Stuff of the Week #1

So, Stuff of the Week... pretty self-explanatory. I pretty much just find different stuff (that has to do with China) and then post it here. What I'll always have posted are the 'Picture of the Week', the 'Idiom of the Week', and the 'Chinese Lesson of the Week'. If I find of other things that I think you guys should know or might like to know, I'll post it at the end under Extras of the Week.


Oh, also, I'll try very hard to have one of these posted every week on Saturday (just because Monday through Friday is school ((duh)), and Sunday I usually am up finishing my homework). If I don't, I'm sorry, I'll get it up as soon as possible. And, without further ado, CTG's first ever 'Stuff of the Week'!!!


Picture of the Week:

Image from China Daily iPod Touch App   

Idiom of the Week:


Lets start out with answering the question, what is a idiom? An idiom (according to Dictionary.com) is a group of words whose meaning cannot be predicted from the meanings of the constituent words. These groups of words are natural to native speakers of a language. If this still doesn't make sense, an example of an English idiom would be a phrase like 'Let's cut to the chase'. There is no real chase going on, but if a person is a native English speaker, odds are they can immediately tell that 'Let's cut to the chase' actual just means let's get to the most important part of this without any further delay.


The Chinese idiom I chose is actually the first idiom I ever learned.

对牛弹琴: [duì niú tán qín]

Pronounced (dway new tahn cheen) Literally means to play the lute to a cow. This may seem like a really funny and silly thing to say, but it's pretty much the Chinese equavilent of the English Idiom 'Talking to a wall'. If you are playing some song on a lute to a cow, the cow's probably not going to pay any attention, or care. This is meaning that you are talking to somebody, but they aren't listening to you.

Chinese Lesson of the Week:

Naughty Words Alert!

屁股：[pī gǔ]

Pronounced like pee goo, means butt, ass, buttocks, bum, backside, tush

I should probably start explaining a bit. I have this book called Nuibi!: The Real Chinese you were Never Taught in School. Oh, what you find when you're wondering around Borders. It is pretty much a book of not so appropriate words and phases as well as a surprisingly large amount of information on the culture through author Eveline Chao's experiences. It also goes into why different characters are put together to make those words/phrases.

Yes, I know, I know, butt isn't a bad word, but I just wanted to put it up because some of these words in the future might not be age appropriate. I chose to write about this word because of person reasons. It was one of the first words my friend and her friend actually remembered how to say. Now, it's just use to have fun in such immature ways, like, "Psh! I can fit in-between these desks, my 屁股's too big!"... Immature? Of course. Hilarious? You know it!

So, time to break down this word just so that it makes more sense. I know, you're probably thinking 'GAH!! LEARNING!!'. Just bear with me on this. This is my favorite part.

屁：

Okay， so there are two major parts to a character; the radical and the rest of the character. The radical is the part of the character that kind of hints towards what deals with mean. For 屁 is 尸 [shī](sounds like sure) which means corpse... gross... 屁 by itself means to fart or to break wind... haa haa!!!

股：

Now the radical for 股 is kind of a tricky one. You would think, at first glance that the radical would be 月 [yuè](like you-ayy) which means moon and that doesn't make any sense. The radical, believe it or not, is 肉 [ròu](row) which means meat or flesh (much more applicable). Though, if you do squish 肉 a lot, it does resemble the left part of 股. 股 means, by itself tight, rump, haunches

And there you have it. Now you know the word for butt (or farting haunches) in Chinese! Don't you feel so intelligent? I hope you enjoyed my Lesson of the Week. Tell me, what did you like? What didn't you like? What do you think I should change? etc. Leave it as a comment below

Oh yeah, all that radical stuff, it's just there for fun :) tee hee. Also, be sure to check up that book that I was talking about it. It's really funny and has comics in it that are really hilarious.

Extra of the Week:

Deviant Story:

Impoverished Girl Returns Missing Money
                                   By: Zhang Jiawei

A 79-year old man surnamed Zeng could have had a terrible day if his lost briefcase had been found by someone else.

Chen Kun, 15, a middle school girl in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality, happened to find a briefcase that was apparently lost by someone in a small dumpling restaurant. There were only two or three other customers, except for her and her father, eating their breakfast on the morning of June 5, the Chongqing Evening News reported Saturday.

Thinking the owner must be anxious about losing the briefcase but without a phone on them, the daughter and father returned to their nearby home immediately, trying to find a clue from things in the case guiding them to the owner.

To their great surprise, they found about 50,000 yuan cash, a passbook indicating the balance was 5 million yuan, several bankcards, some paper materials, a digital camera and about 10 name cards.

"Oh, my god! I have never seen so much money in my life," said the daughter at the sight of the cash.

The family knew the owner must be quite upset, so the daughter and mother decided to call the people on the name cards they found, while the father was ready to report the case to the police.

But all the people they called said they hadn't lost anything. The family then decided to search once again in the briefcase, and this time they found another name card and an identity card in the interlayer of the briefcase.
They finally got in touch with the owner after another attempt, with the man on the other side of the phone speaking excitedly "Yeah, it is me who lost a briefcase!"

The owner, 79, was the board chairman of a local car sales company in Chongqing.

He lost his briefcase because he had an unpleasant morning in the dumpling restaurant, where he asked the waiter to hand him the salt, but the waiter treated him badly and asked him to get the salt himself, which, angered the old man and made him to leave without eating the food.

He didn't realize he lost his briefcase until 20 minutes later when he arrived at his company. He immediately called his family members to search along the road from the restaurant to the company.

About half an hour after the old man realized his misfortune, the girl's call came in.

After getting back his briefcase, the man decided to give the girl 1,000 yuan as a reward, but she and the family turned him down even after he left the money at the family's gate and left quickly.

"When I was getting my briefcase back from the family, my hands were shaking and I couldn't even stand still," the old man said, adding he was really excited to meet such kind-hearted people.

One of the girl's teachers, Chen Jingming, said she was an excellent student.

The girl's family was impoverished because her father, who was a miner, broke his wrist in a work accident several days ago and the family had tens of thousands of yuan in debt, according to the teacher.

The old man gave the girl's school a letter of thanks since she declined any cash reward, and he decided to spend more time and money in charity to help those like the kind-hearted girl in the future.

Article from China Daily iPod Touch App