Chinese characters: 07 (肥 / 胖 vs 瘦)

 

肥 / 胖 vs 瘦

páng / féi vs shòu

"fat / fat" vs "thin, lean"

These Chinese characters are interesting for revealing cultural perspectives.

    The characters for "fat / obese" are written with the flesh radical (the left hand side of 肥 / 胖), yet the character for "thin / lean" is written with the sickness radical (the 疒 element in 瘦).

    (The radical part of a Chinese character indicates the category of the meaning, e.g., water radical characters are to do with water, be they nouns or verbs or adjectives: 池 chí / pond, 洗 xǐ / to wash, 清 qīng / clear [vs 濁 / 浊 zhuó / muddy].)

    This is to do with the historical situation, I think.

    With (among other things) the constant floods and famines, there was always the insecurity and worry about food being enough.

    A Chinese will comment on someone who has put on weight with "你發福了 / 你发福了 / nǐ fā fú le / "you have developed blessings", which AI says can be a joke, or is "tactful, diplomatic or euphemistic".  

    I think it can actually be a genuine compliment, especially in the old days, or with the older generation, because being fat means that one has enough to eat.

See also my mother's attempt at putting on weight:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2013/06/one-way-of-putting-on-weight-or-not.html 

Chinese sayings: 42 (攀轅扣馬 / 攀辕扣马)

 

攀轅扣馬 / 攀辕扣马

pān yuán kòu mǎ

"climb shaft detain horse"

This is another saying about hospitality:  climbing onto the shaft of the cart and detaining the horse to stop the guest from leaving.

    Having been brought up in the Chinese tradition, I can certainly relate to the duty of trying to make your guests feel welcomed, but not to the point of  climbing onto the bonnet and withholding their car keys (the modern equivalent).  Hahahahaha.

See also:  牽衣投轄 / 牵衣投辖

https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2023/12/chinese-sayings-20.html 

The Pavlov's dog effect

(AI says)  "Pavlov's dog" refers to the famous experiments by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov that demonstrated classical conditioning. Through repeated association, dogs learned to salivate at the sound of a bell because it was consistently paired with the presentation of food. This led to the discovery of classical conditioning, where a neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus, triggering a conditioned response after being paired with an unconditioned stimulus.

    I have a cockroach phobia, which I don’t with spiders, or snakes, or other creepy crawlies.  Cockroaches generally don’t bite (not in the sense of attacking, anyway), so my phobia can’t be due to that.

    One day, it struck me that it might’ve come from one of the ways of childminding that I’d observed in my younger days in Singapore.

    I’d seen old people (usually the grandparent generation), using verbal control to stop toddlers from getting into a dangerous situation (e.g., getting too close to the main door and therefore to the street), to save themselves from having to physically chase after them and bring them back, which is very tiring for the old person.

    I’d hear them saying (in dialect and in a breathless, alarming, scary, warning tone of voice), “Don’t go, don’t go.  Police, police, arrest, arrest!”  

    And the toddler would usually stop or pull back, more because of the tone of voice than the semantics.  My theory is that the Pavlov’s dog effect then sets in for the rest of their lives, associating the concept of (or word) “police” with something frightening, scary, terrifying.

    I think they might have used “cockroach” with me instead.