Chinese sayings: 38 (樂以忘憂 / 乐以忘忧 lè yǐ wàng yōu)

樂以忘憂 / 乐以忘忧

lè yǐ wàng yōu

“happy in-order-to forget worry”

I have my own term for it:  distraction therapy.

    I go for activities which give me a lot of pleasure and joy, such as healing (giving people massage and Longevitology energy adjustment to relieve aches and pains, and to improve well-being), gardening (weeding and watering the plants on a vegetable allotment), foraging (wild garlic, wild leek, wild spinach, nettle, dandelion).

    These activities get me out of the house, help take my mind off the horrible and stressful things (and people) in life, and I get a great sense of satisfaction in having made people’s lives easier in some way.  Living a useful life, as I call it.

longevitology.org.uk 

The nature vs nurture of food: 09 (raw vs cooked)

The Chinese are generally not big on raw vegetables as a dish on its own like the salad course in Western dining.

    They do use raw veg, but only in a minor role in general,

* as a garnish: e.g., coriander or spring onion in a Chinese clear soup or in a broth

* as a contrast: e.g., shredded cucumber in Peking duck pancake filling (the crunchiness and the refreshing taste providing a contrast with the meat)

    Yet they eat fruit raw, not cooked (cf. Western cooked fruit as a dessert, which is common), with a few exceptions like banana fritters which is generally a special treat, or a restaurant or banquet party dish.

    The equation between the two cultures seems to have flipped over.

Losing track of time: 01 (London)

I was talking to an old friend about his artistically creative wife not listening properly to things he said, e.g., he’ll ask her to switch on the light and she’ll close the door.

    My response was that my impression of artistically creative people is that they're often, if not always, in a world of their own.  I cited the example of a Japanese friend, Satoshi (who’s now a famous children’s book illustrator).

    Satoshi told me that often he’d work on his illustrations (not necessarily to meet a deadline which would at least justify shutting out the world) until he had finished, or until hunger brought him back to reality.  He’d then discover that there was no food in the house and it was 2am.

(London, 1980s)

Losing track of time: 02 (London)

I was given a small Mac in the summer of 1987(?) to work on at home when I was tasked with compiling a list of the traditional character equivalents for the simplified character database that we had on our Unix system in my office at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), where I was working on two Chinese computer research projects:  Speech Recognition and Speech Synthesis, and CALL / Computer Aided Language Learning).

    My desk was in a corner of the living room at a north-facing window.

    I had surrounded myself with five different dictionaries to cross reference.

    I’d get home from SOAS around 10pm.  (I always left at SOAS closing time, 9pm, one of the last to leave the building.)

    I’d walk straight into my living room and switch on the Mac first, as it took time (this was 1987) to boot up, then go and remove my shoes.  That was how keen I was to get going.

    During one long stretch, I’d only get up out of my chair in the corner of the living room to go to the kitchen for coffee or to the loo, then back again.

    At one point, I looked up out of the window.  The sky was a shade that I couldn’t tell was dawn (4am in summer before it got light) or dusk (9:30pm before it got dark), that was how sucked in I was by the database conversion work.

    I had no idea at all which day it was, and how long I’d been working at it.

    In the end, I found out that I’d been sitting there, working at it for 19 hours non-stop.

    So, I can understand how these artistic people could be so lost in their own creative world all the time.

(London, 1987)

London train drivers' announcements (London)

Just got a text from a friend:

Quote

Right now I am in Tube going to Archway. The train driver just announced in Camden, this train is going to MillHill. If you want to go to Edgware then change here and Rock and Roll. 😁😅

We all looked at each other and asked did he say that?

That breaks the mundane boring journey. I wish we could all be able to joke more often.

Unquote

My reply:

Quote

I was on a late night Tube train in the 80s or 90s.  When it got to Kings Cross, which interchanges with quite a few lines, the driver said,

“This is King’s Cross.  Change here for Piccadilly line, the Northern line, and lots of other lines.”

Unquote

PS:  Kings Cross and King’s Cross are both used.

