Fact Friday: And Your Name Is?

Have you ever mused over the possible deep meaning of the choice English names your students chose? Have you ever wondered why your Chinese name sounds really strange when translated into English? Well below is an introduction to some of the more interesting naming practices. 

1. How many names?: Historically, socially enfranchised individuals could have different names at different stages of their life and stylized versions of them for different uses. Sun Yat-Sen, the founding father of the Chinese Republic, had eight, not including a large number of pseudonyms used while in hiding.
2. 1, 2, or 3?: In traditional China there was a strong emphasis on having as many children as possible. This led to some pretty large numbers of children that could sometimes be hard to keep track of. Enter the numbers. Using a number after a name indicates the individual’s position in line; in the case of Su Forty-Three, a famous rebel in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) who seems to be pretty far down the list. A common usage today is referring to oneself relative to one’s brothers and sisters. The third child in a family would be called “old three.”
3. You want me to be what?: In China, names express a parents desire for a child or describe characteristics the child may have. In rural settings, embarrassing physical features or associations are common. If a child doesn’t turn out just as the parents wanted, they may keep the name they planned on anyway. A tragic young male character in “The World” by director Jia Zhangke goes by the name “Maiden Number Two” because his parents had hoped that their second child would be a girl.

Things You'd Know: The Heihe - Tongcheng Line

Proposed in 1934 by geographer Hu Huanyong, the Heihe-Tengchong line is not China’s newest highspeed rail line, but an interesting artifact of human geography. This line divides China roughly into two halves  in terms of geographic area (57% to the West, 43% to the East), but nearly all the population - a whopping 94% - resides to the East of the line. 
Impressive though these numbers may be, what’s perhaps more impressive is that despite having a population density lower than all but 27 countries, the western half of China would still be the 16th largest country in the world by population, just below Germany. 

As you can see from the map, China’s population density is highly concentrated between the Yellow River (黄河） to the north and the Yang-tze River (长江）to the Souh, as well as along the coast. The large red spot just east of the line represents a very fertile agricultural area sometimes referred to as “China’s breadbasket” and includes the megacities Chengdu and Chongqing.  Most of China’s West is arid, high up in the mountains, or both, making it difficult to sustain dense populations.

Fact Friday: The Old Hundred Names

If your Chinese is at a moderate level, there’s a good chance you’ll have learned the word 老百姓 (lit. “old hundred names” or “the common people”). What you may not have learned is that the word has completely flipped in meaning over the last hundred years. Throughout most of Chinese history, common people did not have surnames. Surnames (姓) were reserved only for the aristocracy, and the “hundred” (百) was a way of referring to all of the various family lines as a unit. Thus, 百姓 refers to the nobility, not the common people. However with the end of the feudal system, the universalization of surnames, and progressive social atmosphere brought by the communist revolution, the term took a 老 (“old”, which to this learner seems to add both respect and familiarity) and began to refer to “the people” as a whole.

Fact Friday: Labor Day Used to be a Week Off

Before 2008, International Labor Day was one of three long holidays during the year, along with Spring Festival and National Day. Like every other so-called “Golden Week” this inspired enormous crowds, jacked up prices, and severe shortage of resources in tourist areas. Around 2008 the government realized that if the holidays were a bit more spread out workers would be happier and fewer old ladies would get punched in the face for the last train ticket. And so, Labor Day was reformed from a week long holiday into a three day one, and three other holidays were given official recognition.

These holidays, Qingming (Tomb Sweeping Festival), Duanwu (Dragon Boat Festival) and Middle Autumn Day, were not new creations, but rather traditional holidays that were reinstated in 2008. These holidays all enjoyed official status during the Republican period (1912-1949), but saw it revoked with the rise of a new government determined to wipe out old superstition. However, recent years have seen interest in preserving traditional culture rekindled in China, and these holidays have accordingly been transformed from something to be ideologically reviled to a way to preserve and continue aspects of China’s unique cultural heritage like respect for ancestors, love of nature, and punching old ladies in the face.

Fact Friday: Chinese Typing & Shortcuts

After inventing the movable type printing press, not a lot of innovation happened in Chinese typography until the invention of the computer. Early attempts to digitize the language included shape-based methods like Cangjie and phonetic-based ones like Zhuyin, but today the most common are Pinyin and Wubi. After six years in China Wubi is still like sorcery to me, so today we’ll just talk about Pinyin. Among Pinyin input systems, the best by far is Sougou.

