#daily chinese

[whisperglyph]

[daily-dragon-drawing]

It might be a little abstract, but could you draw a telephone pole dragon? With the wires and lights I think it may be cool

#141 - 電線 (diàn xiàn / electric line) - Better not touch this telephone pole! ⚡⚡⚡

[stargirl230]

Eclipse \\ 月食

top 10 photos taken moments before disaster (maiming by shovel)

(no reposts; reblogs appreciated)

[yingdu-lover]

angry post

i have a personal problem with this kind of attitude. it's not a petty thing i am unreasonably angry about. there is a politics of translation and it affects one's understanding of art and popular culture/cultural geopolitics.

yes, tbhx has an unprecedented world wide release for a donghua/Chinese media and it's vital for its popularity, especially among transnational fandom spaces. Transcreated works are important for easier access. BUT, my gripe with the Japanese dub of a Chinese media WILL never be resolved. I am not talking about the quality, the issue lies in the very creation of the Japanese dub of a donghua itself. Let me give you an example.

Last year, we had an optional course called translation studies and one of the first things our professor asked was : who are the writers of A Doll's House and Waiting for Godot? He told those few of us who had read these texts closely to shut our mouth and let others take a guess. Most people answered : British writers. The texts are English texts. Because it's so famous among literature enthusiasts and when a piece of literature has a 'classic' tag attached to it, we tend to generalize and oversimplify it. So, a Norwegian playwright's original Norwegian play or an Irish playwright's play originally written in French- both get labelled as British literature. Get my point?

The anime industry is justifiably dominated by Japanese productions but when we forget to accommodate the nuances, the origin culture decays. It is, in many senses, a form of subtle cultural imperialism brought by ignorance.

People complain about Link Click's 'poor marketing' but I think Haolin was clever doing so. Even in the reviews by Indian anime bros™ I see them trying to pronounce 'donghua'. People RECOGNIZE that Link Click is a Chinese media, it's NOT an anime. You may laugh at those link click related youtube video titles saying stuff like : China is taking over anime, this Chinese anime is better than your favourite anime, PEAK Chinese anime, the best anime of 2021 is NOT Japanese?!, Link Click is taking over anime, China's hidden gem, China might have created the best anime of the year- CHINA IS IMPORTANT.

Whenever people talk about Chinese donghua- Link Click, Heaven Official's Blessing, Master of Diabolism etc are mentioned and people KNOW that it looks like anime but not really anime. It's... something... something else. This distinction is critical and essential.

Now, thanks to censorship (the Chinese version is not available on any official platform), many people think (not all people dig that deep while watching things, like come on) Spiritpact is a JAPANESE anime. Who the heck is Tanmouki or whatever. They are are Duanmu Xi and Yang Jinghua.

Reading up to this part if you think I am a Japanese anime hater then...*sighs*. Please read the whole thing again.

I like the Japanese dub of Link Click but there was a c*** in the comments who said "uwu it's not in japanese so I won't watch it" b**** doesn't even understand Japanese. B just wants an 'authentic Japanese anime experience.'

I feared that tbhx would face this issue.

And if you find those people who go : Ahhh, Japanese or Chinese- same thing, even their script look similar- fuck you, fuck you, you loser-fuckrr sinophobe i hope your phone battery dies your charger malfunctions your phone your laptop restarts with all data erased I hope you reek of wet socks and your taste sand all the time fuck you

[journeytothewest-daily]

Welcome to The Journey to the West (西游记) Daily!

You are about to beging a reading journey to get the hidden Buddhist texts accompanied by the monk Tang Sanzang, Sun Wukong, Sha Wujing, Zhu Bajie and Bai Long Ma.

To beging this journey you must subscribe to the newsletter, which you will find at https://journeytothewestdaily.substack.com/. You wil receive your first email this week, welcoming you and sharing information about what's to come and what I will include in the emails.

However, beforehand I want to tell you already that you won't receive a daily email, despite the name of the newsletter. The chapters are dense and full of references to folklore or religion references that you might be unfamiliar with, so you will receive an email every 2 or 3 days maximum.

If this is the first time that you hear about this newsletter and you don't know what Journey to the West is...

