Learning Mandarin - The Dragon Festival 端午节 Duanwu Jie -

> Chinese Culture > Chinese History
The Dragon Festival 端午节 Duanwu Jie
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shunyadragon -

When the stories of Chinese holidays and festivals come to us in condensed versions we do not
always get the whole story. When I lived in China I made an effort research in more depth the
holidays and festivals of China. What is called the Dragon Boat Festival is somewhhat misleading
as to the true nature and origins of the festival. It is indeed the Dragon Festival, and there is
much more to the story than most Chinese and foreigners realize.

Dragon Festival

The Dragon Festival, 端午节 Duanwu Jie or 端阳节 Duanyang Jie, sometimes called the Dragon
Boat Festival, is celebrated some time in June on fifth day of the fifth lunar month. The origins
of the festival are likely very ancient. According to Wen Yiduo 闻一多(1898-1946), a modern
poet and scholar this festival had its beginnings over 5,000 years ago in the ancient kingdoms of
Wu and Yue located in present day Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces. The celebration of this festival
was likely inspired as ceremonies, sacrifices and offerings to the Dragon of the Eastern Sea to
prevent the floods, drought, and plagues of insects and disease that often occurred around this
time of year.

This day was considered to be the beginning of an important period in the change of seasons that
could make it a bountiful year or a very bad year. It was considered a day that could possibly
bring bad fortunes, because of the potential for spring and summer disasters. The purpose of most
of these ceremonies was to appease the great Father Dragon of the Eastern Sea and other gods to
prevent drought, floods, plague, insect swarms like grasshoppers, and diseases. The throwing of
zongzi in the river was originally part of this ceremony. Many of the ancient ceremonies and
traditions are still commonly practiced on China, though they mostly do not have the same meaning
today. The overwhelming threat of floods, drought, plagues and disease is not as great today.
Modern science and technology has replaced these beliefs with alternative solutions to these
problems.

Traditionally in ancient times offerings, like 粽子zongzi first described as rice or millet
filled bamboo tubes were thrown into the river or sea to appease the dragon. Zongzi is a popular
traditional dish eaten all year in South China, and it became the central food representing the
tradition of Dragon Festival all over China. It takes many forms and uses different fillings
around China, but the most common form is a triangular four point wrapping made of a wide bamboo
or reed leaf common in China. The practice of wrapping the zongzi in leaves is said to begin
during the reign of Emperor Guangwu (25-26 AD) of the Han Dynasty when Qu Hui saw a man near the
traditional site where 屈原Qu Yuan committed suicide on the Miluo River. The man told Qu Hui he
was the Minister in charge of three aristocratic families of the Chu Kingdom. He also told him,
“It is okay to make offerings in memory of me by throwing packaged rice into the river. In the
past the fish ate all the rice in the bamboo tubes, therefore in the future please wrap them in
Chinaberry leaves and tie them with colored thread. The fish will be afraid of these two things
and will not eat your offerings.”

Today zongzi filling varies, but the main filling consists of white millet called glutinous rice
and possibly yellow millet, or a mix of the two. In the south the zongzi are usually larger and
contains salty dried pork, beef or chicken, or a salty egg yolk. In the north they are smaller and
may contain Chinese dates, peanuts, walnuts, or other stuff, and they are often eaten with sugar.
Some eat their eggs before sunrise, and some dye the eggs red.

"Fetching noon water" was the traditional practice of getting water from a well at noon, believing
it had special medicinal properties to cure illness, and an egg that is stood on its end at twelve
o'clock means a whole year of good luck. Some. Especially childern knock two eggs together and
which ever one does not break promises the winner good luck, health and fortune.

