Please note, this article is translated from one post here, two Chinese bloggers cry for the peace between the Taiwan Straits. The original acticle’s released under a CC license, thus my English translation remains the same!  Click here for the link of the original copy, in Chinese:

p.s I left the word 華人(Hua Ren) untranslated because I didn’t know how to translate it properly.

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Peace needs you!

How far is war from us? Does it sound like just an alarmist talk?

During the mid 1980’s, whenver there was tense situation arising between the two sides on the Taiwan Straits, the streets of Fuzhou city were filled with military troops and vehicles, and rumors flowed all around streets that those long-time abandoned air-raid shelters would be opened ang put into use again.
On TV or radio, News like announcement of Fishing Forbidden In Fujian Coastal Areas During Military Manoeuvre period, or notice of Air Raid Sirens For The Civil Defence Drill are on air over and over again. Unfamiliar to this, kids always asked their parents nervously, ‘is there really war coming?’

‘Is there really war coming this tme?’ we ask this qusetion to ourselves repeatedly.
War, fire, bleeding, death, ruins…all these words are frequently mentioned by media like some kind of habit, which, of course, makes us horrified, but also starts to make us feel numb.

However, whenever we write down those hostile words to each other, by our written language, with the same cultrual and historical roots, however differently coded; whenever we assail each other with coarse or insulting words, spoken in the same language, have we ever thought of the horror of the war? Have we ever tried to treasure the social stability and peace which surely didn’t come handy? Have we ever thought about the possibility that maybe we can throw away the difference of the ideology, and embrace the desire and passion for peace shared by all Hua Ren(華人) around the world? Have we asked ourselves, have we tried hard?

When we watch the poverty and misery caused by war on CCTV or TVBS, and feel the misery and upset in our hearts, maybe we should look up into the blue sky that all the Hua Ren(華人) share on the earth. The faith of peace, should have already been deeply rooted in our hearts.
Blogger in Taiwan writes: ‘I love peace, just like I love my life and my denity.’
In fact, everyone can and should make an effect on this, by the name of life and denity.

Peace needs us fo us! Peace needs everyone of you!
A peaceful Taiwan Straits, a peaceful East Asia and a peaceful world needs the effects from people who speak the language called Chinese!

If you are a blogger, please tell your readers, your colleagues, your family and friends, the desire for the peaceful Taiwan Straits in our hearst has never been so strong like today!
We believe in this: if one cry for peace and one logo for peace can be shown on all the blogs, it will make one step of hope forward to the peacemaking process of the Taiwan Straits.
Come on, everyone! For the sake of denity of life, the happiness of the Hua Ren(華人) world needs you! Peace needs you!

If you agree with us and our words, please copy this logo and link to this page to your website!
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End of article
Feel free to use or reuse it in any non-commercial ways you want; just kindly leave link cited back here.

Chinese name is really one of the most interesting aspect among the Chinese language. There are several interesting facts about Chinese names:
1. The order of the given name and the family name of Chinese names is different from that of western names. e.g. my Chinese name’s Chan Weiwei(陳蔚蔚), while my English name is Vivian Chan. Some people believe that this phenomenon happens by chance, but rather, has its reasons rooted deeply in difference of cultures: Chinese place their family or surname ahead of the given name to pay respect to their ancestors, while in western culture people value individualism, so call the given name first name and place it in front of the family name.

2. Most parents may attach special meanings to their children’s names so as to give good omen for the children’s future. A boy’s name may indicate power and strength, e.g. 強(strong), 雄(powerful), 智(smartness), 勇(braveness) whilst a girl’s name may indicate beauty and charm, e.g. 嬌(charming or tender), 麗(pretty), 芳(fragrance). However, among the younger generation, cool or more free-styled characters are preferable. In my case, my parents just picked the character Wei(蔚) at random for me(boring, I know). Though random, Wei(蔚) has pretty meanings itself in Chinese. It can mean the sky blue color, plants flourishing, or even of unusual literary talent.

3. Numbers of characters in Chinese names are ranged from two or four. Usually a Chinese name’s made of one chacracter of family name and one(or two)character(s) of given name. The case of a name with four characters is relatively rare since the two-character Chinese family names are rare. Some two-character family names are: Ou’yang(歐陽), Shangguan(上官), dongfang(東方). In fact many Chinese people think the two-character family names sound very poetic and romantic. My fmaily name Chan(陳) is nothing poetic or romantic though since it’s in fact as common among Chinese family name as Smith in English.