The classical Chinese novel Journey to the West is an extended account of the legendary pilgrimage of the Tang dynasty Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who traveled to the "Western Regions" (Central Asia and India) to obtain Buddhist sūtras (sacred texts) and returned after many trials and much suffering. Gautama Buddha gives this task to the monk, whose name in the novel is Tang Sanzang, and provides him with three protectors who agree to help him as an atonement for their sins. These disciples are the Monkey King, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing, together with a dragon prince who acts as the monk's steed, a white horse. The group of pilgrims journey towards enlightenment by the power and virtue of cooperation.

The novel is perfect for the epistolary format, since it's is divided in different and disconnected adventures, so you don't have to always remember what happened in the previous chapter to read the next!

We'll be reading Anthony C. Yu's translation since it is the first unabridged version that we have available in English. It is about 100 chapters long.

As I said, you will receive a first email as soon as you subscribe and an introductory email in a few days. Please, share this post so more people can read along. Use the hashtag #jttwdaily if you want to comment your impressions. I'll share the most important dates soon.

May the Buddha help you in your endeavours.

[shantechni]

After ripping my hair out over animation inconsistencies and characters going off model, I now bring you a slightly more accurate height chart of the gang

Brought to you by that one scene in EP4 where Xia Fei is stupidly tall compared to Cheng Xiaoshi for literally no reason

[noonaenthusiast]

Si Jin 1x01

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

💙❤️Happy Holidays!❤️💙

[mostlyfate]

𐙚 ∩_∩ („• ֊ •„)❀༉ |￣U U￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣| [ⅴ] — ‧₊˚. daily miaomiao ‧₊˚. — [ⅴ]

[sarshles-cheescake-li]

Fun fact: the English lyrics of the new Yingdu chapter opening are different than the Chinese subtitles provided in the video. Which is. Um. I'm torn whether it's some sort of foreshadowing move or it was just the producers being silly.

There's your usual translation subtleties, like "rewind" being written once as 倒带 and once as 回溯; 倒带 is a reference to film (literally rewinding film) whereas 回溯 means literally thinking back or reminiscing about the past. It's also the way most Chinese fandoms refer to characters going back in time as part of a time loop (not sure if it's applied to normal non-looped time travel, but I feel like I've only seen it as part of loops).

Another thing is that the Chinese version of the lyrics "the clock tower bell only struck nine" is "the clock tower bell only struck nine times," which someone in the scrolling comments theorized is a reference to 九九归真, a concept I'm not equipped to talk about other than the fact that it's basically "you always end up at the beginning/nothing will change" (?? Educated Chinese people save me). "I followed every end of the signs" is also written as "I followed every direction of the (road) signs" in Chinese.

[EDIT] I stand corrected; 英都眼 is a reference to the London Eye (Yingdu Eye, in this case), and the English lyrics do reflect that! Which is somehow even funnier. Lu Guang vs An Entire Ferris Wheel FIGHT. Also, the lyric were written before the musicians were aware of the plot of Yingdu, so it does not directly reference any plot events. Disregard anything below this paragraph!

My biggest thing is all the lyrics referencing The Eye. You know. "Rewinding right in front of the eye" and "standing still in front of the eye."

In Chinese, they're "在英都眼前回溯" and "坚定伫立在英都眼前". Which translates to "rewinding back in time in front of Yingdu" and "determinedly standing in front of Yingdu"

I can see the clock tower one being a genuine mistranslation between the two languages; I, too, despise it when English mixes metaphorical and literal terms. But Yingdu is a whole Normal Noun. How Does One Simply Turn A City Into An Eyeball.

Side note, the Chinese lyrics really imply that our guy Lu Guang was stuck at Yingdu for ages/it was a particularly lethal vacation for Cheng Xiaoshi. Which is just so funny to me. Maybe the real enemies were the UKs we met along the way.

[whisperglyph]

This character (永) evolved from a drawing of a long river, but you can also use this philosophical mnemonic: there is an ETERNITY (永) trapped in a DROP (丶) of WATER (水).

[daily-dragon-drawing]

#111 - 跨性別 (kuà xìngbié / transgender) - A dragon that transes your gender?! 🏳️‍⚧️💙💗🤍⚧️

[daily-batposting]

Chinese Rufous Horseshoe Bat, photographed by Merlin D. Tuttle, (source)

[yingdu-lover]

i surrender y'all

[obsidianquill]

"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop." – Confucius

[loveisinthebat]

The Night!