The new test system has some nice features (freely editable CSS files, for one thing), but others aren't so hot. One of the reasons I chose BlogChina over BlogCN was that the text display here wraps English text correctly; the BlogCN processing software puts non-breaking spaces between every word, making things impossible to read. Well, the new system appears to be taking a step backward (in fact, many of the features are nearly identical to those at BlogCN), so it remains to be seen whether I will have to find another solution.

And since the test system has dropped two of my posts, I probably won't be updating for a while. Check the RSS to hear when things change.

UPDATE: The categories are back, and there's a bit more info on the update, so I've decided it's safe to continue posting. That, and I have a few more chapters of Journey to the West translated, so why not put them up, eh?

    John has three common transliterations. 约翰 is used in the Protestant church for the Evangelist and the Baptist, and it is the most common form in everyday use (约翰·穆勒 is John Stuart Mill, for example). 若望 is used in the Catholic church for the Evangelist, saints, popes, and practically everyone except John the Baptist, who gets called 若翰, Ruòhàn.

    In general, the Chinese transliterations of western names follow the Protestant model, since Protestant missionaries arrived with the influx of western culture during the 19th century. The earlier Catholic forms did not gain much currency, although they are still used within the Catholic church itself.

    To make things more confusing, the roster of saints' names was revised, giving every Catholic saint an older, closer approximation, and a newer form that is limited to two characters per word. St. Thomas Aquinas was originally called 圣多玛斯·阿奎那, but this has been revised to the much pithier 圣道茂. These new names are not much used, at least in my experience.

    One interesting Protestant transliteration that was not widely adopted is 阿拉法 (ālāfǎ) for alpha ("I am the alpha and the omega..."). Here, the choice was made to keep the [l] sound at the cost of introducing an extra syllable. The standard form is 阿尔法 (ā'ěrfǎ), which follows the convention of using an "er" element to represent a syllable-ending [l] sound. To my ears it sounds more natural; 阿拉法 calls up late Palestinian leader Arafat (阿拉法特).

Addendum: The Beijing News runs its coverage of the Pope's death under the headline 《罗马教皇保罗二世去世》, or "Pope Paul II Passes Away," 534 years too late.

I PICKED UP an old collection of Cordwainer Smith stories (The Best of Cordwainer Smith) the other day, and ran across the following anecdote in the forward, by J.J. Pierce:

While in Korea, Linebarger masterminded the surrender of thousands of Chinese troops who considered it shameful to give up their arms. He drafted leaflets explaining how the soldiers could surrender by shouting the Chinese words for 'love,' 'duty,' 'humanity,' and 'virtue'--words that happened, when pronounced in that order, to sound like 'I surrender' in English. He considered this act to be the single most worthwhile thing he had done in his life.

Linebarger here is Paul Linebarger, the real name of Cordwainer Smith. The Chinese words mentioned are probably 爱责仁德, pronounced "ài zé rén dé," a fair approximation of the English. I'd like to see a copy of the original pamphlet.

Linebarger spent part of his childhood in China and was godson to Sun Yatsen, who gave him his Chinese name. This is given in most places as Lin Bah Loh, with the gloss "Forest of Incandescent Bliss". He later used this as a pseudonym in the form "Felix C. Forrest". I can't find the characters given anywhere, but I'd assume his name was 林白乐, Lín Báilè. When mentioned in Chinese these days, his name is given exclusively in a phonetic approximation: 考德维那·史密斯 (only an approximation because "Cordwainer" ought to have the pronunciation 考德那).

As far as I am aware, his science fiction has not yet been translated into Chinese.

   I was unable to find a copy online, so I have uploaded a version typed from a facsimile edition of the 1928 printing. Apart from using simplified characters and regularizing the third-person pronouns, most of the other printing irregularities remain (both 么 and 吗 are used, as are 吧 and 罢). Be aware of possible input errors.

   Hu Shi, editor of the Quarterly and admirer of Chen's poetry, writes in his forward to her short story collection Raindrops, "When we were still discussing the question of New Literature, Sophie had already started writing literature in the vernacular. One Day then is the earliest piece to come out of the first period of the discussions of literary revolution." Lacking the social commentary and pure shock value of Diary of a Madman, Chen's One Day was far less influential than Lu Xun's story and is now frequently overlooked. Then, of course, there is the subject matter (American college life), the main characters (American students), and the author herself (a woman), all of which would make for a rather less spectacular start to modern Chinese literature. In an introduction to the story, Chen writes that "it has neither structure nor goal, so it can only be called a kind of description, not a story." These words have been accepted at face value, although Lu Xun's alternative is not strictly a story, either.

