Good Characters, Inc. Blog

For thousands of moms in Sichuan, China, the day after Mother’s Day will be remembered as their worst day ever. On that day, Monday May 12, 2008, a 7.9 earthquake took the lives of their children.

If you know someone who has lost a love one, the most common way to express sympathy is to say, “Qing Jie Ai,” pronounced cheeng jee-eh eye.

Qing (cheeng) means please. Jie Ai (jee-eh eye) means to restrain one’s grief and accept the change.

For anyone interested in numbers and symbolism, this quake, registering nearly 8 on the Richter scale, has a lot that can be talked about. The number 8, traditionally a symbol for prosperity and good luck in the southern part of China, has not been lucky so far for China this year. The quake struck 88 days before the Summer Olympics is scheduled to begin in Beijing; the official start is slated for 08-08-08, at 8 p.m. Some researchers linked the quake to a shift of the Tibetan plateau to the north and east. The day of the quake was the birthday of Lord Buddha in China, which is the eighth day of fourth lunar month. The epicenter was in Sichuan Province, which is, literally, the place of four (si) rivers (chuan).

Mu-Qin-Jie Kuai-Le

Mu Qin (pronounced moo cheen) is a mother.

Jie (pronounced jee-eh) is a festival day or holiday.

Kuai Le (pronounced kwie-luh) is happiness, joy, pleasure, delight, or rejoicing.

So Mother + Day + Happy, pronounced moo cheen jee-eh kwie luh, Mu Qin Jie Kuai Le is how you say “Happy Mother’s Day” in Mandarin Chinese.

A distinct feature of the mother “mu” character is presence of two dots. They are said to represent two nipples of a breast-feeding mother. If you look at the ancient Chinese characters you can see a resemblance between the “mother” and the “female” characters. A female character with two dots becomes the mother character. Picture a mother feeding and embracing a baby in her arms. The bottom part of the ancient characters look like legs in a sitting position. The resemblance is less obvious in the modern character.

More

We’ve been very busy and I haven’t had time to update this blog at all. However, I just found a great source of information about China at china.alltop.com. I have included the link on Blogroll on the bottom right-hand side of this page as well.

The most common Chinese ways of saying Happy New Year are Gong Xi Fa Cai (Mandarin) and Gong Hey Fat Choy (Cantonese). Even though the pronunciations are a little different, both are written the same way.

Gong Xi is congratulations or respectfully wishing one joy.
Fa Cai is to become rich or to make money.

Thus, Gong Xi Fa Cai means wishing you to be prosperous in the coming year.

Chinese New Year: Feb. 7, 2008. The Year of Rat.

Links:

• See it and Hear it
• Learn how to write Gong Xi Fa Cai in Chinese

There are many naming experts who advise on the do’s and don’t’s of naming, but then there are always creative entreprerneurs who break the rules.

A store in Hong Kong named “Delay No Mall” is a good example. It has a name that sounds profane and yet caters to teens’ rebellion and anti-establishment imaginations. 

As any resident of Hong Kong would tell you, the English pronunciation of “delay no more” sounds just like the curse phrase “F*** your mother” in Cantonese.

It’s sort of like the Chinese version of FCUK, which is, supposely, the acronym for the clothing company French Connection (FC) followed by the abbreviation for a branch location, the UK. The clothing company exploited the association of the F word and produced extremely popular t-shirts.

Doing a search on Wikipedia, I found that the company French Connection “apparently first discovered the acronym when a fax was sent from their Hong Kong store FCHK to FCUK.”

To cool accusations that Delay No Mall is in bad taste, the store’s staff has been instructed to pronounce the name as “Delay No Mao” instead of “Delay No Mall.”
 
Links:

• Delay No Mall (Ming Pao) 
• French Connection UK (Wiki)
• Delay No Mall partially open!
• Delay No Mall (Chinese)
  港出位商場以髒話命名取諧音”罵人娘親”
• A Survey of Language Usage (Chinese)
  性暴力語言意見調查
• Delay No Mao (Chinese)
  商場名似粗口 不讀 Delay No Mall 強讀 Delay No 貓

MSNBC reported that a New York City Japanese eatery, Hakata Tonton, boasts that eating collagen-rich pig’s feet is the key to youthful skin.

