The pictographic element of the Chinese written script: 02 (Animal characters)

The characters with the most obvious pictographic element are those for animals.  Here, I give the traditional version first, then the simplified.

    (For those who might not know this:  the simplified script, officially adopted by post-1949 mainland China [The People's Republic of China], was mostly artificially created for cutting down the level of illiteracy -- yes, it's hard for Chinese people, too, to learn their own written script.  I say "mostly artificially created", because a lot of simplified characters already existed in some simplified form or other in real life down the centuries, a sort of unofficial cursive / shorthand adopted by the users.  So, the Language Reform Committee seemed to have taken a lot of their inspirations from the grassroots level -- why not?

    Back in the 1960s, I remember my second sister writing the two halves of the character for "trust / letter" 信 xìn as 亻and 文, which is not on the official list.  After all, the character 這 (zhè / this) has been simplified to 这, with the 言 half reduced to 文, so why not the 言 in 信?  An oversight on the part of the Language Reform Committee?  That's another story to come.)

    Characters for animals:  you will see that the traditional forms are closer pictographically to the animals themselves, but all credit to the Language Reform Committee for trying their best to match the spirit while reducing the number of strokes required to write the characters.

馬 / 马 mǎ / horse

魚 / 鱼 yú / fish

鳥 / 鸟 niǎo / bird

烏 / 乌 wū / crow; black (can't see the eye in the bird)

爪 / 爪 zhǎo (/ [colloquial] zhuǎ) / claw

龜 / 龟 guī / tortoise

龍 / 龙 lóng / dragon

   If you can't visualise the animals from the characters (whichever version), you can google the brush stroke renditions for a more artistically realistic version.

The pictographic element of the Chinese written script: 01 (旦)

The Chinese script being pictographic, one might be able to work out the meaning of a character without knowing/remembering the pronunciation.

    Admittedly, one does need to know certain basic rules for a start to help with the guessing.  (I will cover some of the basic rules in a separate blog.)

    An example is the character 旦, which comprises 日 / sun (which one does need to know = / represents "sun") and a horizontal line at the bottom.  (I'm deliberately not providing the readings here for the purpose of this illustration.)

    旦 means morning / dawn, or day (vs night).

    You can visualise it here: the sun over the horizon, therefore = morning or dawn or day.

    (The reading is dàn, for those who might be interested.)

Chinese sayings: 53 (凹凸不平)

Reader Valerio (an old friend with an exploring mind) posted a comment (in blog https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/01/huh-conversations-02-uk.html) saying he can sometimes guess at the meaning of a Chinese character without knowing its reading.  (He's done a bit of basic Chinese.)

    In my response to that comment of his, I raised the example of 凹凸 which one doesn't need to know the readings for to get to the meaning.

    凹凸不平

    āo tū bù píng

    "concave convex not level"

It's used for describing a surface that's uneven, especially potholes in the road, which is particularly of concern to cyclists, which Valerio is.

“Huh?!?” conversations: 02 (UK)

An octogenarian student says for learning Chinese characters, she writes the pinyin (/romanisation for the pronunciation) for the characters that she recognises in pencil on the text.

    Her approach to learning is commendable, but I'm not sure I understand the logic of it.

    Surely there's no need to write the pinyin on the text for the characters that one DOES recognise?  If one already recognises the character, I'd have thought one wouldn't need some/any form of mnemonic.

    Surely one only needs to provide annotation(s) (after looking up the pinyin, and writing it down against the relevant character[s]) for those characters that one does NOT recognise (/ will have trouble recognising subsequently, however many times)?

    Or am I missing something here??

(UK, 2026)

PS:  A while after posting this blog (yes, my brain's arrived on the slow train), I wonder if maybe she just needs to reassure herself that she knows the pinyin (/ romanised spelling) for the character(s)?

Corpsing: 02 (London)

To corpse

(from googling)

Quote

verb THEATRICAL SLANG

spoil a piece of acting by forgetting one's lines or laughing uncontrollably.

"Peter just can't stop himself corpsing when he is on stage"

cause (an actor) to forget their lines and start laughing.

