China, add oil!

When Olympics fans are cheering the U.S. team, the main chant is "USA! USA!"

In China, the cheer is 中国队加油! (Zhong1 guo2 dui4 jia1 you2), Basically it means, "let's go Chinese team." Fairly simple, but there is an interesting story behind it. The first part 中国队, means "Chinese team." But the second part, 加油, (pronounced "jyah yo") literally means "add oil," or "add gasoline," as in "gas station": 加油站 (jia1 you2 zhan4).

NPR had a story about "jia you" being the officially sanctioned cheer for the games, but Beijing correspondent Anthony Kuhn said the origins of "jia you" are mysterious and might refer to stepping on the gas in a car, or adding cooking oil to a pot. There is also a NY Times blog about it. One of the responses to that post actually references the story I have translated below. Both the NPR and the NYT stories came out in the last couple of days, so for some reason people are thinking about it. (I am writing about it because Michala was asking me about the origin of the phrase last night.)

Here is a translation of the real story, according to the all-knowing international network of computers.

The origin of the phrase "jia you" dates back to the 14th century.

Liu2 Bo2 Wen1 (刘伯温) (1311-1375) was a famous Ming Dynasty general. But he always regretted that he did not live in the same era as the cleverest and most famous general of all time, Zhu1 Ge3 Liang4 (诸葛亮) (181-234). Since Zhuge Liang was long dead, there was no way for Liu Bowen to try and match wits with him.

One day Liu and his army came upon a plum tree forest. His mouth was dry and he spat on the ground, but when the spit hit the ground, it made a sharp "splat" sound. Perplexed, he ordered his men to cut the grass and brush around the spot to see what was there that would make such a noise. To his surprise, he found a stone monument that read: "Liu Bowen spat here." To his even further surprise, the monument was signed by Zhuge Kongming, the courtesy name of Zhuge Liang. He was impressed that Zhuge Liang would be that clever as to predict that Liu would spit there one day, but he was still not convinced that Zhuge Liang was smarter than he, so he kept going into the forest.

Before long, he came upon a tomb. Taking a closer look, he discovered that it was none other than the grave of Zhuge Liang. He thought to himself, "Not bad, Zhuge Liang. You predicted that I would spit here on this day, but I bet you couldn't predict that I would find your tomb."

So Liu had his men open up the tomb, and he walked in by himself. He looked around and finally found Zhuge's sarcophagus. Next to it was a small oil lamp, that was flickering, just on the verge of running out of oil. Liu thought: "Hmph. Everyone says how clever and awesome you were, but here you are today, with your altar lamp about to extinguish itself."

But then he noticed next to the lamp was a piece of parchment, so he looked at it more closely. On the paper was written: "Old Liu, Old Liu, add oil, add oil." At this, he was dumbfounded, and immediately kowtowed before the sarcophagus three times. He then swept the tomb, out of newfound respect for Zhuge Liang. Henceforth the phrase "Add oil" has been used to encourage people.

I'm not sure how the story translates into cheering for a volleyball team, but there are lots of these parables out there, and many of them are old, but have led to phrases that are used today.

"Jia you" is not only used in sports, though. Right after the Chengdu earthquake, for example, the phrase was all over the Internet as a general "keep your head up" type of sentiment.

In his NPR report, Kuhn also referred to one of the "unsanctioned" cheers used by Beijingers, "niu2 bi1," which literally means "cow [genitalia]." I'll save the origin of that lovely phrase for a later post.

Poor zoning

All right, I had to get a picture of this and post it. It is too strange. On my commute to work there is a big cemetery, and a bunch of death-related businesses. But this little mall has several things grouped together that I think are bad marketing choices.
You've got your crematorium -- and your bakery. Then there's "Casket Mart," which is odd in itself, next to a meat & sausage store.
Is it just me, or is that a little creepy?

Writers of the Future!

I found out today that I received "honorable mention" in the Writers of the Future contest for 3rd Quarter 2008!
It is very exciting because this is a large, international, reputable contest for unpublished science fiction/fantasy writers. I entered a story I worked on this spring, titled "Charged Contact." The story is about a planetary geologist who is sent to a planet to perform a simple mineral extraction, but things take a turn for the wierd when he discovers the extraction site is not as barren as it is supposed to be... . Maybe I will post an excerpt on this blog in the future.
This is one of the only contests I have entered, and it is a real boost to be named honorably mentionable. I think I might get a certificate too, plus I can include it on a cover letter if I want to submit the story to a magazine.

I just started a new job, so that is why I have been lazy about posting blogs. The new job is taking some getting used to, but it is still reporting, so I am in somewhat familiar territory, aside from the subject matter (veterinary medicine).

In other news, Michala and I played in the State Games of the West badminton tournament in Colorado Springs on Sunday. In Mens B Singles I won my first round, but lost in the second round to the eventual winner of the division, some dude from Oregon. In mens B doubles my partner and I lost the last round in the consolation bracket, so did not get the bronze. Michala and I won the silver medal in the Mixed C division. Should have won the gold, but oh well.