Rainbow colored decorations and adornments are common today as a part of the festival. The
decorations range from simple forms of folded paper to elaborate colorful folk crafts. Many people
wear bracelets made of five colors of thread or string on their wrists or ankles. The colors vary
but seem to always include red, yellow and blue. Other colors used are white, pink, black and
green. In some places the traditional colors chosen are the same as those that are use to paint
the dragon boats in the race. These ornaments were believed to offer protection against disease
and misfortune. They put these on sometime between the first day of the fifth lunar month, Dragon
Festival Day and take them off and throw them into a running stream during the first heavy rain
after that day. One story I was told is that the five color thread turns into a baby dragon as it
journey’s to the sea. Other colorful items include red or rainbow colored paper gourds, and
mythical figures.

Mythical persons also play a role in the festival. Placing a picture of 钟馗Zhongkui, the
legendary ghost catcher, on the front door to guard the house is still commonly done today. Small
stuffed colorful human figures, and the animals of the Chinese astrology are hung around the
house. Monkeys with a club in their hand are especially popular in some areas.

Dragon boat racing is an important part of the festivities, particularly in the soth along the
larger rivers and in is reality older than the death of 屈原Qu Yuan, whom some believe the race
commemorates the search for him after he jumped into the river. It began in the south along the
Chang Jiang River and its tributaries, but they are now performed elsewhere in China today where
there is a large river. Dragon boats are about 20 to 40 meters long, made to look like a dragon,
and painted red, white, yellow, green and black. The races begin with a ceremony honoring the
Dragon King.

Other traditions focused on traditional medicines and practices that were intended to prevent or
cure illnesses that were common in the summer. The herbs used in this period included wormwood,
mugwort, elsholtzia (Aromatic Madder) and cattail. These leaves are placed around the house
usually above doors and windows. Baths, salves and balms using herbal medicines are widely used.
Children wear necklaces with bags of herbs. Some use a branch from the peach tree with immature
peaches, and sometimes wrap it with the herbs. Other traditions include placing wormwood or
mugwort leaves behind the ear before sunrise on Dragon Festival.

Realgar was believed to be an antidote for poisons, cure for disease, and effective in driving
away evil spirits and insects. Traditionally many men drank ‘Spring red liquor’, which was
white liquor colored with realgar, and it was used to write wang, the character for king on the
forehead of male children. Some still drink this or some variation of traditional white liquor
with their zongzi. Unfortunately Realgar is Arsenic sulfide and potentially very poisonous.

Later the people of the Chu Kingdom began to commemorate the death of 屈原Qu Yuan (~340-278 BC),
the famous poet and advisor to the king during the last years of the Chu Kingdom during the
Warring States Period (475-221 BC). At about the young age of 36 Qu Yuan became an important
advisor in the royal court of the three aristocratic families of the Chu Kingdom. Qu Yuan proposed
the development of peaceful relations and alliances with other states in this turbulent period,
because the Chu Kingdom was relatively weak. He was opposed by the more ambitious and corrupt Jin
Shang, the king’s aide, and Zhenxiu, the Queen’s consort. The honorable devoted Qu Yuan lost
favor in the court and he was banished by the king.

Living in exile Qu Yuan wrote many poems expressing his sorrow and distress for declining corrupt
state of affairs of the Chu Kingdom. At about 278 BC the Qin Kingdom defeated the Chu and captured
the capital.Qu Yuan was heart broken, because his beloved Chu Kingdom lay in ruins, disgraced and
betrayed by the corrupt royal families. In despair Qu Yuan committed suicide by holding a stone in
his arms and jumped into the Miluo River near present day Changsha in Henan Province. The
traditional belief among the Chu people is that Qu Yuan committed suicide on the fifth day of the
fifth lunar month. This symbolic self-sacrifice by Chu Yuan may have be made at this time in the
tradition of Chinese custom to make sacrifices at this time to prevent disasters from befalling
the people of the Kingdom. In commemoration of Chu Yuan’s passing the people of Chu continued
the tradition of throwing bamboo tubes filled with rice into the Miluo River on Dragon boat
Festival Day in memory of him as people all over China continue to do today. Chinese chose this
day as a memorial to patriots, because of Chu Yuan’s sacrafice to his country. Today, throwing
zongzi in the river is said to feed the fish and/or the dragon to prevent them from eating Chu
Yuan.