"one singer ad libbed and corpsed his colleagues on stage"

British English uses a slang term, corpsing, to specifically describe one of the most common ways of breaking character—when an actor loses their composure and laughs or giggles inappropriately during a scene. The British slang term is derived from an actor laughing when their character is supposed to be a corpse.

Unquote

We started doing classical Chinese in Year.2 on the undergraduate course at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies).

    One of the texts was 史記 / 史记 / shǐjì / "history record" / Records of the Grand Historian (by 司馬遷 / 司马迁 / Sima Qian), taught by our beloved Mr. George Weys.  Being a historical text, completed c.104–91 BC, the contents are sombre, a lot of which focus on fighting for power, which is not a light subject at all.

    German classmate Robbie and I got on well from the start, so we'd sit together.

    Something happened one day in class (I can't remember what now, but it was a very minor thing) which set me and Robbie off giggling.  For the rest of the lesson, Robbie and I would start giggling all over again after subsiding, usually with one of us recalling the trigger and starting to giggle, which would then set the other one off.  During subsequent lessons, one of us would, out of the corner of the eye, catch sight of the other's body shaking in suppressed giggles, and that would get that person giggling as well.

    It got so bad that we decided to sit on opposite sides of the classroom, but then we'd happen to make eye contact across the room, and the corpsing would start all over again.

    For those of you who might not have been infected with the corpsing bug before, let me tell you that once it starts wriggling in your system, it's very hard to control it -- at the time, and on subsequent occasions, time and time again.  Long after you've forgotten what had started it.

(London, 1978–9)

Corpsing: 01 (Singapore)

To corpse

(from googling)

Quote

verb THEATRICAL SLANG

spoil a piece of acting by forgetting one's lines or laughing uncontrollably.

"Peter just can't stop himself corpsing when he is on stage"

cause (an actor) to forget their lines and start laughing.

"one singer ad libbed and corpsed his colleagues on stage"

British English uses a slang term, corpsing, to specifically describe one of the most common ways of breaking character—when an actor loses their composure and laughs or giggles inappropriately during a scene. The British slang term is derived from an actor laughing when their character is supposed to be a corpse.

Unquote

In Pre-U 1 at RI (Raffles Institution), I was in a Chekhov play The Bear for RI’s annual Drama Festival (with awards handed out).

    I played Widow Popova who was being visited by Smirnov wanting a debt settled.

    (My summary)  When Popova said she couldn't pay him there and then, Smirnov started to get very angry, shouting at her.  At some point, she called him a bear.  Feeling insulted, he called for a duel, and two guns were produced.  During the arguments, Smirnov had started to fall in love with Popova, so he threw the gun onto the floor, feeling that the row was getting to a silly level. (End of my summary)

    After being thrown onto the floor many times during the rehearsals, the aluminium toy gun that the director Utaman had bought for the performance broke, so the next time it was used for a rehearsal, the front half of the toy gun swung open (downwards at the hinge) just as Smirnov and Popova were supposed to be angry and shouting at each other.  Kwok Chow Thim and I collapsed into a fit of corpsing.  

    (In hindsight, I don’t know why we couldn’t have used a wooden spoon or fork for the rehearsals, or just mimed.)

    The director Utaman took it home and tied a wire around the middle section to hold the two halves together.

    At the next rehearsal, the sight of that crude home DIY got us corpsing again.  Every single time after that, rehearsals had to be called off because we kept corpsing.

    The thing about corpsing (in my case anyway) is that even after the cause of the corpsing has been visually removed, the memory would set it off again -- for a long time afterwards.

(Singapore, 1971)

Half full or half empty: 04 (Dealing with being jilted)

Someone I know was recently told by her boyfriend that he didn't want to be with her anymore.  (Ditto someone else whose husband ran off with another woman.)

    I was devastated when the same happened to me.  I spent all my waking moments feeling worthless as a human being.

    One day, the half full vs half empty struck me.  If I'd been the one to have fallen out of love with him, would I be experiencing this depression and self-doubt?  "No," came the answer.  I'd only feel bad about dumping him, I wouldn't feel depressed and worthless.

    So, the only explanation I could find for it was:  I was feeling sorry for myself, because I was the one who'd been abandoned.  The depression lifted once I looked at it this way.

(London, 1980s)