jon wang

*help fobbyallstar = Ray... thinking of JR...: this medic told me
about taking day and night quale when you first get to a new
surrounding.
jonathan wang: oh yeah?
jonathan wang: does it really work?
*help fobbyallstar = Ray... thinking of JR...: he says it does.
jonathan wang: does he work for Robitussin?
*help fobbyallstar = Ray... thinking of JR...: i don't know.
*help fobbyallstar = Ray... thinking of JR...: i would just take day
and night quale.
jonathan wang: you mean nyquil?
*help fobbyallstar = Ray... thinking of JR...: yeah, that..
jonathan wang: you keep talking as if you are ingesting a bird
jonathan wang: night quail
*help fobbyallstar = Ray... thinking of JR...: haha. nice..
jonathan wang: you and your shitty english.
*help fobbyallstar = Ray... thinking of JR...: that must be it.

Loading mentions Retweet

..a highly confident woman."
>>
Corinna: hi, Jon!
Corinna: let me find her email for u
jonathan wang: fantastic
Corinna: my-name17[at]hotmail.com
Corinna: she has sent email to you, please check your email
jonathan wang: nice email
jonathan wang: my-name
Corinna: ha
Corinna: very confident!
jonathan wang: why is that confident?
Corinna: Because of "My Name" is sound like "that is me!"
jonathan wang: hmm. i dont see how that expresses a high level of self-esteem
jonathan wang: do you mean its very anonymous?
Corinna: i mean it is positive
Corinna: i think it's great that a woman can show confidnet
jonathan wang: how do you know its even a woman if the email is myname-17?
Corinna: i dont' know, but i can see her in the office.

Loading mentions Retweet

Continuing from the last post, when I think of ancient chinese
scholars, I'm always reminded of this funny moment I had with my
friend Debbie when we attended saturday chinese school back in
Fullerton.
 
As usual, we were in language class and the topic of discussion was a
story about a scholar who was disrespected by some king, even though
he was the 'wisest of wise men', whatever cliche you would like to
insert. That part is unimportant. The only relevant element for this
blog post was that this man was blind. In chinese, '瞎' pronounced
shia1, is the character for blindness. To say someone is a blind guy
is to call him a '瞎子' for shia1 zi3.
 
When we broke into groups for discussion, Debbie, this entire time,
was thoroughly confused. She thought the story involved an
anthropomorphized shrimp; some elaborate tale of a scholarly shrimp
living in exile walking the streets, begging for money. She even
justified her confusion by using the white rabbit and the entire
fantastical story from Alice In Wonderland as basis for
interpretation.
 
As it turns out, her bubble was burst with the realization that
shrimp, in chinese, is '蝦', which is also pronounced, shia1.

Loading mentions Retweet

To commemorate the dragon boat festival today, here is a bit on how I
learned about it. Keep in mind that some of the facts in the story
may be exaggerated due to my memory.
 
Growing up, my parents were a big fan of tradition. We celebrated all
the major chinese holidays. After a while, without knowing the
reasoning behind it, it would just become a big blur. For instance,
some holidays I was expecting mooncakes, but instead we cleaned the
house. Its too bad I lived in California for much of my wonder years
because fireworks were illegal; you could light those on any holiday
and it would be appropriate. That is one great advantage of being
chinese, we invented fireworks.
 
What I remember most about this holiday is eating this stuff called
'粽子', pronounced zhong4 zi3, which is basically a chinese tamale
filled with rice. I always liked eating them, but I never really knew
where they came from, or why they were wrapped like that. So my mom
told me the story of 屈原, romanized to Qu Yuan, which was this minister
of one of the great warring states. To make a long story short, and
she did, Qu Yuan was exiled by the king after he fell out of favor
with the other corrupt officials, and he decided life was not worth
living and drowned himself in the river with a pair of concrete shoes.
 This is also not before he wrote a bunch of poems reflecting on his
apprehension for the future and his love of the nation-state. The
zhong zi are thrown in the water by the citizens to make sure he
doesn't go hungry. Let me correct myself on that one. Last week, 18
years later, I learned from my Dad that this is incorrect. The zhong
zi are thrown into the river to feed the fish and keep them from
eating Qu Yuan. My Dad said that, as a kid he got it wrong too, so it
was only fair that I received the truth at roughly the same time he
got his epiphany. As far as the dragon boat racing is concerned, I only made the
connection that the zhong zi were thrown from people in boats.
 
What's funny to me is, while reflecting, I'll never forget this, but
my mom would say that he was a true chinese patriot. But back then,
I'm going to elementary school to discover that true patriots, at
least the American ones, bear arms and promote militant action. They
even had awesome catchphrases like 'Give me liberty, or give me
death', and 'the British are coming'. But our patriot wrote some
nationalist poems and thats that. I'm not knocking on our history,
I'm just saying, it would have been nice to have something to compete with
the American ones, even something to the tune of using firecrackers to
at least burn a part of the palace down. Or took some concubines for
his own as slaves and started a new colony, I mean, no judgment in
brainstorming here.