Many of China’s traditions, festivals, cultural characteristics, early technological
achievements can be traced to the region of Zhijiang and Jiangzu Provinces indicating that it is
the likely primary region of origin of Chinese culture and civilization.


Frank

Go with the flow the river knows

Turn weapons into peace and friendship with gifts of jade-silk.
化干戈为玉帛



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Chinese Tutor - 这 dots -

> Learning Chinese > Reading and Writing
这 dots
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OneEye -

Sometimes I see 这 written with 2 dots over the radical and sometimes it is only one. In Pleco it
has 2 dots (but not in the magnified frame) and in other places it has only one. Pleco isn't the
only place I've seen this (HanziHelper has it too, but only when you print out character practice
sheets). Is it a variation or is it an error?



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muyongshi -

Which radical? I just checked my pleco and there isn't two dots (at all). Not sure what it is that
you are seeing...










skylee -

The difference may be due to different print fonts.

As far as I know, this is how the character should be written ->
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/azi/d5e2j.gif












OneEye -

Skylee, I think that's what it is. Some of the characters look like different characters in Pleco
than in other fonts. 还 is another, and 着. I think some of them have to do with the size of the
fonts, so certain strokes don't show up or they get distorted. I'll have to tinker with it (just
got Pleco two days ago).












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Chinese Mandarin - Pronunciation in dictionaries and in reality -

> Learning Chinese > Speaking and Listening
Pronunciation in dictionaries and in reality
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Luoman -

I`ve noticed that the pronunciation of some characters in dictionaries and in reality differs a
lot.
For example:

熟 in 成熟. Dictionaries say shu2. But everyone seems to say shou2.
血 is xue4 in dictionaries and xue3 in reality.
处 in 处女. It is chu3 in dictionaries and chu4 in reality.
灸 in 针灸. Dictionaries say jiu3, but everyone including Chinese doctors pronounce it as jiu1.

So I want to ask: is it that the dictionaries do not keep up-to-date or everyone`s prononciation
is not right?

Any more examples of this phenomena?



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gougou -

塑料 - suoliao.










muyongshi -



Quote:

So I want to ask: is it that the dictionaries do not keep up-to-date or everyone`s prononciation
is not right?

It's both in a way but think about how much work it takes to update a dictionary. It doesn't
happen every year. According to the standard everyone's pronunciation then is wrong. But they do
realize that language morphs and so there is always discussions going on of what changes to make.
But those thing take time. Until they can come to conclusions to change the things everyone's
pronunciation is wrong. But since it takes time all the dictionaries aren't keeping up to date.
Make sense?

Here's another one 一模一样 and even my input has the wrong pronunciation. It should be yi mu
yi yang (don't believe me 查一下) but I think a majority of people say yi mou yi yang.



Quote:

风/ 風 should be fēng in 普通话 but almost everybody pronounce it 'fong'.

Never heard this (regional difference?) so I don't think everyone says it.










Luoman -



Quote:

but think about how much work it takes to update a dictionary. It doesn't happen every year.

But isn`t there a new edition of 新华字典 nearly every year? So I guess this dictionary is
just being reprinted, not changed, right?










gougou -



Quote:

So I guess this dictionary is just being reprinted, not changed, right?

It is being changed, sometimes to public outcry...










muyongshi -

But pronunciations don't change...

And I just talked to some of the profs at my uni (that sounds funny) and they said the majority of
language experts don't believe that they will ever change the official pronunciation system. The
bigger problem in their mind is to get people to say it right. But they also made a odd
distinction between pronunciation 成熟 shou or shu and tone 针灸. How did they make this
distinction you ask? By saying 那是声调的问题。。。










Luoman -

便秘. Everyone says bianmi. Dictionaries say bianbi.










trufflepig -

Mold 模具
dictionary has mu2ju4

everyone else says mou2ju4


yes - someone PL-ease explain 血 - xie3 xue4 ....xue3 to me.... this has been bugging me for years










muyongshi -

Do a search please...this has been discussed so many times it hurts my head!