   The piece itself is a simple read; it has been translated in Writing Women in Modern China: An Anthology of Women's Literature from the Early Twentieth-Century, edited by Amy D. Dooling and Kristina M. Torgeson (I have not read this version), so I will not do so here. Notable, however, is a scene in which one of the school's Chinese exchange students finds herself in a situation many westerners in China will recognize:

(Note: Chen is writing English dialogue in Chinese, and all of the names but Zhang's are translated phonetically from English. Retranslating back into English is non-trivial, especially given the fall in popularity of many of the names of that era (Eunice?). So if anyone can suggest name that corresponds to 贝田 better than "Patience", please let me know.)

   The scene continues in a familiar way, with a request for Chinese instruction. Ms. Zhang responds by teaching Emily a few sentences of Shanghainese (which Emily butchers horribly); I cannot decide if this is out of spite, or if it really is her native tongue:

爱米立："请你教我几句中国说话，好吗？"
张："很好。比如你见了人，你就说，'侬好拉否？'"
爱米立："这个很容易，'侬豪拉否'。还有呢？"
张："他就说，'蛮好，谢谢侬'。"
爱米立："'妹豪，茶茶侬'，对吗？"
张笑："差不多了。"
爱米立跳起，高声说："我会说中国话了，你们听哪，'侬豪拉妹豪茶茶侬'。"

   Chen Hengzhe went on to write several more short stories, new-form poetry (including a response to Diary of a Madman called They Say I've Gone Crazy), and dozens of essays. She also wrote a history of the West from a feminist perspective （《西洋史》） as well as several volumes of literary histories. In addition to One Day, several of her essays and a delightful fable called The West Wind have been translated into English.

So, how'd you do? Not too great, huh? I put this quiz together and I still have trouble with some of them. If the winds of history had blown in a slightly different direction, however, every last one of them would be recognizable on sight.

   The first round of simplification of Chinese characters is well-documented. Put into practice in 1956 and 1964, it caused the break between the mainland's writing system and that of the overseas community. Less well known is the second round of simplification, a draft of which was published in 1977, but which was repealed in 1986. There are several books in print that discuss this plan, but any reference to it on the web takes the form of the second half of the previous sentence. Since I have not been able to find a full list online, I've taken the liberty of scanning in the relevant pages from 第二次汉字简化方案 (the quality's not so great because the pamphlet is non-circulating - I had to scan a rather poor photocopy).

   The characters in the quiz all come from that draft. Some of them may be familiar - the first three, in fact, are quite common on rough, hand-lettered signs despite government campaigns urging standard characters. "早歺" can be seen on the door of a shack selling breakfast buns, "禁止仃车" spray-painted on a metal garage door proclaims "No Parking", and 亍 points out roads on sketched maps. Each of these characters has an older meaning and pronunciation that is simply overlooked in this folk usage: 歺 is a variant of 歹 "evil", 仃 is used in 伶仃, "solitary", and 亍 is used in 彳亍, "walk slowly". Number ten, also a folk simplification, is more widely accepted (visited Hong Kong recently?), since its base meaning, "chew" is similar to the borrowed meaning, "mouth".

   Other characters resurrect historical usage. 厶 is an ancient form of 私, "private", and 坣 is an ancient variant of 堂, "hall". 迊 is an ancient variant of 币, "coin", but here it takes its inspiration from a calligraphic form of 迎, "greet" (this usage is quite common on banners). Character 27 is based on a script form of 真, and character 28 is a regularized script form of 青.

   Characters that somehow escaped simplification under applicable rules during the first round are addressed here. The script form of 這 became regularized as 这 in 1956, so here the framers understand that 言 simplifies to文, and reduce 信 to 伩. Likewise, 套 contains 長, which was previously simplified to 长, so the secondary result is character 19.

   The 1977 plan is much more ruthless in its phonetic substitutions, eliminating wholesale those components that no longer have a phonetic relationship with modern Chinese pronunciation. Compare character 32, with 干 (gān) as a phonetic, against the original, 感 (gǎn), phonetic 咸 (xián). Or number four, 辺 (dào), phonetic 刀 (dāo), against 道, phonetic 首 (shǒu).

   Where the first simplification was basically a reduction of strokes, this round turns its attention to needless semantic components. The "radicals" in Chinese characters often have little relationship to the current meaning, anyway, so when the meaning of a certain sound is evident from context, why not do away with useless strokes? Thus 葫猢蝴糊 (hú) all reduce to the phonetic component 胡, and 菜蔡 (cài) reduce to a single character with a simplified phonetic [艹才] (see the second character of 14). Note that not all characters with identical pronunciation are so conflated; 湖, "lake", retains its original form, probably because the semantic component 氵 "water" is closely related to the meaning.

