Disclaimer: My blogs are mainly lighthearted, mostly based on my own experiences, for raising a laugh or a smile, with the occasional enlightenment moments (“Ah, I see!”). What is covered in this blog about the Chinese script is what I teach my students, my own perspective and interpretation, as a mnemonic / an aid to remembering, not based on scholastic research and proven etymology.
鮮花插在牛糞上 / 鲜花插在牛粪上
xiān huā chā zài niú fèn shàng
“fresh flower stick on cow excrement top”
鲜 xiān / fresh
插 chā / to stick (into / onto)
糞 (粪) fèn / excrement
This saying is usually a comment on what a waste it is for a beautiful woman to be with an ugly man. Could be useless man, not necessarily just looks. Somehow it doesn’t apply the other way round, or at least I haven’t come across it myself, i.e., it’s not used to describe a handsome man being with an ugly or useless woman, maybe because of the flower reference.
The character for fresh 鲜 xiān is made up of 鱼 yú / fish and 羊 yáng / goat, sheep. Both are strong-smelling, therefore have to be eaten fresh.
The character for “excrement” has an interesting composition.
In the traditional version, 糞 fèn has three components:
米 mǐ / (uncooked) rice
田 tián / (farming) field
共 gòng / together
The simplified version 粪 (米 and 共) has the “田 tián / field” missing.
It is reflective of the Chinese practice of recycling waste. Rice (米 mǐ) is consumed, leaves the body, is taken out to the fields (田 tián), and mixed in together with (共) the soil as fertiliser.
Caring, the second episode of The Heart of The Dragon (a 12-part documentary series about China for the then-nascent Channel Four), was filmed in February 1982 in Harbin, N.E. China.
Just to give you an idea how cold it gets there in February (which is around Chinese New Year time): Harbin is famous for its International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, with the creations (some as big as a building, allowing people to walk around inside) standing out in the open from late December to late February.
One of the cutaway shots in the episode Caring features a lorry driver shovelling the human waste in frozen blocks from the outdoor latrines onto the lorry, then tipping the frozen blocks onto the soil upon arrival at the fields. When the weather warms up, the blocks will melt away into the soil.
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