4. In some traditional family, especially in rural areas, peole name their children with the same second characters, in order to indicate they are from the same generation in the same family.e.g.Chan Wenli(陳文立), Chan Wenqin(陳文齊), Chan Wenjia(陳文佳). Another way is to form the same or similar character strcture, e.g. Chan Lin(陳林),double wood(木), Chan Yan(陳炎),double fire(火), Chan Chang(陳昌), double two sun(日);
or Chan Yan(陳焰), Chan Zhi(陳熾), Chan Yue(陳燁); the given names are contained a fire(火) component.

5. Why I spell 陳 as Chan instead of Chen? Because it sounds cuter! -___-~~Okay, let me try to write seriously again: the pronunciation of Chinese names may vary with different dialects. e.g. in Cantonese, 陳’s spelt as Chan while in Mandarin, it’s Chen. More example as this:
a 郭 is Guo in Mandarin but Kowk in Cantonese;
a 蘇 is Su in Mandarin but So in Cantonese.
However, this kind of Cantonese spelling in names are only used in Hong Kong or Macao; in Cantonese cities in Mainland China, such as Guangzhou or Shenzhen, people adopt their names in Mandarin Pinyin, in order to avoid confusion.
In my case, my given name’s in Mandarin spelling but the first name’s still kept in traditional Cantonese way.

6…(too lazy to think more points….Will get back to this topic when having time)

n…Interested in picking up your Chinese name? try the Get your Chinese name here. Write your name in chinese characters with pronunciation, calligraphy and meaning. English names and their corresponding Chinese names by gender and origin.

And,,,,to be continued…

*This story happens in Canton, China.

Before leaving office, one female colleague, Fifi’s subsidiary, caught her and asked her to loan her two thousand bulks.
‘My friend,’ her colleague said,’is desperately in need of cash, but I myself don’t have such an amount at hand currently. He promises he will return the money back before the end of next month!’
The amount was nearly her monthly salary, Fifi hesitated a bit:I’ve only got 150 bucks in my purse now.’
‘Tomorrow, please!’ Her colleague replied anxiously.
‘Ah, let’s see what I can.’ She gave an ambiguous reply.

At home, she discussed with her husband.
‘She said he promised he would return the money; does she mean to imply it’s not her who borrows the money?’ she complained.
‘Imply? that does sound complicated,’ said her husband.
‘No, Mr. non-Chinese, read what lies between lines. Chinese tend to be implicit.’said she, and returned to her topic, ‘we are not that intimate at office, though we have been colleagues for eight months or so. I definitely know nothing about her friend. I can’t depend on a perfect stranger’s promise so much.’
Her husband shrugged: ‘then don’t loan the money.’
‘How can I say no to her? A negative answer hurts my Guanxi with her at office.’ Fifi sighed, ‘I turn to you for help, my Mr.Solomon.’ she looked at him in expectation.
Her husband pendered for a while, and gave his wife a pretty satisfactory answer finally.

What’s his answer? This is an unfinished story, please help me to complete it by choose an answer from following options, so what can her husband possibly said:

a. ‘Loan your money to him and save/improve your Guanxi with your colleague at office. Though you two are total strangers, your kind-hearted colleague’s helped him to borrow the money from you and will help you to get the money from him!’
b. ‘Avoid this topic again altogether with her; if she reminds you again then protend you forget the issue. Repeat this the day after tomorrow if necessary till she gets the hints and drops the topic herself.’
c. ‘Find an excuss and tell her you’d love to help but you are suddenly short of cash yourself, due to, eg. your husband lost your bank cards and credit cards? Okay, this one’s lame. We can work out some smarter excuses later.’
d. ‘Tell her that you are not willing to loan the money and explain your concerns frankly, then see whether she has other better ways or thoughts.’
e. ‘Protend you forget to bring enough cash tomorrow till she reminds you; tell her she could have the several hundred cash in your purse today if the issue’s really urgent. Don’t expect the money will be returned, take it as a donation to someone in need. You might still lose the several hundred but you save your two thousand bucks.’

