#Taiwanese/Mainland Chinese

[happy-yetstrange-collector]

From the Manga.

[luckynightkryptonite]

Shenhua without her makeup

[slowlypalewinner]

[leatherbookmark]

it really is a bummer when you see another translation of a work you've enjoyed translated to your language -- as a kid or recently -- and all the stuff that was translated/localized in your language is... kept as it was (usually in english) in that other translation

[senadimell]

Can’t believe Microsoft doesn’t have a keyboard shortcut for typing em dashes...an embarrassment, that’s what that is.

[vv-ispy]

man if humans turned out to be decended from dragons in genshin that would be a True Chinese Story Moment

[read-marx-and-lenin]

about taiwan. but im still confused as to why should china care. they havent controlled taiwan for some time and seems to just cause conflict. why not just leave taiwan be and be happy with the mainland. what good does claiming taiwanese island bring? why do they care if an island belongs to them or not?

What good does the ROC claiming the mainland bring? Why does the KMT care about the ROC being the legitimate successor to Sun Yat-sen's Republic? Why is the DPP bribing right-wing US warhawks and inviting US destroyers into the Taiwan Strait?

This is not a situation where a bunch of nasty evil communists are persecuting an innocent island nation. This is a situation where a right-wing counter-revolutionary army, upon losing a civil war, occupied the island and maintained a military dictatorship for 45 years, only eventually opening up to democracy after massive amounts of protests and unrest. The PRC was the only democracy in China for those 45 years. They were fighting to liberate the Taiwanese people, not to oppress them.

After the ROC abolished the military dictatorship and repealed the law declaring the CPC to be rebels and enemies of the nation, the CPC and the KMT began to engage in peaceful dialog, leading to the 1992 Consensus. This consensus formed the basis of informal PRC-ROC relations, under the shared belief that Taiwan is a territory of China.

The election of the pro-independence DPP in 2016 has threatened the prospects of peaceful reunification. Unlike the KMT, the DPP has never had any relations with the CPC and is firmly opposed to reunification. Cross-Strait dialog between the two governments was cut off and the ROC quickly began to take a much more antagonistic role towards the PRC.

The PRC does not want a war. The Taiwanese people do not want a war. The KMT does not want a war. It is only the DPP and a bunch of US imperialists who have been bribed by the DPP who want a war. This is why the PRC has condemned foreign interference in Chinese affairs and condemned the separatist movement in Taiwan.

The PRC does not even want political control over Taiwan. They have proposed a "one China, two systems" approach to reunification that would enable the Taiwanese government to maintain its current legal system and operate with a high degree of autonomy. They know that the Taiwanese people would not soon accept CPC control over the island and they are not proposing that as a solution. But if the separatists get their way and start the Civil War all over again, it's very likely that that is what will happen, with many innocent lives lost to boot.

The DPP could choose at any point to resume the peaceful cross-Strait dialogues that the KMT had been engaging in. But they would rather continue their nonsensical rhetoric and wordplay where they can have their cake and eat it too; where the 1992 Consensus was never a consensus and where Taiwan is already independent despite never having declared independence. More worryingly, they want to continue courting US imperialists and engaging in behavior intended to provoke armed conflict in the region. They would rather start a war than risk having to acknowledge Taiwan's status as a territory of China.

If you want to understand the PRC's position better, this publication by the PRC is a good summary of their current position on the subject.

[theside-b]

There a few things people need to know before criticizing The On1y One:

It's based on a chinese novel, not taiwanese. It may seem like a small detail, but it isn't.

This was supposed to be adapted in mainland China, but due censorship production went to Taiwan to avoid interference.

Liu Dong (Eric Zayn) casting did come under fire prior to release due his age, he is 30. Him being on the show was actually a demand from one of the financial backers.

Liu most likely would've been casted if the show remained in mainland China, where he resides. And because he lives there he cannot promote the show with his partner. So you probably won't see him beside Jiang any time soon.

He is actually at risk of suffering retaliation from chinese government by staying there and working on this show.

From the get go director Liu Kuang Hui made it clear that show and book would be different from one another. Want what you get in the novel? Stick to it, because the show won't be a word by word adaptation.

Again, since production started on mainland China what we get probably was adapted to avoid problems with their government, so you can put that on their never ending homophobic tab.

So there you have it, hopefully this helps clear a few things up.

[olderthannetfic]

Dear US Americans,

Please stop getting angry at me, a Taiwanese, for saying a Taiwanese character can read Chinese. I don't know how to explain this but the alphabet doesn't shift so radically from the mainland that we can't read it. "Taiwan isn't China!" And the US isn't England but you read the English language. You're not Roman but you read the Roman alphabet. Am I calling you Roman when I say that? No. You're not stupid. Your civilization put humans on the moon. Think a little!