Ancient Enemies no more

Imagine trying to translate a book if all you had were the cover, and someone who had read it like 80 years ago. You could get an idea of what it was about, but the details wouldn't be there.

I just got back from an fantastic trip to Mesa Verde National Park down in southwestern Colorado. The main feature of the park is the series of ancient cliff dwellings, constructed from sandstone blocks and mortar, like the one above, which is part of the structure called Cliff Palace. (Taken by me with my awesome new used Nikon D70s.)

For some reason I really got into learning about the history of the place and the people who lived there. I had seen some of these ruins before, when I was on a Colorado Outward Bound School trip in high school. I remembered that the people who lived in the dwellings were called Anasazi, and they mysteriously disappeared. Well, a lot has changed since then...

Anasazi is a Navajo word, which means "ancient enemy," or "enemy ancestors," or "ancient people who are not us," depending on which web site you go by. But now, according to the parks people, the preferred term is "Ancestral Puebloans." This is because the accepted wisdom now is that instead of mysteriously vanishing, the people who lived there simply moved. The minor mystery is why did they move, but it is generally thought now that the Pueblo Indians who are around today, such as the Hopi and Zuni, are the ancestors of the "Anasazi."

The Hopi prefer to call them Hisatsinom (hih-ZAHT-sih-nohm), "the old ones," (not to be confused with Yog-Sothoth and Cthulu, Lovecraft fans) or more spookily, Moqui, "the dead." The Hopi apparently don't like the use of a Navajo word for their ancestors, which makes sense since the Navajo are a separate culture. Other Pueblo groups have other names for them.

The stuff they tell you at the park about the Hisatsinom culture is all inferred from modern Pueblo Indian culture (a method known as "ethnographic analogy"), since there were no written recordings left by the Hisatsinom. They did leave some rock art, or petroglyphs, but those are not considered language - yet, anyway. Obviously they had some sort of spoken language, because the traditions and culture have been communicated continuously for several thousand years.

Some details are still alive, like the "sipapu," a hole in the bottom of the kiva (a ceremonial underground room), that is a reminder of where the people came from, i.e. the Lower World. The kivas actually seem to be the evolved version of the pithouse, which was what they lived in from at least 1500 BC to 800 AD or so.

How well does a culture translate from antiquity into the present? The modern Pueblo Indians continue their traditions today, but how different are they from the time of the Hisatsinom? It probably doesn't really matter. The cool thing is that there exists a multi-millenial continuity in their cultural heritage. How many of us can say that?

What, the devil?

Recently, my good friend Mary Anne sent me this mysterious picture of an octagonal coin that she found somewhere. She was wondering if it had ancient and benevolent Confucian messages on it, and at first glance it sure does not.

The first thing that catches the eye when seeing this coin is the large encircled character in the middle. It says "KILL."

The character on the right I knew said "ghost" or "demon." And on the left it clearly says "thunder" but under that is a weird one so I tried to look up the entire poem in an attempt to see if there was an explanation somewhere.

One clue was on the other side of the coin, (not pictured) which has the Eight Trigrams or 八卦(ba1 gua4), from the Book of Changes (易经 yi4 jing1). They are used for divination and other types of fortunetelling stuff I am not real clear on. So the coin was some sort of Taoist medallion or a replica thereof.

Searching for the second stanza in the poem (which I did because I recognized all four characters in it) led me to a Chinese forum where someone had discovered a similar coin and was wondering about its value. Turns out (according to this person anyway), that the coin is a Taoist talisman, inscribed with a spell to ward off evil. Which as a former D&D player and eternal fan of sorcery, real magicks, weirde shite, the occult, et cetera, I found to be really awesome.

I figured out that this coin is called 符咒钱 (fu2 zhou4 qian2), or "charmed money." AKA 避邪钱 (bi4 xie2 qian2) "Ward-against-evil money." Its purpose is not to be exchanged for goods or services like regular money, but rather to protect your very soul from possession by demonic forces. Which I suppose is technically a "service," but what I'm saying is, you can't buy a veggie dumpling with this thing.
In Chinese the full text reads as follows:
雷霆雷霆、杀鬼降精、斩妖除邪、永保神清。奉太上老君急急如令敕

lei2 ting2 lei2 ting2
sha1 gui3 jiang4 jing1
zhan3 yao1 chu2 xie2
yong3 bao1 shen2 qing1

feng4 tai4 shang4 lao3 jun1 ji2 ji2 ru2 lv4 ling3 chi4

The large words on the left middle and right say
"Thunder kills the demons"

Here is how I have translated this spell. Note that I have (masterfully) maintained the Chinese rhyming scheme of 1,1,2,1. (in this case ting, jing, xie, qing)

Sound of thunder, sound of thunder
Kills the ghosts, drives sprites asunder
Beheads the goblins, wards off evil
Forever keeps the soul from plunder.

Tai Shang Lao Jun says it is so.