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Section one of The Chinese Extensive Virtuous Sayings, Stanza 2

All constructive criticism is most appreciated!

Stanza 2

畫虎畫皮難畫骨，
知人知面不知心。
錢財如糞土，
仁義值千金。
a painted tiger shows the skin but not the skeleton,
a familiar face shows the smile but has the heart hidden;
money can be as worthless as dust;
a pile of gold weighes lighter than a word of trust;

流水下灘非有意，
白雲出岫本無心
當時若不登高望，
誰知東流海洋深。
Naturaly the stream overflows river banks,
involuntarily the cloud floats above hills;
He who never reaches the peak,
is he who never knows depth of east sea.

路遙知馬力，
日久見人心。
馬行無力皆因瘦，
人不風流只為貧。
Distance tests a horse’s ability,
time reveals a person’s personality;
a thin house can’t be strong,
a poor man’s romance can’t last long.

癡漢不會饒人，
饒人不是癡漢。
He who can’t learn forgiveness isn’t witty,
He who understands forgiveness can’t be silly.

End of stanza 2

Section one of The Chinese Extensive Virtuous Sayings

All constructive criticism is most appreciated!

Stanza 1

昔時賢文，
會汝諄諄。
集韻增廣，
多見多聞。
觀今宜鑒古，
無古不成今。
Virtuous sayings of ancient rhyme,
Cultivate one for a lifetime;
See more, hear more and bless thy soul,
Collective wisdom broadens thy sight.
To benefit today from the mirror of the past,
And the history of wisdom is thus amassed.

知己知彼﹐
將心比心。
酒逢知己飲﹐
詩向會人吟。
Victory is where mutual understanding leads,
put thyself into other’s shoes;
bottoms up to the delight of Bacchus,
recite a poem to the adherent of Muse.

相識滿天下，
知心能幾人？
相逢好似初相識，
到老終無怨恨心。
Knowing men nine out of ten in this world,
which acquaintance is a friend of thine indeed?
greet each other with respect we paid at the first meeting,
suffer no hatred till the time thy life is ended.

近水知魚性，
近山知鳥音。
易漲易退山溪水，
易反易覆小人心。
Familiarize thyself with fish at sea’s rim,
reside by the hill to learn a bird’s chirm;
freely the brooklet rises and fades;
easily the unworthy change the mind at whims.

運去金成鐵，
時來鐵似金。
讀書須用意，
一字值千金。
Gold can turn into iron for thee,
o, thou forgotten son from the dole;
when the shoe is on the other foot,
thou have iron tranfrom into gold!
Read a book as much as thy heart could enfold;
for with every word thou should behold
its worth as a thousand ounces of gold.

逢人且說三分話，
不可全拋一片心。
有意栽花花不發，
無心插柳柳成蔭。
Weight thy words before spitting them out;
Hold the tongue intead of letting the heart all-out;
keeping a mind to grow flowers is thus failed,
in sheer luck thy inserting willow twig creates shade.

End of stanza 1

My translation of classic Chinese proverbs 增广贤文 or The Chinese Extensive Virtuous Sayings(mind you, this title’s translated by me as well, since I couldn’t find a properly wide-spread English translated title for it), is on going. Since the original contents are in public domain, thus my translation remains PD. I will write some free comments or background reviews for those proverbs, which will be created under the CC license.
I have my PD translation project in this wiki as well and will update them simultaneously…I really need find some native speakers to polish my translation…

Summary to this collection:

