months ago, I still haven't mentioned them in the blog.
My excuse is that I was too busy watching events and didn't have time to write.

My favorite events were diving and gymnastics.
I didn't expect badminton to be such an exciting event!

Since I was watching the games on American TV, I seldom heard people speaking Chinese.
As a result, as far as my Chinese goes, watching the Olympics wasn't useful, but I think it was still extremely cool to watch.

Language notes:

奥林匹克运动会 Àolínpǐkè yùndòng huì is the full way to say "Olympic Games" and is literally more like "Olympic Sports Meet."

奥运会 Àoyùnhuì is a short way of saying the same thing taking the first character of each of the main bits 奥 Ào of 奥林匹克, 运 yùn of 运动, and 会 huì.

Putting together just the first character of each word is sort of the Chinese equivalent of an acronym or abbreviation. Another example would be 北大 Běidà for 北京大学 Běijīng Dàxué "Beijing University."

三聚氰胺牛奶到了波士顿吗？/ Has melamine milk reached Boston?

Boston Herald报导了波士顿中国城的两家商店卖"大百兔奶糖"。这种糖果在英国、新加坡、新西兰被证实含有三聚氰胺。"大百兔奶糖"是从中国上海进口的。

The Boston Herald reported that two stores in Boston's Chinatown are selling "[Big] White Rabbit Milk Candy." This type of candy has been confirmed to contain melamine in England, Singapore, and New Zealand. "White Rabbit Milk Candy" is imported from Shanghai, China.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1121369

BBC报道了新加坡当局警告人不要买"大百兔奶糖"。

The BBC reported that Singapore authorities were warning people not to buy "White Rabbit Milk Candy".

新加坡：大白兔奶糖含三聚氰胺 / Singapore: White Rabbit Milk Candy has melamine

中秋节 / Mid-Autumn Festival

今天是中秋节。我没有月饼。
一个小朋友祝我中秋节快乐。

Today is the Mid-Autumn festival. I have no mooncakes.
A "small friend" wishes me a Happy Mid-Autumn Festival.

Language notes:
"Mid-autumn festival" is a literal translation of 中秋节 zhōngqiūjié.
月饼 yuébǐng "mooncakes" are traditionally eaten during this festival.

Here is a poem by the Tang dynasty poet 李白 Lí Bái, which features the words 秋 qiū "autumn" and 月 yué "moon". The title given is "Autumn Air", but 秋风 is more literally "Autumn Wind". Below the text there is a literal translation on the left and a more idiomatic translation on the right. This is linked from chinese-poems.com.

城外的中国饭馆 / Chinese restaurants outside the city

波士顿的中国城有很多饭馆。
当然那里的一些饭馆非常好。
但是别的地方也有很好的中国饭馆。
波士顿报纸刊登这个：
8 ways to go for gastronomic gold - The Boston Globe

Boston's Chinatown has lots of restaurants. Of course some of the ones there are extremely good. But other places have good Chinese restaurants too.
The Boston newspaper published this:
8 ways to go for gastronomic gold - The Boston Globe

在这八家饭馆中，六家我没去过。
我去过王的饭馆很多次,
很喜欢吃他们的菜。
我最喜欢的是干烧四季豆和葱油饼。
水饺又好吃又著名。
Of these eight, there are six I haven't been to.
I've been to Wang's many times; I really like their food. My favorites are the spicy dry-cooked string beans and scallion pancake. The dumplings are delicious and famous.

不久以前我的一个朋友给我介绍Gitlo's.
在那里每天都能吃点心。
比星期日去中国城方便多了。
因为我只去了三次了，所以还有很多菜我没吃过。
我最喜欢的是叉烧包。

Not long ago a friend of mine introduced me to Gitlo's. You can eat dimsum there every day. It's much more convenient than going to Chinatown on Sundays. I've only gone three times so far; so there are still a lot of dishes I haven't tried. My favorite is the roast pork buns.

您推荐哪一家中国饭馆？哪些菜？请您留评论。
Which Chinese restaurants do you recommend? What dishes? Please leave a comment.