   Some results defy explanation. Character 18 is a simplification of 部, through what tortured logic I cannot fathom. And the prize for most obscure goes to character 20, whose traditional form is 器. The glyph itself only occurs one other place, as part of 临, the simplified form of 臨. There is perhaps a chain through 吅, but it remains one ugly character.

   Of course, ugly is relative. The entire Unicode Ideograph Extension is immense (check out the 方正超大字符集; it includes both A and B), and when I open up a character browser I often lose my way, sidetracked by the marvelous, strange, and incomprehensible. Some of the characters I can guess at - some are ancient seal forms recast in modern angular strokes, others are taken from handwritten variants. Finding alternative characters for my name is a great time-waster.

   The goal of all this is to allow scholars of Chinese to discuss historical tetragraphs in print without resorting to the ugly graphical representations I used in the quiz. Apparently this means that the slip of the woodblock-carver's chisel gets a slot, as does the effort made by a calligrapher who had just a bit too much to drink. And there is someone somewhere who will not be satisfied until there is space enough for the entire 千寿图, 万福图, and 亿操图. In a fine slice of irony, the "Four Dragons" character, cited in a footnote in John DeFrancis as an extreme example of why the current written form of Chinese is needlessly difficult and unlikely to work well in a computerized age, has been granted a slot at the far end of extension B.

   Scholars using Unicode will find themselves able to discuss the length and breadth of China's Glorious Five-Thousand Years of history, and yet there is one period about which they must remain silent: the vast majority of the characters in the 1977 simplification draft are simply not present. The first sixteen characters in the quiz are all present in a full Unicode font, although 13-16 are in the Extension space. The remaining sixteen I pieced together with eudcedit.

   The sinograph section of Unicode has always been a hotbed of political controversy, mostly in the form of nationalism on the part of Japan and the traditional-simplified struggle among China and her outlying regions. I suspect our situation here is much the same, whether through active efforts to exclude the characters, or a simple indifference. With electronic composition and transmission, scanning and indexing integral parts of current-day research, this decade-long orthographic experiment is as if it had never even existed.

   Or perhaps not entirely. A friend of mine who was in school during the proposed second simplification still uses many of these forms in her casual writing, and I'm sure she's not the only one.

   A third method is to translate the dialect into a regional variety of English. This only works when the regional distinction has a parallel in the original culture. The northeast dialect in China, for example, sounds rustic and uneducated (a stereotype heavily exploited in popular comedy), so translating into "hayseed" English works well. The popular song from a few years back, 《东北人都是活雷锋》, had the line "俺们这嘎都是东北寅", "We're all northeasterners here," but this can be interpreted as "Us'ns is all nor'easters in these parts." In my admittedly vague impression, it may be appropriate to translate the fourth student's dialect in this way.

   This method breaks down when the dialect in question is spoken by a cosmopolitan population; Shanghai, as the capital of modern culture in turn-of-the-century China, nevertheless spoke a dialect distinct from the standard language. There doesn't seem to be a variety of English that would convey "different" without implying "inferior" or "odd".

   The story Schoolwork Inspection was written in 1907 and published in Fiction Monthly. The author, Wu Jianren, was well-known for his novels of social criticism, most notably An Eyewitness Account of Twenty Years of Strange Events 《二十年目睹之怪现状》and Sea of Regret 《恨海》. Stripped of all but the bare essentials of description, the story is mostly unattributed dialogue, and satirizes both the political situation at the time and the bureaucratic inefficiency of educational institutions. With a slight change in the nature of the MacGuffin, it would work rather nicely as a highly pedigreed in-class skit for an intermediate Chinese class or multicultural talent show. Original is in a Unicode text file.

Schoolwork Inspection

Wu Jianren

   dring, drrinng, drrinnnnnnng...

   "Eh? Who's calling at one in the morning? It must be some bored person playing around. Best ignore him and get back to sleep."

   dring, drrinng, drrinnnnnnng...the sound went on and on.

   "Eh? Who could it be?" Putting on his clothes he got out of bed, slipped on his shoes, lit the electric lamp, entered the phone box, and lifted the receiver: "Hello, hello, who is this?"

   There was a buzzing sound from the receiver that said:

   "I am the governor general. Who are you?"

   "Oh, the governor general, who are you? This is the _________ school."

   "Who are you?"

   "I am superintendent ________."

   "Tell all of the students they are not to sleep. We are sending officers to inspect their schoolwork."

