Wordplay for the Chinese New Year

Wordplay for the Chinese New Year
中国新年的文字游戏

Punnest weekend ever
一个双关至极的周末

Feb 11th 2011, 13:26 by A.T. | HONG KONG


UNMERCIFULLY, The Economist works straight through the Chinese New Year. Most of Hong Kong however, including the office tower in which we keep our bureau, closes for a four-day weekend. So for a change of pace, I worked from home, in a decidedly traditional village, 45 minutes from the main business district. As I had learned a year ago, soon after I moved to greater China, this village is a noisy place to spend the New Year—think gongs and firecrackers, day and night—but also festive, friendly and colourful.

真不厚道，经济学人在中国农历新年期间要照常工作。香港的大部分地区，包括我们局所在的办公大楼全都停业放一个四天长周末。于是，我调剂了一下生活节奏，从家里上班。我住在一个显然还保留着传统乡俗的村庄里，离主要商业区45分钟路程。一年前刚到中国香港不久，我便尝到了在这个村里过年的那份喧闹非常的滋味：锣鼓声和爆竹声，不分昼夜此起彼落；同时，这里也缤纷多彩，洋溢着节庆祥和的气氛。

And a punny place too? The punniest place I'd ever imagined? What a difference a year of studying Chinese makes. As it turns out, corny visual puns are the order of the day, or the entire first month, of chūnjié, the spring festival. Nearly every bit of decoration, food and gesture seems to be infected in some way with punnery. I had long thought of myself as being tolerant, when it comes to puns anyway. But this particular form, the  heterographic homophone, can quickly turn into something like  Chinese water torture [sic].

它还是一个双关语之地？ 甚至是我想象中的双关语最高境地？一年的中文学习让我眼界大开，结果我领教了落套的视觉双关语游戏，它们成了每天以至整个正月的特色大餐，全部围着chūnjié（春节）打转。几乎每一种装饰、食品和手势都多少传染了类似的玩法。我一直以为自己的忍受力已经够强韧了，尤其在牵涉到双关语的时候，但频遇这种谐音异形字的形式，能很快让你像遭遇中国水刑一样。

Start with the orange trees, which are everywhere. Really they're tangerines (or "mandarins", but let's set that word aside) which is important. They're pretty, standing at nearly every door's threshold and on village corners, short or tall, with straight trunks, waxy green leaves and bursting with bright fruit. I bought one last year, thinking it was in season. I was disappointed at how quickly it died. But I had missed the point. The joke goes like this: tangerines are are 橘, pronounced jú or júzi in Mandarin Chinese. (That accent mark means that the syllable is pronounced with a rising tone.) So it sounds something like jí, which is how you pronounce 吉, which means "good luck". The sounds are different in Cantonese, the local tongue, but the pun works the same way.

先从橘子树说起吧。触目所及，四处皆是橘子树。它们实际上是柑子（或者是"桔子"，且别管它了），关键是橘。橘树很好看，放在几乎每家每户的门槛旁边和街边村角之处，有矮有高，挺直的树干上满是油亮的绿叶和累累果实。去年我也买了一株，以为正值旺季时期，没想它很快就枯死了，我还为此闷闷不乐。其实，是我未领略其中的奥妙。它的双关是这么解读的：tangerines就是橘，发音为jú 或者 júzi（字母上的符号表示音节发音为升调）。听起来好像jí，就跟你说"吉"的声音一样。吉的意思是"好运气"，用粤语发音不一样，但即使按照本地的粤语口音，所表示的双关意思是相同的。

This formula can be applied ad infinitum to explain nearly every visible or edible emblem of this holiday. Chrysanthemums are everywhere and they look fine. That's not the point. They are 菊花, júhuā. Get it? My secret Santa at the office new year party gave me a pair of embroidered fish ornaments, which would've looked cute on a Christmas tree. But their purpose is to be "double fish" or double 魚, shuāngyú, which sounds like 雙餘, which means "double bounty". This goes on and on.

这一公式可以被拿来重复解释几乎所有可见可食的节日象征物品。满街满园的菊花十分赏心悦目，但这并不是重点。关键在于它们叫菊花，júhuā。明白了吗？我的神秘圣诞老人在办公室新年派对上送了我一对绣花鱼挂饰，把它们挂在圣诞树上一定很可爱。但它们的主要含义在"双鱼"上，shuāngyú与雙餘同音，取"双份余粮【年终奖金】"之意。诸如此类，不胜枚举。

Chinese is brimming with puns in part because it has so few sounds. There are only 400-some syllables in the first place, which can be intoned in four or five ways each, at a maximum. But that understates the potential for mischief. Most special about the Chinese language to the mind of this rank beginner is that every single syllable is susceptible to semantic interpretation. I believe that my colleague, who thinks that the Chinese could abandon their characters in favour of a phonetic writing system, is missing something important here, but I am happy to leave that heady debate to the experts. (See, for example, " Protocols of Designing Pun Rebuses: Revisiting the Triple Interface of Image, Morphology, and Phonology". I'm on holiday.)