Earlier Pinyin methods worked character by character, so you had to type wo, select 我, yao, select 要,  qu, select 去…. but Sougou and other modern pinyin inputs can interpret entire sentences (woyaoquxuexiao 我要去学校) with impressive accuracy using context clues and data from other users. You can also just type the first letter of each syllable, for example xx pulls up 谢谢, 学校, and 信息 as my top 3. Typing rq for 日期 gives you the date in multiple different formats, and classical poems are indexed as well (try typing llysc!). After some practice I found that I could type in Chinese even faster than in English.
One particularly cool feature for learners of Chinese is that  by first typing u you enter an input mode that allows you to break up characters you don’t know and enter them radical by radical. For example, to type 淼, a character made up of three 水s, type u then “shuishuishui” and Sougou will tell you it’s pronounced miao3. NICE.
As many of you are painfully aware, China is a land of many dialects, and people are often unsure of the “proper” pronunciation of a character. So most Pinyin systems today allow for what’s called “fuzzy Pinyin”. In the settings menu you can check boxes indicating the features of your dialect (sh goes to s, h goes to f, n goes to l, etc.). 
Last but not least, if you come across a computer that’s ｔｙｐｉｎｇ　ｌｉｋｅ　ｔｈｉｓ， the computer is in full-width character mode, which you can exit by hitting shift+space or control+space.

Fact Friday: 56 Ethnicities, 56 Flowers

China has its own special way of celebrating diversity, but as the song referenced in the title suggests, China is home to a staggering array of ethnic diversity. Nothing you can say about 56 different cultural groups in two paragraphs could really communicate anything, so the only option is to go out there and experience it first hand. Popular destinations for cultural travel in China include Yunnan (Xishuang Bannna and Lijiang) and Guangxi (Yangshuo), which are very accessible but quite touristy. For people who want to get off the beaten track a bit, there are some better options. For Tibetan culture, Western Sichuan is actually a better choice than Tibet, as there are less restrictions both on you the traveler and on the local community. For Miao/Hmong people, Guizhou is working hard to attract tourists but is still full of amazing undeveloped places to visit, and the local culture is extremely hospitable (but be prepared to be drunk every day). Even further afield choices include Ningxia for an interesting mix of East and Central Asian cultures inhabited by the Hui people (Chinese Muslims), and the Nu and Dulong river valleys in the far west of Yunnan near the border with Myanmar. These latter two valleys are very hard to get to, but home to some of the smallest ethnic groups in the country (the Nu and Dulong respectively). If you do not fear the cold, legend has it the far Northeast still has nomadic herders of the reindeer variety. Any true China experience should include at least some time spent in minority areas. 

Fact Friday: Chinese New Year Means Going Home

China has three distinct concepts of homeland: 籍贯 (jiguan)，故乡 (guxiang) and 老家 (laojia). Many people in traditional families will be headed to their 籍贯 - their paternal grandfather’s hometown. 籍贯 is the only one of these three used on official documents like school records or hukous. 故乡 (lit. former hometown) sounds a bit more poetic, and can be used to refer to any place with which you have developed an emotional attachment (Nanjing would now be considered this columnist’s second 故乡）. 老家 (old home) is very colloquial and usually refers to the place where you grew up or where your parents live. Most people will probably head for their 老家 for the holiday.

As it happens, the reason tickets are hard to buy at this time of year is not entirely because everyone in China will be traveling during the same few days. Scalping of train tickets by people called 黄牛 (yellow bulls) has historically been a huge problem, with people using their connections to buy obscene numbers of tickets and selling them to desperate migrants returning home to their families with the money they’ve earned working. The government has taken huge steps to curb this in recent years, but the problem is probably impossible to totally eliminate.

Note for foreigners coming to China: be aware that going home for the holiday with your S.O. strongly implies that a wedding is not far off. Even if you’re just friends, it’s probably a good idea to bring someone else along if you’re visiting the hometown of someone of the opposite sex during Spring Festival to avoid adding grist to the vicious hometown rumor mill.