I play a mainland Chinese crossword puzzle game on my phone. It comes under the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp, which I’d had to download because some mainland Chinese people wanting to do English lessons with me can’t use anything else.
The crossword puzzle game uses four-character Chinese sayings: some are common everyday usage ones, some are more erudite ones picked from classical Chinese texts and poetry.
A student who works in Singapore has his lessons with me via WhatsApp. One day more than a year ago, he told me at the end of his lesson that he’d be getting married. Lesson over, I went to play the Chinese crossword puzzle game. Among the first round of sayings was 男大当婚 nán dà dāng hūn / “man big ought-to marry”!
For today’s lesson (still via WhatsApp) with the same student more than a year later, I fed him a four-character saying 花言巧语 huā yán qiǎo yǔ / “flowery words clever language” which the dictionaries have given as “slick / smooth talk”. When I went into the Chinese crossword puzzle game after the lesson, one of the sayings in the first batch that came up was 花言巧语!
During a lesson a few months back with a different student based in Shanghai, I gave him a saying that involves a slightly more classical Chinese construction: 诸 zhū which is short for 之于 zhī yú, roughly broken down as “it into”, e.g., 付诸东流 fù zhū dōng liú / “pay it-into east flow” (dictionary says: throw it into the eastward flowing stream; English equivalent: throwing something down the drain).
The 付诸东流 saying is common enough, without every Chinese user necessarily knowing the breakdown, as they tend to learn things by rote and repeat parrot-fashion. It’s the 诸 being short for 之于 that’s the more obscure bit, often encountered in this meaning/usage only in set phrases or literary language.
After my lesson with the Shanghai-based student, I went into the crossword puzzle game. Yep, up popped 付诸东流!
(London / Singapore / Shanghai, 2021–2023)
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