Some lines of poetry from Zheng Banqiao

Some days ago I stumbled upon a fragment of poetry, of which I knew nothing before: a friend asked me for an overall translation of the meaning of some Chinese characters in calligraphy on some painting he had in his house.
 After checking, I think it is a pretty enjoyable poem for anyone.

   The painting of the photo I received was in fact a copy of a painting with calligraphy of Fan Ceng 范曾 (1938 -). (You can get an idea at this link).

  But the text of the writing in calligraphy, as declared at the left end of the writing by the painter himself, comes from the Qing Dynasty: from the poems of Zheng  Xie 郑燮, better known as Zheng Banqiao 郑板桥 (1693 -1765). And what is on the painting is only a fragment. It is one of eight little poems (see full text here).

 山深人跡少
漸石瘦松肥,
云痴鹤老。 [...]

shānshen rénjì shăo  
mountain - deep - person - trace - few)
jiàn shí shòu sōng féi,
gradually - rock- meagre - pine - fat)
yún chī hè lăo. 
cloud - silly - crane - old)

Deep in the mountains 山深

Following, my translation of these verses into English and Italian.

Deep in the mountains, few are the traces of man, 
step by step, rock cliffs and luxuriant pine trees,
Silly as a cloud, wise as a crane. 

Addentrandosi nelle montagne, rare le tracce dell'uomo,
poco a poco rocce appuntite e floridi pini,
la frivolezza delle nuvole, la saggezza della gru.

   The second line plays around the opposition between  "meagre shou" and "fat fei" wich is hardly translatable, as the "meagre rock" means edgy rocks, and recalls a mountain view of cliffs and rocks; while the pine trees are luxuriant.

Rock cliffs 瘦石

   The third line also has "silly chi" which is opposed to "old lao". They are opposed because the first is linked to the concept of youth and sillyness; while the second is linked to the idea of wisdom and old age. Such is the disposition of a traveler.

  If you happen to go to Xiamen Zhongshan Park, you might see a rock on which the second and third line are engraved.

This is the photo I received, and it is, in fact, different in the end of the first line: 
here is not "few are the traces of man", but "there are a few people",
as the character for "traces" is missing. Also, the second line goes: "luxuriant pine trees and rock cliffs, as the two parts of the line are inverted here. 

Below here some links to pages with some information I used for this post.

• ChinaCulture.org (link)
• Page about Xiamen Zhongshan Park
• Grande Dizionario Cinese -Italiano (Giorgio Casacchia - Bai Yukun) (link to description)
• Full text

Black sheep....or horses?

      If you want to say that someone is the bad person in a family or in a group you can say he or she is the black sheep, right?

or you can call him or her "rotten apple"

   But how do you say all this in Chinese? 

   In Chinese, the idiom that indicates the bad element in a group does not present any sheep, instead, we find a horse, but it is not black at all. Let's see it:

In the first line you can find the characters, in the second line the pinyin (phonetic transcription), in the third the translation of the single characters in English, in the last line the translation of the single characters in Italian.

For those that are interested in the grammatical structure of the idiom, it is a name (horse) determined by a verb phrase. In English it would be "The horse that harms [its own] herd". In Italian it would be "Il cavallo che fa del male alla propria mandria". If you want to explain it in Chinese it is 危害马群的劣马.

    See you next time, if you have any comments please feel free to write it in the comment section!

Confucius says

jǐsuǒbúyù wùshīyúrén

This is a saying from the Analects of Confucius. If you want to know more about it, here's the sentence explained. The first column is the text in classical Chinese, the second column (the coloured one) is the translation of the single characters in modern Chinese, and the third is the translation in English.

"Do not do to others

 what you do not like done to yourself"

                                                    (Confucius, Analects)

Chinese Idioms Special 4: One horse takes the lead

  The year of the horse has just begun: Happy new year of the horse to everyone!

 

   And here it is: another Chinese Idioms Special:

yī mǎ dāng xiān

   This four-characters idiom  means "to gallop at the head", "take the lead", "be in the forefront", "to be the first to take the enemy or to do work". It is used to indicate that this time it's the turn of the year of the horse. 

   But, this idiom is part of a eight characters saying:

yī mǎ dāng xiān, wàn mǎ bēn téng

And here is the full idiom with pinyin and word by word translation:

   It means that, "when one single horse takes the lead in battle, ten thousand horses follow, going full-steam ahead".

   I hope you like this content, feel free tu make suggestions! ^_^

   See you next post!

Chinese Idioms 7: How often do you change your mind?

"Change one's mind constantly"

   This four-character idiom's structure is an apposition: the first part (sanxin) is parallel to the second (eryi). If your heart is three and

Chinese Idioms special 3: The year of the horse brings a lot of good luck!

This is the third special post dedicated to the soon beginning year of the horse. If you lost the previews ones, you can find them here and here.

mǎnián xíng dàyùn   jíqìngyǒuyú

Today's idiom can be translated as: "May the year of the

Chinese Idioms special 2: may the year of the horse bring riches!

  

 As promised in the previews post (see here), a new idiom regarding the year of the horse.
    Also this one is

Felice anno nuovo del Cavallo!

(per la versione in inglese clicca qui)

   Come tutti sappiamo, il 2014 è cominciato; ma secondo il calendario tradizionale cinese, che è un calendario lunare, il nuovo anno comincerà tra circa un mese: il 31 gennaio 2014.

"Calendario lunare": il primo carattere (yue) significa "luna", il secondo (li) significa "calendario".

Il nuovo anno sarà l'anno del Cavallo: "ma"

Chinese Idioms Special: Happy new year of the horse

(for the italian version of this post see here)

   As we all know, the year 2014 has begun. But according to the Chinese traditional lunar calendar the new year is going to begin within almost a month (on the 31st of January 2014).

   The new Chinese Year is going

Chinese idioms 5: imaginary fears

Hi everyone! Back from summer break, I am going to present some four-characters Chinese idioms  (chengyu) that express in a metaphorical way the concept of imaginary fear.

  The first one is 杯弓蛇影 bēi gōng shé yǐng.

    This chengyu refers to the episode of the Han Dynasty (30 - 220 AD) where the shape of a bow hung on the wall, which is reflected in a cup, is mistaken for

Verbs: what makes them so tough

Good day everyone! Today's post will be a very general and introductive one. If you already have some experience with Chinese language, this post might be useless. 请你谅解!

[    for Italian text, go to the end of the post    ]

   As you start studying Chinese, you could be pleasantly surprised to find out that you will not need to learn by heart tons of conjugations, varying according to person (well, for English speaking people this is a given), number, aspect and tense. Yes indeed: Chinese verbs have no conjugations at all.

For example, let's take the verb "to know" 知道 zhidao: the verb never changes. What changes is the pronoun:

Dieci fatti sulla lingua cinese

Vagando per internet, mi capita di imbattermi in imprecisioni, errori, leggende e colossali assurdità sulla lingua cinese. Da ciò nasce questo post per i curiosi. Ecco alcuni fatti:

   1) La lingua cinese (intesa come putonghua, lingua ufficiale della Repubblica Popolare Cinese) ha un sistema di scrittura di origine millenaria, la cui unità minima sono i caratteri 汉字 hanzi. Gli ideogrammi sono una sotto-categoria: sono quei caratteri che rappresentano un'idea.