How do you get Americans, especially New Yorkers, to eat pig’s feet? By calling it by its exotic-sounding Japanese name, Tonsoku, and emphasizing the collagen-rich food’s (or foot’s) potential anti-aging benefits.

What’s in a name? That which we call pig’s feet—yuk!—the Japanese call Tonsoku—much more appealing!

In a Japan Times interview, Himi Okajima, chef and owner of Hakata Tonton, called Tonsoku “the next sushi.” He claims that Americans will adjust to this cuisine just as they now enjoy sushi and the once unappealing notion of raw fish. Today sushi is part of mainstream American dining and it is readily available even in supermarkets. Okajima says that promoting Tonsoku’s health and beauty benefits will open Americans to the idea of eating pig’s feet.

But the underlying question is Are Americans ready to eat pig’s feet? Would you eat them?

To tell you the truth, I grew up eating Tonsoku! In Taiwan, a birthday celebration traditionally includes a meal of noodle soup with pig’s feet. The idea is that because a pig’s feet are huge and strong enough to withhold its large body, eating pig’s feet brings health and strength. And the long noodles in the soup are associated with living a long life. The traditional birthday wish is to live a healthy and long life, so Tonsoku is the perfect birthday dish. People also have a bowl of pig’s feet noodle soup to get rid of bad luck.

Links

• Are pig’s feet the secret to good skin? (MSNBC Video)
  A New York City Japanese eatery boasts that eating collagen-rich pig’s feet is the key to youthful skin.
   
• Will pig’s feet step in where sushi left off in NY? (Japan Times)
  What will New Yorkers crave next? Is Tonsoku the next sushi?
   
• Ma Ying-Jeou Eating Pig’s Feet Noodle Soup (Chinese)
  Ma Ying-Jeou is the Kuomintang candidate in the 2008 Republic of China (Taiwan) presidential elections. He was photographed eating a bowl of pig’s feet noodle soup. It’s symbolic of a wish for a good start.
  馬英九繼續其南下的行程 台南吃豬腳麵線
   
• Collagen (Wiki)

NBC Nightly News has a video (Selling China on human rights) about Dui Hua Executive Director John Kamm, a successful business person turned human rights activist for Chinese political and religious prisoners. Kamm uses persistence and his acquired business skills to advocate for human rights.

John Kamm’s Chinese name is 康原 (Kang Yuan). Kang is a Chinese surname meaning health or to be healthy. It sounds like the English pronunciation of his last name, Kamm. Yuan means original It doesn’t sound like John. We’d like to ask him one day how he decided on his Chinese name and what inspired him to pick this name.

According to the report, his approach to negotiating with Chinese officials can be summarized in two steps:

1. Kamm first researches Chinese court documents to discover and identify prisoners who are in the system.
    
2. Subsequently, using a business approach to human rights, Kamm makes a request to the Chinese officials, trying to convince them that they are better off releasing the prisoners. He is persistent and sees the release as yet another sale he needs to close.

He understands that he gets better results when he informs the government officials of the benefits to them of releasing prisoners than when he uses threats. Unlike other human rights activists, Kamm tries to stay low key, working quietly rather than embarrassing the officials.

Kamm is well admired, not only because of his accomplishments as a successful business man, his past service as president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, and his role as a successful corporate vice president.  He is well respected and liked among the Chinese because his intentions seem to be genuine and sincere. He helps those who cannot help themselves and cannot give him anything in return. His actions have freed 450 political and religious prisoners to date; most of them he says he’s never met.

We can all learn something from this report.