Love, A very tired fanfic author

--

Ahahaha. Oh god. I mean, it makes sense in terms of how people talk about Taiwan in English in the US, but... people, please.

Also, traditional characters 5eva! Boo, simplified, boo.

[hailmaryfullofgrace55675]

“Ashkenazi Jews don’t actually have Levantine genetic ancestry” has been floating around lately among naïve and conspiracy minded anti-Zionists, a problematic claim that undermines actually correct anti-Zionist principles and defense of Palestinian rights. This claim is

absolutely irrelevant, as “blood” originating on the “soil” does not grant anyone any right to an ethnostate on any land. Using area-native ethnicity to justify discrimination and mass killing is bad when it’s Yamato Japanese discriminating against Korean, Mainland Chinese, and Taiwanese minorities in Japan and it’s bad when it’s Celtic-Germanic descent Brits oppressing Celtic-Germanic descent Irish who they’re genetically undifferentiatable from. It was bad when it was Hutus killing Tutsis and it was bad when it was the Khmer Rouge killing Chinese and Vietnamese Cambodians. The actions of the Israeli state in immiserating and slaughtering non-Jewish Palestinians would be equally harmful and wrong if the diaspora had never happened and every Israeli could trace their resident lineage in an unbroken line back to the time of the Second Temple, because it is bad to destroy people’s homes, burn their crops, imprison them, and kill them.

incorrect, at least according to current scientific consensus. Most genetic studies seem to indicate that Ashkenazim are of majority European descent and also have ancestry in the Levant, that is: the Ashkenazi population had some Levantine founders and there’s been significant amounts of intermarriage over the hundreds and hundreds of years of the diaspora into Southern Europe and from there across Central and Eastern Europe.

irrelevant again because even if, through a combination of conversions, adoptions, intermarriage, and adulterous and out of wedlock pairings between Jews and local gentiles, the diasporic European Jewish population had become completely genetically indistinguishable from local gentiles, those Jews would still have been the children of Israel. They still would have learned to read the Torah and celebrate its festivals. They still would have learned, from their families and communities in an unbroken line, to pray “Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad” (Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one) as the rabbinic sages of Roman Judea observed in the Talmud that they were commanded to do. They still would have spoken languages with Hebrew and Aramaic elements, and they still would have written them with letters recognizable in the Dead Sea Scrolls. They still would have had the same interests, affirmed daily and yearly, in the land that their people left so many hundreds of years ago.

One formulation of the claim is “Israel bans direct to consumer genetic testing because it shows that (Ashkenazi) Jews don’t have Middle Eastern ancestry”. The Israeli government does ban DTC genetic testing as part of a genetic information privacy and nondiscrimination law passed in 2000, before companies like 23andMe existed. DNA testing for ancestry can be interpreted and presented many ways, and the ancestry breakdowns given by DTC GT companies just do not correspond to the question “where, how, and through what migrations did this population originate?”.

Once again, Zionism is not bad because people residing in places their ancestors are not from is bad. That is fine. Zionism is bad because from its beginning the Zionist project has been one of violent dispossession and because that violent dispossession continues in and through this very present moment.

[luckynightkryptonite]

Rev spread,'cause she's Revy

[slowlypalewinner]

Tan the (delusional and irrelevant in my opinion) the Lotton wizard

[indigostudies]

a very incomplete list of cdramas (plus a few chinese films) i've watched and my rating for hsk proficiencies for them below the cut!

i've watched some shows that aren't included on this list, but i didn't watch enough of them to get a good sense for the level of challenge they pose, so they're omitted from the list. i've also included links to the mydramalist pages, if you want to get a sense of the plot.

i had to remove the list format, since tumblr decided i had too many characters per block of text, so i apologise for that. a number of these can be watched on youtube with english fansubs, but if you can't find something, you can always dm me and i'll get you a link!