But because I'm so bloody nice...

http://www. /showthread.php?t=4593

http://www. /showthread.php?t=9706

模 character is very interesting it is pronounced wrong now in two situations... hmm
要研究一下










muyongshi -

And don't you mean they say it mó not móu?












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Chinese Online Class - A question about the Unihan Database by Unicode -

> Learning Chinese > Chinese Computing and Technology
A question about the Unihan Database by Unicode
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Xi'Er Dun -

I have a question about the Unihan Database by Unicode, it regards the amount of
Chinese-Japanese-Korean-(Vietnamese) [CJK (V)] Characters (ie. Hanzi, Kanji, Hanja, Chữ Nôm/
Hán Tự/ Chữ Hán) included in the encoding Unihan Database Unicode character set(s).
How many CJK Characters (ie. Hanzi-Traditional 繁體漢字 and Simplified 简体汉字,
Kanji-Kyuujitai/Shinjitai 舊字體/新字体 漢字, Hanja 漢字, Chữ Nôm 字喃/ Hán
Tự漢字/ Chữ Hán字漢) are included in the general Unihan Database, and how many are
there in the Unihan extended database(s) too?
Does the Unihan Database include all Characters that are entries in Morohashi Dai-Kan-Wa-Jiten
大漢和辭典, Cihai Zidian 辭海字典, Kangxi Zidian 康熙字典, Hanyu-Da-Zidian
漢語大字典, etc.

Is there a Unicode Unihan expert on this forum, if so could they please answer my questions?

謝謝您

如何も有り難う御座い升


希爾頓從



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imron -

I'm not sure what you mean by the extended database. Unihan is just one big collection of chinese
characters. Perhaps you are confusing this with the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) and the
Supplementary Multlingual plane (SMP)? Altogether though, the Unihan database contains information
for 71226 unique code points (and obviously, some code points have more information than others).

Regarding the dictionaries you mention, I'm not sure if Unihan contains all the entries from those
dictionaries, however it does list information about the dictionaries it uses.

If you visit this page, it lists dictionary indice information for all the dictionaries used to
compile/cross-check the database. Following the link to a given dictionary will tell you how many
dictionary indices exist in Unihan database for that dictionary. Therefore there will be at least
that many characters in the database from that dictionary and possibly more (I say at least,
because the information is listed as provisional and so might not be complete).

E.g There are dictionary indices for 55812 characters from the 汉语大词典 Hanyu Da Cidian,
70205 from the Kangxi etc.

Suffice to say, regardless of whether it contains all the characters in those dictionaries, Unihan
is almost certainly the most comprehensive database of CJK characters.










trevelyan -

I'm under the impression it doesn't contain all of the entries in the 康熙字典, although the
missing entries are mostly variants.












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Speak Chinese - Random new word of the day - Page 32 -

> Learning Chinese > Grammar and Vocabulary
Random new word of the day
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Page 32 of 32 First < 223031 32






rob07 -

而立之年 (er2 li4 zhi1 nian2) - 30 years of age. Literal translation would be something like
"the age at which one stands firm" based on the passage below by Confucius where he explains where
he was at each stage in his life. I saw it in 阿Q正传, where it is heavily sarcastic.

子曰：吾，十有五，而志于学，三十而立，四十而不惑，五十而知天命，六�
��而耳顺，七十而从心所欲，不逾矩。



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roddy -

超级党代表, chāojí dǎngdàibiǎo - super-delegate












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Study Chinese - Database Error -

> Announcements > Bug Reports / Help
Database Error
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muyongshi -

For the last couple weeks at least I have been getting many "database error" messages. Won't let
me connect for anywhere between 2 and 10 minutes and then I have to re-login. Any idea what is
going on?