用中文点菜 / Order food in Chinese:

• 水饺 shuǐjiǎo "dumpling"
• 干烧四季豆 gānshāo sìjì dòu "dry-cooked string beans"
• 葱油饼 cōng yóubǐng "scallion pancake"
• 点心 diǎnxin "dimsum"
• 叉烧包 chāshāobǎo "roast pork bun"

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杭州市市长 / The Mayor of the city of Hangzhou

上上个星期六我认识了杭州市市长！
他姓蔡。蔡市长来了波士顿
因为杭州和波士顿是姊妹市。
蔡市长参观波士顿儿童博物馆
“杭州少年”展览。
他跟大概十位杭州政府官员一起也参观哈佛大学。
我很荣幸能给他们介绍一下。
我们在校园走走，去看哈佛博物馆很有名的玻璃花。
The Saturday before last I met the mayor of Hangzhou!
His last name is Cai. Mayor Cai came to Boston because Hangzhou and Boston are "sister cities". Mayor Cai visited the Boston Children's Museum exhibit "Children of Hangzhou". He, along with about 10 civil servants, also visited Harvard University. I was honored to be able to show them around a bit. We walked around the Yard and went to see the Harvard Museum's famous glass flowers.

在这儿您能看蔡市长在波士l顿拍的一些照片.
You can see pictures taken of Mayor Cai in Boston here.

杭州在哪里？看看地图.
Where is Hangzhou? Have a look at the map.


View Larger Map

iPhone: 汉字输入 / Chinese character input

连第一个iPhone 也能看汉字 。

比方说，在电子邮件里或者在网上等等。
Even the first version of the iPhone could display Chinese (in Unicode encoding), for example, in e-mail, on the web, etc. (see right).

不过从固件更新到了2.0版本起来，也能输入汉字。

打拼音，写在手记上都可以。

But since the 2.0 firmware update, you can enter Chinese characters either by typing pinyin or writing directly on the screen (see below).

The pinyin input even recognizes 2-character words. Below, you can see how after typing in "xiezi", my first two choices are 鞋子 xiézi "shoe" and 写字 xiězì "write character(s)". This example is interesting because the ITABC pinyin input in the full Mac OS doesn't seem to give 写字 as an option for this string. The handwriting recognition also works well and can be even faster than typing pinyin.

These input methods are enabled in the iPhone Settings>General. From there, go either to International>Keyboards or Keyboards>International (both ways take you to the same screen). At the bottom, you can choose Chinese (simplified) and/or Chinese (traditional).

For each, you can enable pinyin and/or handwriting. Once you have more than one input system, tapping the small globe at the bottom of the keyboard moves from one to the next in a set order.

Since I haven't been taking formal classes for a little over a year now, I haven't had to handwrite much and I realized that I was forgetting characters left and right. So now as a learning device, the iPhone rocks, because even shooting off a text message or posting to the blog gives me an opportunity to slip in some practice, without making time to sit down with pen and paper.

Now I really hope Apple introduces handwriting recognition into the Mac OS, so I can hook up a little graphics tablet to my laptop.

电影/Movie：Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

明天 （2008年8月1日）在美国将推出。

To be released in the US tomorrow (8/1/08).

怎么说 "blog"? / How do you say "blog"?

因为我应该知道用中文怎么说blog，所以我查了词典。

原来有四个词！

Since I ought to know how to say "blog" in Chinese, I looked it up in the dictionary. It turns out there are four words (or expressions)!

1. 网志 wǎngzhì "web log"
2. 网络日记 wǎngluò rìjì "online diary/journal"
3. 部落格 bùluògé
4. 博客 bókè

The first two are translations (or calques) of the full form "web log." The latter two are transliterations of the common form "blog".

Language note: 网 wǎng can literally mean "web" (as in a spider's), but is also used for the [World Wide] Web. 网 wǎng can also literally mean "net" (e.g. when talking about fishing or tennis), as well as network/internet.

Now how to choose? Well, 网络日记 is a bit long and literal. 部落格 seems weird since it's a 3-character word. 博客 is apparently more common (based on Google search) and it comes up immediately when using pinyin input (网志 doesn't seem to be recognized as a word). So 博客 it is!