Full name of author(s)/compiler(s) by 无名氏(或未知) Anonymous or unidentified (Mid Ming to late Qing Dynasty)
Original title: 增广贤文 or 增广便读昔时贤文 or 昔时贤文 or 古今贤文
Source: Traditional Chinese: [1] Simplified Chinese: [2] [3]
《增广贤文》，又称《昔时贤文》、《增广便读昔时贤文》，是一部极有影响的蒙学读本。 关于《增广贤文》的作者和成书年代，我们至今尚无法确定。目前，人们大多认为成书于清代中叶，因为清代同治年间周希陶曾对《增广贤文》加以修订，并刊行了 《重订增广》一书。这种意见可备一家之说，但究竟如何，还有待于进一步探讨。《重订增广》的出现表明，《增广贤文》一书至迟在清同治时期就有了广泛的流 传。 《增广贤文》篇幅不长，通行本只有3800 字左右。全书以韵文的形式，将格言排列在一起，三言、四言、五言、六言、七言交错而出，灵活多变，读起来抑扬顿挫，朗朗上口，从而突破了传统蒙学读物一种 句式贯穿始终的基本格式，使语句更接近于口语，更易于为人们接受。可以说，这是《增广贤文》深入民间的原因之一。 (Summarized by baike.baidu.com in Chinese)
‘The Chinese Extensive Virtuous Sayings’, also named ‘Old-Time Virtuous Sayings’ or briefly ‘The Extensive Wisdoms’, is a very widely spreaded collection of traditional Chinese proverbs. The original author or compiler is unknown to all nowadays. Some said it was compiled by a scholar in the mid Ming Dynasty, and then added, edited and revised frequently through time. By the late Qing Dynasty, it’d already penetrated into every corner of the whole society, and eventually became one of the classic served as a child’s first formal education at home. The text of the Extensive Wisdoms is terse and beautifully concentrated in less than 4000 Hanzhi Chinese characters. The memorable rhyme and rhythm ensured its popularity.It consists of parables and sayings from all aspects of daily life and different classes of society, including governing and reclusive, religious and practical. Its writing styles also vary a lot, ranging from direct to implicit, sophisticated to simple and plain, elegant to vulgar. (Summarized by Vivian Chan in English)

Does shark eat chicken? Shark has the reputation of being the Sea Garbage Bin due to its a wild range of omnivorous diet. It is a predator, it is omnivorous, and it is an opportunistic feeder…
Sounds just like human being, doesn’t it? Chicken is the favorite food of human being. A mazingly I found it out in Human Senses TV Programmes that shark is actually disgusted by chicken–just throw it up after one bite! So maybe the diet of the sharks is limited after all, due to its underwater living entironment.
That’s a different situation when comes to the human case.Humans have the ability to learn to love the taste of almost anything. We are basically *opportunistic* feeders (survive by eating what is available) and we are also curious *riskers*. As a species, we have a remarkable ability to learn to love the taste of almost anything, however strange it tastes, as long as it doesn’t make us sick.Thus we end up with extraordinary tastes that vary across different cultures.
However, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
We always find that there is something in some others’ cultures, some kinds of food are really weird. Sometimes we are upset, digusted by them or even feel offensive.
One great advantage of being an expat in a foreign country is that you can carry on the blind taste tests any time you want! It is just like to push your taste buds to the limit. Discover a new kind of food you like, really brings you the joy you can get from a roller-coaster ride! As long as you know that it won’t cause any damage to your physical health…

Taste poem series, #1

A girl who calls herself a yogurt girl,
every morning one cup of yogurt,
the result of bacteria action on milk,
sugar-free and smooth as China silk,
ornated with sticky rice pearl;

She says she’s an original yogurt girl,
she’s sour, and not a favor
to someone who prefer sweet taker;
she’s never sweetened with sugar,
without any fruit and fruit jam flavor;

She may be not mellow,
but no drama queen to play the melo,
may be attractive to some lactose-intolerant fellow;
she’s live and well-culture,
because yogurt contains live active culture;
so don’t mess her up with something shallow;

Be careful with a girl called yogurt,
because it is always difficult to find out
when is the yogurt’s expiry date.

note:
That’s something I feel towards a girl here, a friend of mine. She’s young and ordinary, without very pretty face or sexy figure. She’s not rich or very well-educated, but she’s pleasant to be with and always having an upbeat disposition in life.