Links:

• Selling China on Human Rights
  “Making a Difference” Series on NBC Nightly News Features Dui Hua Executive Director John Kamm. Dec. 28: How an American man leveraged his big business connections to free hundreds of China’s religious and political prisoners.
• Making A Difference
  Making a difference Friday, December 28, 2007
• John Kamm’s Chinese Name is Kang Yuan
  斯坦福大学名誉教授 John Kamm (康原) 来我院演讲. John Kamm 的中文名字叫康原.
• Human Rights Award Recipient John Kamm
  美国之音焦点透视主持人康原获人权奖
• The Dui Hua Foundation Home Page
  The Dui Hua Foundation (”dui hua” means “dialogue” in Mandarin Chinese) is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving universal human rights by means of a well-informed dialogue between the United States and China.

AdAge reports that a new study from OMD Worldwide found that ethnic groups are turned off by ads that rely on stereotypes and caricatures rather than meaningful cultural cues.

Key points that are relevant when doing business in China or with the Chinese:

• “The respondents were saying, ‘We want to see ourselves represented in ads, but not in a stereotypical manner,’” said Pamela Marsh, group director-primary research and insights at the Omnicom media agency.
   
  Comment: This seems to be common sense although there is a fine line between typical and stereotypical.
   
• The ethnic groups agreed that messages should be culturally relevant, but they responded more positively to ads with multicultural cues, such as ethnic characters, phrases, expressions and values, than ads that were simply translations of general-market ads.
   
  Comment: Very often companies simply have their ads and marketing material translated from English to Chinese believing that simple translation will get their point across. Typically it doesn’t work this way. A more reliable method is to use culturally relevant ways to express the same idea instead of merely translating marketing ads.
   
• “Ad relevancy is more about communicating in kind than speaking in a language,” Ms. Marsh said. 
   
• Asians used the internet at significantly higher rates.
   
  Comment: Since the population in China is much greater than in the U.S., it is likely that in a few years there will be more people in China using the Internet than the entire U.S. population.
   
• According to the study, Asian-Americans also rely heavily on word-of-mouth because they are less receptive to ads than other segments of the population.
   
  Comment: Perhaps this is because several generations of Chinese and Taiwanese have endured several wars and various political propaganda. Hence they have learned to place less trust on the media and rely more on word-of-mouth. The good thing is that people are more ready to accept that an undesirable purchase was simply “bad luck” and they do not blame others or start lawsuits. On the other hand, the lower level of trust among Chinese makes life more difficult and less enjoyable. Until recently, you could not make a purchase in China or Taiwan and expect to receive a refund even if the product was defective or didn’t work as claimed. Thus people have to be very cautious before making a purchase.

What do you think?

Original:

• When Targeting Multicultural Audiences, Be Relevant
  OMD Study: Doing it wrong is worse than not doing it at all

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Xin Nian is New Year. Xin is new and Nian is year.
Kuai Le is happiness, joy, pleasure, delight, or rejoicings.

So “Happy New Year” in English is “New Year Happy” in Chinese: Xin Nian Kuai Le.

Links:

• See it and Hear it
• Learn how to write Happy New Year in Chinese

Ye Dan Kuai Le!

Merry Christmas is Sheng Dan Kuai Le or Ye Dan Kuai Le in Chinese.

Ye is short for Ye Su, which is the transliterated name for Jesus.

The character ye (pronounced in the first tone as in the transliteration of Jesus) does not have a special meaning. It is a character used to imitate a sound, often used for transliteration of foreign names. In old Chinese literature, ye (pronounced in the second tone) is the same as father or used to indicate a question (old Chinese writing has no punctuation marks).

Su means to revive, to come to, or to rise again.

Just like people speak English with different accents in different parts of America, most Chinese don’t speak 100% Beijing Mandarin. Their speech has a hint of their particular accent. Many Chinese pronounce Ye1 Su1 as Ye2 Su1. In that pronunciation, the name Ye Su not only sounds close to the Latin pronunciation of Jesus, but also has a great meaning: Father who has risen again.

Kuai le is happiness, joy, delight, or rejoicing.

Thus, Ye Dan Kuai Le, or Jesus’ Birth Happy, is how you say Merry Christmas in Chinese.

Links:

• See it and Hear it
• Learn how to write Merry Christmas in Chinese