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

Ma xin tang yuan

Dajia hao 大家好!
   About two years ago I went to a chinese restourant near my home, and among the desserts I happened to choose a dessert that looked like this:

I must say, I never had the chance to try it while I was in China. I think it is delicious, and advise, if you have a chance, that you try it. Even if you won't like it, at least you need to have this experience once.

    They are called "麻心汤圆 máxīn tāngyuán":

they are glutinous rice balls staffed with ground sesame seeds in sweet soup.

 

  They are the best, in my opinion, when osmanthus dried flowers are added to the hot sweet water that is the soup. These small yellow-whitish flowers have a delicate sweet scent that helps balancing the flavour of the sesame seeds. 

   If you want to try making the maxin tangyuan on your own, the main ingredients are not difficult to find:

• black sesame seeds,
• glutinous rice flour, 
• lard, 
• sugar. 
• osmanthus dried flowers (optional)

 Osmanthus unfortunately is not easy to find, but maybe you can find the plant and pick some little flowers and let them dry. In Italy it usually blooms in september.

1. First you need to grind the sesame seeds and mix them with lard and sugar. 
2. then you make a dough,  mixing the rice flour and the water gradually. 
3. make little disk shaped pieces of dough (about 3cm diameter)
4. make little balls of sesame 
5. put the sesame balls on the little dough disks and close the disk around the sesame filling, to make little white orb.
6. put them in boiling water, being careful not to let them stick to the cooking pan. Just wait for them to float to the surface: that is when they are ready: stop the boiling with cold water and wait about 30 second. 
7. put the sesame balls in some bowls, together with their cooking water. Add osmanthus flowers (/essence)

   This recipe post is dedicated to my friend S. who has been waiting for it for ages and has encouraged me so much to keep on with it, thank you.

   And thank you for reading. See you next post

The tiger-sheep approaches

As the Chinese year of the goat is approaching this four-characters idiom that begins with the character "yang" came to my mind:  

   You could ask what is the link between the year of the goat and the "sheep" of the idiom. The fact is, this is going to be the year of the "yang 羊", a character which has a wider meaning than simply "sheep" or "goat" in English or "pecora"/"capra" in Italian.

     In this idiom the word "yang" is in opposition with the word "hu" (tiger): The sheep/goat is here a symbol of weakness, while the tiger represents strength/power. 

This symbolical opposition derives from the other two characters, "zhi" (= nature, substance) and "pi" (= skin), used as opposites. This idioms, that literally translates as "character of a sheep - skin of a tiger", describes someone that appears something that he is not or that brags about some skill he has not: "impressive in appearance but lacking in substance".

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!

Dragonboats and Zongzi

   This year, the 2nd of June was Duānwǔ Jié: the Dragonboat Festival, which is a traditional festivity day in China. It occurs on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, which is why it is also called 双五节Shuāng wǔ jié (Double-fifth festival).

On this day people eat a traditional food, called Zòngzi 粽子(sticky rice treats wrapped in bamboo leaves),








 and lóngzhōu 龙舟 (dragon-boat) races take place. 

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!