Loading mentions Retweet

While I was eating lunch today, my friend commented that I completely
picked my rice bowl clean. While I don't like to waste food,
truthfully, I have to say that it is completely out of superstition.
 
Growing up, my parents would always remind us of the relentless toil
and suffering chinese farmers went through to put a bowl of rice in
front of me, and the least I could do was finish it. Usually the
story of The Good Earth wasn't enough for us so my parents, especially
my mom, resorted to fear as a motivator.
 
The following were used on a regular basis, and they always began as a
conditional statement, "if you don't finish your rice...":
 
"...you will sustain the worst acne on your face"
"...your future wife/husband will have the worst acne on their face"
"...you will go blind"
"...you will have bad luck" (this one is quite possibly the laziest
version I have heard)
 
and my personal favorite,
 
"...your children will be born with no knees"
 
I know some of you reading this have most likely received the same
treatment, and if there are other variations out there, I'd like to
hear them too.
 
I better go wash my face, just to be safe.

Loading mentions Retweet

魚乾: he just arrived
魚乾: i told him the problem
魚乾: he is trying
魚乾: he look like a mass
魚乾: 這樣說對嗎
jonathan wang: you mean a mess?
魚乾: oh ya
jonathan wang: mass = 大量
魚乾: hmm
jonathan wang: mess = 混亂
魚乾: that's right
i mean "he look like a mess
魚乾: he looks like a mess

Loading mentions Retweet

jonathan wang: late
jonathan wang: late is a cool way of saying 'later'
魚乾: oh okok
魚乾: see you late?
jonathan wang: no no
jonathan wang: just use late
jonathan wang: one word
jonathan wang: like 'bye'
jonathan wang: you dont say 'see you bye'
魚乾: oh ok
魚乾: that's right
魚乾: if you don't explain late, i will surly get confused
jonathan wang: word
魚乾: late = =+
jonathan wang: nice

Loading mentions Retweet

One thing that I find a bit funny is the complete reversal of
connotation behind the colors red and green when someone like myself
steps from USA to Taiwan.
 
For instance, while I was watching the financial news on TV I kept on
seeing all trades and movements in bright green colors. Naturally,
since I'm used to the ticker for CNBC, my brain started thinking that
the Dow Jones was on a furious rally going up 600 points. Since the
asian reporter spoke too fast, and I usually watch CNBC on mute
anyway, I failed to notice that it was in fact the exact opposite,
that GREEN = BAD, and I was witnessing a massive sell-off. The moment
of truth came after I had just told my Dad to sell, and as punishment
for bad financial advice, I am held responsible for his realized
losses.
 
Red is very popular with chinese people. The character is '紅',
pronounced hong2. In fact, to say someone or something is red
informally implies that someone or something is very popular and
well-desired. Do so in the US and you might as well change your name
to Joseph McCarthy. From what I know, the color mainly symbolizes
luck, fortune, basically anything good. In Asia, when in doubt, wear
red. In the US, this is not the case. When I was young, I used to
get in trouble in elementary school for not having the proper writing
implements, i.e. I would use a pen instead of a pencil. Then I got
really busted one day for not only using a pen, but a red pen. A red
pen is a correction pen, a grading pen and a pen used to highlight
emergency situations (This is explained to me by a very, very agitated
teacher at the time). One time, on a homework assignment, I received
-2 points for using a pen, and then -1 point for using a red one. How
it got to be this extreme, I do not know. Then again, when I got to
high school and learned about socialism and the red-scare, I now
understand that as a child I was passively promoting the left
opposition.
 
So, I altered an old useful mnemonic to help me switch gears when I go
back and forth from countries:
 
'Green means go, red means your a communist'
 

Please don't make the same mistake I did, I hope you all have been inspi(red).

Loading mentions Retweet

Growing up, my family always ate dinner together. Most of the time we
ate Chinese food, and often our meals would feature vegetables grown
from our backyard. When my Dad was at the Pennsylvania State
University, he received his PhD in Soil Physics; needless to say, I
don't know anyone else with this distinction. But it transformed my
Dad into an expert, lawful horticulturist, and thus every dinner we
enjoyed whatever was in stock. Because my Dad never used
insecticides, I would only have to wash the vegetables once to get rid
of the dirt. The rule of thumb passed down to me was that, for
vegetables grown thyself, wash once, and anything from a store, wash
thrice.
 
