Jiang Ye Chapter 72

Chapter 72

Rain Veranda Chinese Style. This is a garden in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

万岁 Wàn suì- “(Live for, or to be) ten-thousand years”. One of those phrases that just doesn’t convert very well. It’s how “long live the (sovereign)” would be said in English, but of course the time element of the phrase and the humbleness is lost in translation. I have seen subtitles of “long live, long live” which I rather find amusing. I hate coming across these phrases though, because then we are forced to step into the realm of re-writing because there isn’t much wiggle room.

脱尘 Tuō chén “Purifying dust” – this is a Buddhist term. It literally means “removing dust”, as in, the “dust” from the impurities of the world. While you sweep away dust, in a metaphysical sense you don’t just sweep bad things that affect you away. In our view it is a “transfer” of bad to a metaphysical body, so the affected parts should also be “purified”, and so we chose the verb “purify” instead.

饮茶 yǐn chá Drink Tea – you may automatically think, why isn’t this translated as dim sum. Well dim sum is how we do yum cha (drink tea in the Cantonese dialect) in southern China, and does not mean everyone does it the same way – for example, the UK has its own tea time practices. Since this is based on the Tang Dynasty, I have no clue what they did during their “yin cha”. Some light googling didn’t reveal much of substance, like what was served etc etc. A cultural note is that Cantonese uses 饮 yǐn for drinking, and Mandarin uses 喝 Hē. My prof told the class once that Yin is an example of how Cantonese is more similar to Classical Chinese than modern Mandarin.

And, a random image by deviantart user: xiaoxinart, hope he doesn’t mind the permission-less promotion >.<

Tang China