   "Oh, a schoolwork inspection. Yes, yes, yes, when will they come?"

   "They will be there immediately."

   "Yes, yes, yes. We will be prepared..." Hanging up the phone, he put on his socks and laced his boots.

   "Come on!" "Come on!" "Hey, come on!"

   "Come on. Here, here, here. Yes, yes, yes."

   "Come on!"

   "Ok, ok, ok. We're here, we're here."

   "Quickly call all of the tutors, and have the dorm masters wake up the students. Agents are coming to do a schoolwork inspection.

   "Yes, yes, yes."

   "Get up, get up! Get up quickly, come on, get up!"

   Hazily and chaotically, they put on their clothes and shoes and cut the lampwick.

   The student from Beijing said, "What's going on?"

   The student from Guangdong said, "Mystifies me."

   The student from Suzhou said, "What's all of this about?"

   The student from Anhui said, "Who's responsible for this?"

   "Our card."

   "Yes!"

   "Reporting, sir. The four agents have arrived."

   "Please, enter."

   A salute and a bow.

   "Have a seat."

   "My brothers and I are here to carry out our instructions to inspect the students. We have no need to sit down. Let us then go to the lecture hall."

   "Yes, yes, yes."

   "Please, please, this way."

   "We will follow you."

   "Come, light the lantern."

   "Yes."

   Dongdongdong, donglong, donglong, donglong...

   The students entered in single file.

   "Are all the students here?"

   "Yes, all of the students have arrived."

   "Superintendent, sir, and teachers, please keep a close watch. My brothers and I will return after our inspection."

   "Yes, yes, yes. Take your time."

   Trunks rifled through, suitcases overturned, quilts torn off, curtains ripped down, drawers opened, floors pried up.

   "Nothing, nothing."

   "Nothing, nothing."

   "Must be a rumor."

   "Must be a rumor."

   "Return and report."

   "Return and report."

   "Superintendent, sir, and teachers: at ease. There is nothing the matter. Farewell, and sorry to have disturbed you."

   "Won't you have a seat in the reception room?"

   "No, no, we still have to things to report."

   "Take care!"

   "Take care!"

   "Take care!"

   "Take care!"

   The guests left.

   The teachers asked the supervisor, "What was that about?"

   The supervisor asked the superintendent, "What was that about?"

   The superintendent asked the students, "What was that about?"

   The students asked the teachers, "What was that about?"

   "Don't know", "Don't know", "Don't know", "Don't know"; no one knew, a complete unknown.

   The superintendent, the supervisor, and the teachers returned to their rooms,    and the students scattered.

   Student A said, "Yours?"

   Student B said, "In my trousers."

   "Yours?"

   "Also in my trousers."

   "Yours?"

   "Also in my trousers."

   Someone said, "Mine was in my sleeve."

   Everyone said, "Dangerous, dangerous - as soon as someone touched your arm your secret would be out."

   "Bring it out and let's see what it is."

   "People's Journal."

   "Yours?"

   "Also People's Journal."

   "Yours?"

   "Also People's Journal."

   "How many do we have altogether?"

   "Forty copies."

Originally published in Fiction Monthly #8, April 1907. This text taken from fiction volume #7 of the series A Treasury of Modern Chinese Literature, published by Shanghai Book Store, 1992.

Note: People's Journal was a revolutionary newspaper started by the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance in Tokyo in the early 1900s. It was later suppressed, but in its pages were found the writings of such reformers as Sun Yat-sen and Wang Jingwei.

(previous|first)

(Note to those of you reading this on the RSS feed: BlogChina sends out the entire front-page text of these articles, but it does not give any indication of whether a given article continues inside the cut. The serials will always end with (待续), so if that is not present in the feed, be aware that you are missing the bottom half of the article. I am not sure how to solve this problem in other individual articles.)

Chapter 1: Prologue

OUR STORY takes place in the 2513th year after the birth of Confucius (the present year is the 2453rd), that is, 2062 CE (the present year is 2002 CE)¹, a rényín² year. On the first of January (lunar calendar) the National People's Renewal Movement celebrated its 50th anniversary. This same time also happened to be the date of formation of the new All-Nation Peace Conference, with powerful ministers from all countries having just signed the Peace Treaty in Nanjing (note)³. Because special conditions had already come up in the All-Nation Treaty - our nation's government and the representatives of other nations altogether put forward dozens of planks, none of which had been agreed upon - those representatives stayed in China for the time being.