为什么 《东游记》？/ Why "Journey to the East"?

中国人一定懂我为什么叫做博客《东游记》。

因此我用英文给别人讲解。

The name of this blog is a play on name of the novel 西游记 Xīyóujì Journey to the West, substituting 东 dōng "east" for 西 xī "west".

First published ca. 1590, Journey to the West is one of the four great classical Chinese novels; these are often sold in sets (as in the photo of a children's edition below, where the other three novels are propping open 西游记).

Journey to the West tells the story of a Buddhist monk's trip to India with his disciples, one of whom is the Monkey King (the two are pictured below, with the latter riding a cloud). The Monkey King is a popular figure in Chinese culture; part of his story is retold in Gene Yuen Yang's graphic novel American Born Chinese (more on that book in another entry).

Read more about 西游记 Xīyóujì Journey to the West on Wikipedia.

Language note: While Journey to the West is the usual English rendering of the title, the meaning of the characters 游记 yóujì is literally more like "travel record/notes".

电影：功夫熊猫 / Movie: Kung Fu Panda

我看了两次！第二次是在IMAX电影院的。
虽然我觉得电影的故事不太好，
我觉得动画很好看。
中国风景他们画得很漂亮。
I saw it twice, the second time in IMAX. Although I didn't think the story was that good, I thought the animation was good. The scenery of China was very pretty.

Pros: scenery, lack of bodily-function humor, decent female characters, kung fu!
Cons: (granted, most of these are shared by many other American children's movies): too much physical slapstick, lame psychological excuses (the panda eats too much because he's unhappy!), villain with a British accent.

我和一些中国人讨论这部电影。
多数喜欢，但是觉得有点奇怪。
一来，熊猫很难看。中国人画的熊猫都很可爱。
I talked to some Chinese people about the movie. Most of them liked it, but thought it a bit strange. First, the panda is ugly. Pandas drawn by Chinese people are all cute.
(Compare also Japan's Tarepanda. Know of other cute pandas? Please leave a comment.)

二来，熊猫的父亲怎么是鸭子？
Second, how can the panda's father be a duck (or goose)?
(The Shanghai Daily mocks a lawsuit brought against DreamWorks over this.)

我的看法是，在美国很多孩子不像他们的父母。
美国白人常常抱养从非洲或者亚洲来的孩子。
如果父亲和母亲的种族不一样，孩子可能不像他们。
The way I see it, in the US, lots of children don't look like their parents. Caucasian Americans often adopt children from Africa or Asia. Or if a mother and father are of different races, the child may not look much like them. So I think Americans have less trouble accepting this sort of thing.

三来，蛇是电影的一个英雄。蛇应该是坏蛋。

Third, a snake is one of the movie's heroes. Snakes should be bad guys.

虽然我也想不出动画中好蛇的角色，

但是五位功夫高手的那些动物都代表传统的武术路。

Although I can't think of a good snake character in a movie either, the animals of the "Furious Five" represent traditional martial arts styles. This is even explained in one of the trailers (use the widget above to view). For me, this nifty touch overrides the connotations of the specific animals.

(Any one know any good guy snake characters?)

Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion of the movie.

Language note: 熊猫 xiōngmāo "panda" is a compound of the characters for "bear" and "cat".

Sometimes also called 大熊猫 dàxiōngmāo, roughly analogous to Eng. "giant panda".

Chinese you can learn from the movie:
The panda's kung fu master is called "Shifu" (although it's pronounced poorly in the film), that is 师傅 shīfu "master".
The elder master, who is a tortoise, is called "Oogway", that is 乌龟 wūguī "tortoise".

我介绍一下

大家好！欢迎来我的blog。
我的中文名字叫林爱。
我是美国人。
2005年开始学习中文了。
去年我不上课了，
所以我要找到办法练习。
也要试试写blog。
结果就是这个。

Bi-lingual blogging

I've decided to try blogging, partly about my experience learning Chinese. 

我决定试试关于我学中文的经验写blog。 

This will also be a way to practice my Chinese, so some posts will be in Chinese, some in English, some a bit of both.