On average, we had at least two dishes with my Dad's plants. It used
to be that, before eating, my Dad would give a brief introduction
about the vegetable, particularly how he took care of it, what kind of
insects he had to ward off, the exceptional harvest, etc. It was like
sitting down with a wine connoiseur, except the information was
largely uninteresting.
 
It didn't get worse until one day my Dad took it a step further and
started quizzing me and my sister. I would literally sit down with my
chopsticks and my Dad would put his hand over the dishes to block me,
and like some sort of toll-bridge troll from Three Billy Goats Gruff,
I was allowed to eat if I answered the questions successfully. The
main rule was that I had to answer in Chinese, I could not use
English.
 
Here is an example interchange:
 
my dad: '等等等!'
( '等' pronounced 'dun3', equivalent to saying, in rapid fire, 'wait wait wait')
 
me: what.
 
my dad (points to dish #1): '這什麼菜?'
(pronounced 'zhe4 sheh3 muh2 tsai4', for 'what vegetable is this?')
 
me: uh. 菠菜.
(pronounced 'buo1 tsai4' , for 'spinach')
 
my dad: 菠菜, 你的頭. (points to dish #2)
('Spinach, my ass'; please refer to a previous post for the origin of 你的頭)
 
me: hmm, 莧菜?
(pronounced xian4 tsai4, which is this vegetable with red coloring, an amaranth)
 
my dad: 錯. 不行吃.
(pronounced 'tsuo4. bu4 shing2 chi1.' for 'wrong. you cannot eat')
 
Its important to note that this example is not fixed day to day. My
Dad would often change it up, make it so that it wasn't predictable
and easy. On some nights, I only got one try to get each dish right.
Sometimes, I was required to get them all right before I could eat any
of them, the all-or-nothing model. Sometimes, I could eat the ones I
got right only. Sometimes we would play 'hot potato', and on the ones
where I wasn't sure, I was allowed to 'pass' to my sister, and if she
got it wrong she wasn't allowed to eat, but I was. Then when that got
old, my Dad changed it from competitive to cooperative mode, so now my
sister and I had to work together, otherwise we both couldn't eat.
Sometimes, we had to determine if the vegetable was actually grown in
the backyard or bought from the store. My Dad would also preemptively
draw the curtains so we couldn't look outside for a hint.
 
As if it weren't already hard enough to get kids to eat vegetables, I
had to know them before I was allowed to eat them. Does that even make
sense?

Loading mentions Retweet

I think the hardest part of learning any language is being able to
recognize the right definition of a word or phrase when it comes to
homonymity. In English it all depends on understanding the context
and it is no different in Chinese; unfortunately, with my limited
depth of the Chinese language (I can read soundly at the 6th grade
level) I tend to only recognize one definition, one context and then
misapply it.
 

For instance, one day my dad and I were watching TV and this music

comes on, and my dad starts humming along because the music is reminiscent

of what his junior high and high school played during award
ceremonies, i.e. the teacher would present some kind of plaque to him
for being an outstanding student. On a side note, in my family, the
award for 'most improved' is actually not something to brag about,
because my parents would point out that the award also points out that
you were once a poor performer, instead of being initially stellar,
which is where you should be. At all times. I couldn't find an
instance of this song on Youtube so I reconstructed it on my keyboard
here:

Click here to download:

awardmusic.WAV (158 KB)

It loops over and over, and is analogous to 'pomp and circumstance'
played at a high school graduation ceremony.
 
During this time, my dad is explaining to me that this piece is just
known as '頒獎' music, pronounced ban1 jiang3. The definition of this
phrase is exactly 'to award prizes' where '頒' is a verb.
Coincidentally, because of all the talk about school and academics my
dumbass self assumes that my dad is talking about '班獎', where '班' and '頒'
are homonyms, ban1. This '班' literally translates to class, or like
grade, so my own made up phrase '班獎' had a definition of 'classroom
award', which to me made perfect sense. Since most awards were
usually for some academic achievement, I was able to use this phrase
without impunity.
 
That is, until last year, I was in Taiwan on business watching the
Golden Horse awards, the '金馬獎', pronounced jing1 ma2 jiang3, where '金'
is 'gold' and '馬' is 'horse'. This ceremony is analogous to the US
Oscar proceedings. Anyway, all throughout the show they invite
celebrities to come up and present the different awards, standard fare
in these programs, but the emcee would say it as so and so is coming
up to '頒獎' this and '頒獎' that. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there getting
kind of confused because, obviously, this isn't occurring in a
classroom, the awards are not academic, and worst of all, theres no
'頒獎' music, which was highly unsettling.
 
Worse, I realized this when I came back to the US only after talking
to my friend Dennis over instant messenger. I asked him about the
'頒獎' music, and to do so, I had to type the characters in. He
confirmed the existence of it, except he wrote '頒' to my '班'. Well,
now that I know that, at least I showed improvement. 

Loading mentions Retweet