   This coincided with the celebrations our country was holding, and all of our allies sent warships in congratulations. The King and Queen of England, the Emperor and Empress of Japan, the Premier of Russia and his wife (note), the Premier of the Philippines and his wife (note), and the Premier of Hungary and his wife all came themselves to congratulate us. There were many others, all high-level officials who represented their countries in expressing their good wishes, and they congregated in hurried, bustling Nanjing. At that time the Chinese populace decided to hold an exhibition in Shanghai, one which would be different from the norm. It would not only exhibit commercial and artistic objects, but educational and religious groups of all kinds could use this time to hold a unified meeting (this is called the "Great Harmony"⁴). A meeting of famous scholars and doctors from every country would number no fewer than several thousand people; a meeting of students from every country would be no fewer than tens of thousands of people (gloss: Those invited especially for religious studies would already number in the tens of thousands; for the remainder I do not know an exact number). There would be speaking platforms everywhere, and lectures would be held everyday, turning the huge city of Shanghai, including Jiangbei, Wusongkou, and Chongwen county, into a massive exhibition center. (Immense, immense!) This is not a full description, however.

   One group on the list was the history division of the Beijing Metropolitan University Literature Department⁵. Because they wanted to display the uniqueness of Chinese history, on the one hand to encourage patriotism among the people, and on the other hand to show foreigners evidence of the changes the descendents of the Yellow Emperor had undergone during their development, they reserved a large lecture hall at the center of the exhibition to present the lectures of thirty-odd PhD's. Also present were lecturers on the history of Chinese politics, Chinese philosophy, religion, livelihood, finance, customs, and literature - this too is not an exhaustive list. (gloss: It is unmistakable that in the future, Chinese history will be the most important subject in the world. The world's largest nationality, unique qualities cultivated over thousands of years - who can compare with this?)

   One subject on the list was a lecture by the famous doctor of literature, the esteemed Prof. Kong, currently serving as the chairman of the National Education Association. This Prof. Kong, named Hongdao, styled Juemin⁶, was from Qufu county in Shandong; that is, he was the descendant of a branch of the family of Confucius. He was called Professor Qufu by his students, and was 76 years old this year (he is currently 16). From his youth he traveled at his own expense, studying in Japan, America, England, Germany, and France. At the time of the reforms, he had been engaged in national affairs with various upstanding citizens, and had spent two terms in prison (his sorrows were for those of the whole country⁷). When the new government was established, he was on the drafting committee for the new constitution. He was transferred to a position as undersecretary of the education department, later resigning due to illness, but put all his energies into the affairs of the people's education. Because of this he was put up for secretary of the education conference.

   But let us return to our main topic. This venerable doctor, then, lectured on what kind of history? None other than that book we love to hear read, A History of China's Past 60 Years. Is not the period from the renyin year in the 28th year of Guangxu's reign to this renyin year precisely sixty years? (No wonder.)

   Those sixty years could be called the great critical juncture deciding whether China continued or perished, the great drama of her intense scramble for survival. This period brought surprises and headaches, tragedy and delight without bound. Miscellaneous accounts had been published by the government and private citizens, not in small numbers, but there had not yet been a truly complete, detailed book written. The scholarship and papers of this professor Kong have stood out from contemporaries. (Truly standout). Moreover, since he has personally experienced every situation (I'm afraid the future must be personally experienced), such a lecture would certainly be even more intimate and interesting, it goes without saying.

   At that time the Metropolitan University and the National Education Conference issued a name list that announced when the scholars would be speaking at the lecture hall during the history conference at the exhibition. The time of the lecture was fixed for 1:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon of every other day⁸. The first lecture was held on the first of February, and on that day men and women who purchased tickets to listen to the lecture numbered at least 20,000. Among them were 1000 foreigners, including people from England, America, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, and India.

   This Professor Kong was discussing Chinese history in China, so he certainly used Chinese. The reader might inquire how the foreigners were able to understand him. It turns out that since the reforms, rapid progress was made in many disciplines, and countries in Europe and America began to send students over to study. According to old annual records, the entire county had over 30,000 international students, of whom over 1200 have graduated and returned home. Naturally, these students were able to understand Chinese, so when they heard that China's foremost Confucian scholar was lecturing, how could they fail to attend? (gloss: Not exactly what you would think of those studying Chinese today⁹.)

   But enough of this trivia. Let us say that from starting from that day, when Prof. Kong ascended the podium to begin his lecture, stenographers provided by the Historical Society sat beside him working their pens to record from start to finish this History of China's Past 60 Years, not leaving out a single word. As they were taking it down in shorthand, they would send telegrams to the New Fiction magazine for publication. (The telegram fee was not insubstantial.)

   If the reader wishes to know the contents of Prof. Kong's lecture, please look at the next chapter for an explanation¹⁰.

(待续)