(London, 2025 / 1980s/90s)

“Huh?!?” conversations: 01 (London)

 

The Mandarin group lesson this week featured the Chinese name for Heathrow (Airport) in the Listening Comprehension exercise.

    It is my style to ask “why?” all the time — as a teacher and in conversation.

    For teaching, it is to train the students to think about what lies behind a word or language usage, not just to accept it as it comes.  This is so as to provide them with the toolkit to work things out for themselves when they go out and use the language (actively or passively) in real life, without me by their side to help them.  Especially since these students are OAPs (old age pensioners), who can benefit from the cerebral challenge on top of it, to exercise their brains, not just to learn the language.

    It’s an online course, so I use a googledocs file as my blackboard.  Students get an email invitation to join when I share the file with them, and everyone can see what’s happening on the file (/blackboard) in real time.  My explanations or questions are typed up as I go along (if not pre-inserted), so that students can also see what I’m saying or asking should the sound connection fail a bit here and there.

    For the Listening Comprehension exercise that mentioned Heathrow (希思罗 Xīsīluó), I asked (and typed up the text to go with it):

    “The word Heathrow starts with the letter/sound ‘h’, yet the Mandarin version is Xisiluo, which starts with the letter/sound ‘x’ [pronounced more like an ’s’ sound].  So, how did the ‘h’ sound in English become an ‘x[/s]’ sound in Mandarin??”

    The answer by one student (aged 81) was:  “Because the Chinese cannot distinguish between the ‘r’ and ‘l’ sounds.”

    Huh??!!??

(London, 2025)

PS:  This blog is not a name-and-shame exercise.  I haven’t named her, anyway, and I’m not trying to shame her in any way. 

Rather, I’m concerned that she came up with an answer that did not correspond to my question at all, which might mean she has dementia or Alzheimer’s, or is at least in the early stages of it.  (Note I say “might”, as I’m no medical doctor, so I’m just guessing.)

I’d already noticed (and wish now that I’d thought of chronicling them) something very odd about some of her communications since back in March 2024, which was before the “I’ve muted myself” episodes.

This is the same student who’d announced, “I’ve muted myself now,” when I asked her to do so because her husband was making coffee in the background, and the clattering was jarring and disruptive to the lesson.  

In spite of my pointing out to her the oxymoronic logic of announcing to the class that she had muted herself, she still went on to do it time and again in subsequent lessons (because the husband kept choosing to come in during the lesson and make his coffee in spite of my having identified the source of the disturbance), failing to see the strange logic of it.

Her mental confusion, which has been increasing in frequency since March 2024, is also leading me to worry about myself, as I’m not far behind her in age (nine years).

See also: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2023/07/oxymoronic-situation-london.html 

 

Chinese sayings: 37 (鄭人買履 / 郑人买履 Zhèng rén mǎi lǚ)

 

鄭人買履 / 郑人买履

Zhèng rén mǎi lǚ

“Zheng man buy shoe”

Man of Zheng buys shoes

This is a fable having a dig at sticklers.

    A man from the State of Zheng* was going to the market to buy a pair of shoes.

    He took a measurement of his foot and placed it on a chair.  He then forgot to take it with him to the market, so he went back home for it.  By the time he returned to the marketplace, the vendors had left.

    Someone said to him, “Why didn’t you try out the shoes with your own feet?”  He said, “I’d rather go by the measurement recorded.”

*State of Zheng: one of the states during the Spring and Autumn Period (770 – 476/403 BC), in modern-day Henan Province in Central China.

The original text

鄭人有欲買履者，先自度其足，而置之其坐。至之市，而忘操之。已得履，乃曰：「吾忘持度。」反歸取之。及反，市罷，遂不得履。人曰：「何不試之以足？」曰：「寧信度，無自信也。」《韓非子·外儲說左上》。

(鄭人有欲買履者 一作：鄭人有且置履者)

郑人有欲买履者，先自度其足，而置之其坐。至之市，而忘操之。已得履，乃曰：“吾忘持度。”反归取之。及反，市罢，遂不得履。人曰：“何不试之以足？”曰：“宁信度，无自信也。”《韩非子·外储说左上》。

(郑人有欲买履者 一作：郑人有且置履者)