On a quiet and peaceful weekday morning, Mr. Chan was still in sound sleep but suddenly woken up by the cry of his dearest wife; she had already fully dressed for work, tried to pick up one of her favorite mint flavor chocolates from her chocolate jewellery box, but only found the box missing. The chocolates were from rare foreign brand and couldn’t be found anywhere in the domestic market easily so far. Those several one boxes, he bought to her last time he traveled aboard, soon became her treasure and now there were only half a box left.
Thus, the missing box was a big deal for her. After searching all around the house, she exclaimed: ‘It must have been taken by our naughty neighbor boy! He came over last night. Oh, that bad bad boy, very bad boy!’
‘Hey, hon, he came to play with the hamsters, not to steal your candy yesterday…’
‘uh, but he loved that chocolates a lot, too, when I gave two to him! He is a naughty boy, as naught as our Wanchai the dog!’ she grumbled.
‘But, honey, is it possibly that you might have put it somewhere and forgot? You, Ms. absent-minded.’
‘No way, I remember it crystal clear: it was here, then there, then there, and then now, it’s gone! Whatever, I gotta go and beat the traffic now. will deal with this later!’ with this, she slashed the door behind her, and dashed off like a whirlwind.
He groaned, shrugged his shoulders and lay back to bed, in the hope of resuming his much interrupted sleep. It seems his considerate wife, in her rage, totally forgot the fact that he just came back from a business trip abroad and was still suffering from the jet lag.

In the evening when his wife came home from work, and supermarket, too, with hands full of shopping bags, humming a joyful tune. After returning his welcome-home kiss, she went to the kitchen, busily occupying herself with dinner cooking.
‘It seems you had a good day.’ He said, with a grin.
‘You bet your ass I had!’ Her cheerful voice came from the kitchen, ‘got two new cartoon scripts got approved and lots of nice stuff with discount in Jusco…’
Hearing this, he wondered maybe the mint chocolate incident should be forgotten altogether for good.

After dinner, while she slid into the room to do her routine readings, he took his housework shift to clean the dishes as usual, laughing to himself on thinking how she was sulky as a bear this morning; when suddenly he heard her scream. Rushing out to the bedroom, he found she stood stupidly staring at chocolate box lying among a mass of mint chocolate wrappers and other stuff.
‘You are most welcome, honey! I found it among that mess for you this afternoon. ’ He smiled.
She grinned timidly, ‘Ah, I forgot I took the whole box to bedroom and because it was my chocolate day* last night.’ She then checked out the chocolate box carefully, and finding only the three remain. Her eyes got larger. He said to her before she had a chance to burst out:
‘Oh, this afternoon our neighbor boy was crying so bitterly that I had to treat him with our chocolates to stop his tears.’
‘My chocolates!’ She protested, looking at him reproachfully.
‘Yeah, I knew, but you know, the boy was really crying so bitterly and I couldn’t help it. It seems there was some painting a silly grimaced face on their door; so the naughty boy is surely the suspect, despite of his attempt to deny, since nobody rather than a kid would do a childish deed like such.’
‘Ah,’ She tried hard to smile at him innocently, ‘but isn’t the face easy to wash off? Maybe it was painted by a water gel pen? Say, like the ones we use to doodle on our whiteboard at home? That kind’s quite popular nowadays, you know.’
‘So it is!’ He replied, kindly pretended not noticing her face was now as red as an ripe apple, ‘unfortunately the face WAS painted by oil gel pen instead.’
‘Oil gel?!’
‘Yeah, maybe oil gel pen comes into fashion, too. Oil ink doesn’t come off easily so of course isn’t suitable for doodling. But,’ he took out a box of pens, ‘silly me! I brought the box of oil gel pens by mistake for our running out of water gel pens.’
‘…’
‘So maybe our neighbor made the same silly mistake like me…’
‘…’
‘Oh, you are silent.What you think, hon?’
‘…’

End of short story

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Yeah, thanks anyways, for the routine welcome, Mr./Ms. Happy-blogging-wordpress-newbie-welcome-robot; you know, that’s actually made me quite at home.
To make things a bit more official, first of all, I want to write something down in memory of my previous one week’s paintaking work preparing the launch of my No. n(can’t remember which) personal blog:

n days: estimate thenecessity of a personal webite, making a plaaaaaan for launch the blog, making a research on which platform and software to use;
2 days: buying a domain name on Name.com, bargaining and settling about sharing a host account on Dreamhost.com;
3 days: setting up DNS stuff, installing the open-source blog software Wordpress;
3 days: personalizing my blog by adding plugins and creating one personal theme with Chinese classic feel;
2 days: writing ‘about me’, ‘copyrights’ and ‘contact me’ pages;
Today: editing this very first blog entry.

That’s it. Now I am good to go, and show time!