中国话里充满了双关语，部分原因是它的发音非常有限。汉语原本只有400多个音节，每个音节有四种或至多五种声调。不过，可别低估了它足以让你崩溃的能力。以我这个彻头彻尾初学者的感受来看，汉语最特别的地方就是每个音节都可能有多种语义。我一同事认为中国人不如放弃汉字，另择语音文字系统来取代。我相信他错过了非常重要的东西。不过，我还是宁愿把这个头痛的问题留给专家们讨论，（比如在这本《设计双关字画的规程：再论图象、形态和音韵三学交叉接口》书中的论述。本人正度假呢）。

The lion dancers (pictured at the top of this post) sashay to loud musical accompaniment from house to house through the village, stopping to collect lai see, red envelopes with banknotes tucked inside, before devouring a head of romaine lettuce hanging from a bamboo stick. Why romaine? Because that's , or shēngcài, which sounds something like 生財, which means "making money".

舞狮队员（见文首插图）随着震耳欲聋的伴奏音乐踩着方步，在村里走东家串西家，遇到"利是"（夹着钞票的红包）便停下来收集，然后(让"狮子")吞掉挂在竹竿上的生菜头。为何生菜？因为shēngcài听起来与 "生财"同音，意思是"赚钱"。

Speaking of wealth there's a character that shows up everywhere, year round, but especially this week. It's 福, pronounced fú, meaning "wealth" or "good fortune". But now I'm seeing it turned upside down. There's a ramshackle gambling den on my street whose fú sign has always hung upside down; I thought it had slipped. But they're just playing with 福. Fúdàole, or 福倒了, means literally "fortune upside down". It also happens to sound just like 福到達, or "fortune has arrived." (Perversely, the gambling den has righted its sign, just this week, but I guess the same pun works in reverse.) Golden images of bats adorn older doorframes. These could be called 金蝠, jīnfú, which sounds like "golden fortune", though my Beijinger tutor denies it.

说到财富，还有一个字一年四季到处有得见，本周尤其多。这就是"福"字，音fú，意思是"财富"或 "好运气"。但现在它被倒了过来。在我住的这条街上有家简陋的赌坊，它家的福字一直倒挂着。我还以为它歪掉了。其实人家只是在戏弄"福"字。 Fúdàole或福倒了，字面意思就是"财富倒了"，也恰好与"福到达"、"财富已到" 同音。（就在本周，赌坊一反惯常，挂正了"福"字。我猜同样的双关语正过来也说得通）。在陈旧的门框上，人们用黄金蝙蝠图来装饰。它们被称作金蝠，jīnfú，听来像"金富"，虽然我的北京老师不同意。

No one offered me a dish of golden fried bat, and I have nothing against romaine lettuce, but it was at the special holiday menu that I had my fill of this wordplay. My local noodle shop had a special sheet of expensive New Year's delicacies to choose from, this week only. A couple of them were even good, but most were perplexing: lots of leafy greens, because "-vegetable" is always going to sound like "-money", but also the 髮菜, a moss that grows on grassroots and is not very edible at all but does sound like "make money", and oyster fermented in soya, not for flavour's sake but so that it can be háochĭ, which sounds like characters that mean "well being". There must have been 30 items on this menu, and only by dint of the crap shoot were any worth eating. (Local friends warned me.)

并没有人给我来一盘油炸金蝙蝠，我一向也不讨厌生菜。只是当看到一份节日特餐菜单时，我算被这种文字游戏彻底填腻了。我常去的一家本地面点小吃推出了新年特色菜供顾客挑选，时间仅限于本周。其中除了一两样口味还不错之外，多数却令人费解：大量的绿叶蔬菜也罢了，因为"蔬菜"永远听起来与"钱"相近。但是"发菜"？发菜是一种沿草根衍生的青苔，一点儿也不美味，可它的发音像"发财"。还有酱油腌牡蛎，这道菜不是吃它的口味，而是为了háochĭ，发音与"好时"的字音相似。这份菜单上起码开了30道菜，哪道好吃则全凭掷骰子来碰运气了（当地朋友如是警告说）。

The pomelo is a good-luck fruit, year round, and if that's because of a pun I don't want to know it. I was not displeased to learn that recent efforts to cross-breed the pomelo with the tangerine—so as to make a "big 橘", dàjú, or "big luck"—have resulted in such a tough and bland fruit that vendors don't bother selling it. Not even for New Year's.

柚子是带来"好运"的水果，此兆头是不分时令的。如果这也出自某种双关，我已经不想知道了。最近听说有人把柚子和橘子进行杂交，培育"大橘"，dàjú 表示"大运"，结果长出了又硬又没口味的水果，即使在新年节日期间也没有水果店愿意进货销售。对此，我并不感到惋惜。