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woliveri -

I just got the same thing about 20 minutes ago.. now it's ok (without relogging in).










muyongshi -

I had it again (I've lost count by now) for about 5 min over an hour ago and i was on of the first
to log back on because there was NO users online.










gato -

Server problem probably.










roddy -

Yeah, I'm currently trying to clear my inbox of several thousand automated error reports, seems
like a server problem caused a bit of trouble. Hopefully back to normal now.

Muyongshi, are you getting any specific error message? Or just a generic 'database error'. If
there's anything specific can you email it to admin@ when it happens - it seems this happens to
you more often. I can see that there have been almost daily episodes of this, but it's normally
something like a minute at a time and it would be unusual for any one user to repeatedly come
across it. Plus it shouldn't require logging back in, hence I'm wondering if there's something
else at work (though I have no idea what )










muyongshi -

I am pretty sure that it is just a generic database error but I will check carefully if it happens
again (keeping my fingers crossed). In regards as it seems to happen to me more often...I think I
just get unlucky more often.










roddy -

Well, someone's got to be unlucky. Fortunately, it's not me

Sometimes database records can get mixed up and cause problems, but I've only seen it happen with
topics before, never a user so I doubt it's that Usage figures are up quite a bit (maybe 25% over
the last couple of months) so it's also possibly we're outgrowing the current hosting set up.

As for this particular episode, seems to be associated with a massive number of requests from
someone in the Ukraine. IP ban in place . . .










muyongshi -

Good. For a minute I was worried that I was doing it. You never know with this being Mianyang. All
the military set-up's, nuclear research, space program, and the like. Oh is that top secret?










muyongshi -

Just happened again and it is just a general error. The error reads as follows:

Database Error
The database has encountered a problem

Wonder if our Ukraine friend is back...










roddy -

Nobody worry about the five minute outage just then, I know exactly why it happened. Oh yes,
exactly why . . .












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Chinese Mandarin - Rate next Australia Prime Minister's Mandarin -

> Learning Chinese > Speaking and Listening
Rate next Australia Prime Minister's Mandarin
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rob07 -

Kevin Rudd is the current Australian Leader of the Opposition. If you believe the polls, he will
be prime minister before the end of the year. He previously worked as a diplomat for several years
in Beijing and claims to be fluent in Mandarin.

Hu Jintao is in Sydney for APEC, so Kevin took the chance to try out his Mandarin. One of the
Australian newspapers posted a video and this should be a link to it:
http://media.smh.com.au/?rid=31424&c...reaking%20News

I'd be interested to know how good people think he is.



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carlo -

Pretty good, very understandable (with some Aussie accent but that's reasonable -he's not running
to become China's Prime Minister LOL).

I would be proud of having a PM who can speak a foreign language like that. Some politicians can
barely speak their own language properly. uh, and I wondered why they cut the video, I was
interested in hearing the whole story...










gato -

He sounds like he's at least conversationally fluent. His pronunciation is above average. It does
sound like he learned his Mandarin in Beijing as the "er's" are fairly noticeable.










skylee -

Not bad.










wannabeafreak -

Depressing. I wish I could speak like him.










johnd -

Sounds pretty impressive to me - the Chinese visitors will really appreciate it.










md1101 -

very decent. and im glad he's confident enough to use it. i was wondering why they cut it off...
then i realised.. most people watching that video wouldnt have had a clue what he was saying!










md1101 -

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/...783466709.html

Looks like our foreign minister Alex Downer itsn't too happy Rudd is getting points for speaking
mandarin. (jealous maybe?)

And he seems to be trying to say he learnt French in 2 months:



Quote:

"I did the French language course and Mr Rudd did the Chinese language course. I did mine in two
months and he did his in two years, that could say something about him and me or something about
the two languages. I think the former but that sounds a tad partisan."












muyongshi -

I don't know to much about the guy but that is a bit big-headed and quite self important. Makes
himself look kind of stupid too in mind.

edit: these comments are referred to Downer's response to Rudd.










tiffsmith -

Bleh, you know he had that rehearsed since the day he decided to get into politics. ;)

我是 妒忌的 :P












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