Tai Shang Lao Jun is a Taoist deity and this line is apparently common in Taoist incantations.

It is interesting to note several things here. First, the repetition mark. On the coin, right side, there is the large character, then going left from top to bottom you see the first two characters and then two squiggles. That indicates repetition. I haven't actually seen a double repetition mark like that. But there it is, and it means to repeat the previous 2 characters. You can find the mark on the left side, below the fifth character. It looks like a "z" kind of. Anyway, there it indicates repetition of the previous character only.

The other parts to notice are the odd, ancient words for ghost, goblin and sprite, and evil. I will go into those at another time. Until then, think of this spell when you hear thunder. Perhaps it is best to recite it a few times as well... Now that there is a definitive English version you should be OK!

Why Dave Matthews should talk to me

The Mile High Music Festival is approaching. The two day event will be held at Dick's Sporting Goods Stadium in Commerce City, which happens to be one of the cities I cover at work.
When I first found out about the festival, which will take place in August, I saw that Dave Matthews was one of the dozens of bands going to play there.

So I tried to call him. I actually got a hold of his publicist, but she eventually said that he is not available for interviews. Oh, well. Anyway, it looks like I will be able to interview at least some of the acts coming to Commerce City, which ones remains to be seen....

However it seems that the PR people still will not let us interview Dave Matthews. Or Tom Petty for that matter. Anyway, I started thinking about Dave Matthews songs and I remembered one called "The Space Between."

The first time I heard the song, I was wondering if Matthews knew Chinese. Because in Chinese there is a specific word that means "the space between." It is one of my favorite characters, because its very existence is quite poetic.

The word is 间 (jian1). It is poetic because of the different parts - or radicals - that make it up. There are two radicals. 门 (men2) means "door" and 日 (ri4) means "sun." The sun radical is in the middle of the door radical, so one can imagine the source of the word. Someone saw the sun peeking through the middle of a double door, and they thought that was an accurate descriptor for the concept of the space between things. It also means just "between," or "among," but by itself it is simply a beautiful character.

If Matthews had consented to an interview with the Commerce City Sentinel Express, I could have alerted him, but alas, he will have to wait until he discovers my blog to find that out.

"random" post

In high school, I wasn't great at math. My mom always said to think of it as another language.

In the case of a recent job, I learned how little I know about that language. I was translating, as usual, a diploma and transcript. Often I come across a course or two in the transcripts that I am not familiar with, but usually it makes some sense, like Fundamentals of Biogenetics. But this person had a masters degree in computer science, and let me tell you there are some strange things in that field.

The first thing I learned, which I should have known already, is the word for "random." I'm not sure I really used this word much when I was in China, although I know when I was describing life in Beijing to English-speakers I would definitely use it. "Random" in Chinese is 随机 (sui3 ji1). Now, 机 is a complicated word. It can mean "opportunity," but it can also mean "machine." Also "secret." It is also a type of tree. Anyway, the question here is which is it in 随机?

"Random" could be defined as "following an opportunity." Take the definition in the Xinhua online dictionary: It gives the example of "a reporter walked on the street, randomly interviewing people." In other words, interviewing people as he/she randomly encountered them. But in the context of computers, it could be interpreted as "following the machine," like randomly generated numbers, or random access memory. "Following the secret" and "following the tree" don't really work, so we will conveniently disregard them.

I am sure the Chinese word was invented before computers, so it is likely one of those strange, in-between words, that express concepts as they were developed in China, but don't translate directly into English, but are now used in certain contexts.

Here are some more odd math words I discovered.

离散数学 - (li2 san4 shu4 xue2) - discrete mathematics
Sounds like a euphemism for bookie math, but actually this is the branch of mathematics that deals with "discrete" objects like integers (-2, 0, 99), instead of "continuous" objects, like real numbers (-2.5, 1.1, 42.9). Basically it involves algorithms, graph theory, combinatorics, and other really complicated stuff that computer geeks know. (This information was cobbled together from various Internet sites, and is very likely incomprehensible and/or incorrect).
The first part of the word in Chinese, 离散, literally means "leave and scatter," and is usually used in terms of relatives who don't see each other. Probably because they are always doing lattice theory homework in the computer lab. It is also translated as "discrete" for some reason.

排队论 (pai2 dui4 lun4)- Queueing theory
This is a theory that explains why, when you are in the checkout line (or queue) at Costco, you get in the shortest line, but it actually takes the longest. Then it goes on to explain why when you jump lines, the cash register in your new line suddenly freezes up, or the 10 pound pack of cashews won't scan.
Actually that isn't too far off. Queueing Theory (apparently that is the correct spelling) is very complex, but it deals with formulas that try to anticipate how much resources are needed to provide service to customers who are either waiting in line on the phone or online or whatever. According to Shmula's Queueing Theory page, it also involves something called Little's Law and something else called heijunka. Now we are getting into multiple languages so I will stop.

Here are two more, just for S&Gs:
面向对象方法学 - Object-oriented methodology
统一建模语言 - Unified modeling language