沙海/tomb of the sea: this fits into the extended daomu biji/grave robbers' chronicles/lost tomb franchise, but you don't have to have seen the other shows or read the books to watch it, and the pov character is an outsider who also doesn't understand what's going on 90% of the time. this show is contemporary, and you could probably start watching it at a fairly low hsk level because it doesn't have a ton of complicated technical or genre-specific terms. the subbing in english decent, since it came out a while ago, but there are some errors that crop up with names and nicknames. if you wanted to watch it without subtitles, i'd say you could probably get the gist of what's being said at around an hsk 4 or hsk 5 level. it has 52 episodes, each around 45 minutes long. (mdl link)

双镜/couple of mirrors: set in the republican era, so some of the terms used are a bit outdated in terms of colloquialism, and it also has a mystery/detective element to it, so that could pose a bit of a struggle. that said, the show isn't actually too challenging in terms of vocab—i would say you could watch it without english subtitles at an hsk 3 level with some struggle, and with a fair amount of ease at hsk 4. 12 episodes, at 46 minutes each. (mdl link)

云泽传/legend of yunze: wuxia/xianxia, which makes the amount of unfamiliar terms higher if you aren't used to the genre, but the episodes are all very short, and the plot itself isn't overly complicated, which makes it easy to sit down and watch in one go. on a level of difficulty, as long as you're familiar with wuxia/xianxia terms, you could probably watch this at an hsk 2 level without too much issue, and the subbing in english is very thorough. has multiple seasons, but the first season is 12 episodes, between 3-7 minutes each. (mdl link)

神探/detective l: this is a procedural detective show, and it's set in the 1930s republican shanghai, so there's a combination of more formal/outdated language and specialised detective/case-related phrases. the english subs are decent, though, and the actors all enunciate clearly, which helps if you need to look up words. i would say this would probably be a bit of a struggle below the hsk 5 level, but you'll pick up a lot of new, crime-related phrases. 24 episodes, 40 minutes each. (mdl link)

不良执念清除师/oh no! here comes trouble!: i'll be honest, this one was a struggle for me because of the taiwanese accent. i can understand what they're saying, it just sounds like the auditory equivalent of someone coming into my house and moving everything a few centimetres to the left. this is also a procedural show, but contemporary, so not quite as challenging in terms of vocab to detective l, in my opinion..........but it's also got a heavy supernatural element, which does come with specific vocab. the subbing is good, but if you're going to watch it, this one probably requires a higher hsk level to keep up—hsk 5, at a minimum, in my opinion. 12 episodes, 52 minutes each. (mdl link)

s.c.i谜案集/sci mystery/sci: another contemporary procedural mystery show, but from the mainland, so there's no elements of supernatural. surprisingly simple vocabulary; you could watch this at an hsk 2 level and get the gist, and an hsk 3 or hsk 4 level would let you watch it just fine. has fairly good english subs, and i believe they set the show in hk, which accounts for the higher than usual amount of english usage, up to and including in dialogue. the only bit that might make it challenging is the heavy lean into the psychology, but it's all largely explained directly, since most of the characters aren't familiar with the terms either. 24 episodes, 45 minutes each. (mdl link)

成化十四年/sleuth of the ming dynasty: ming dynasty (mid 1400s, under the chenghua emperor) setting, but a fairly colloquial vocabulary. there are some specialised titles used, but those are fairly self-evident by the way the show is shot, and easy enough to look up. the english subs are good, and i would put this at an hsk 4 level—but even at an hsk 3 level you probably won't struggle too badly. my hangup here was, again, one of the leads being played by an actor with a taiwanese accent, though it's not too heavy. 48 episodes, 45 minutes each. (mdl link)

老九门/the mystic nine: dmbj prequel, set in the tail end of the republican era (1939, if i remember correctly?). has a lot of tomb- and tomb-robbing specific vocabulary, alongside the more dated modes of speech, so i would put this up at an hsk 5 or hsk 6 level, but there's decent subs, so you could watch it at lower levels, it would just be a bit of a challenge. 48 episodes, 42 minutes each. (mdl link)

猎罪图鉴/under the skin: contemporary procedural show; there's a lot of emotion- and motive-specific words used, and the fact that it's a procedural makes it a bit more challenging, in my opinion. i would recommend that don't start with this show, just because of the fact that it's pretty easy to get lost if you don't grasp some of the vocabulary. i'd put it at an hsk 6 level, but that said, the subs are good and you can watch it at an hsk 5 level with some effort, i think. 20 episodes, 45 minutes each. (mdl link)

春风沉醉的夜晚/spring fever: honestly not as challenging in terms of vocabulary as a lot of things on this list, and fairly contemporary (set in the 2000s). i would say if you're at an hsk 4 level, you will probably do alright with it. 116 minutes in total. (mdl link)

关于我和鬼变成家人的那件事/marry my dead body: another case of struggling to acclimate to the taiwanese accent; otherwise, not too complicated in terms of vocab, though there are some spirit/marriage-specific terms used. overall, though, i'd put this at an hsk 4 level as well. 130 minutes in total. (mdl link)

陈情令/the untamed: heavy on the wuxia/xianxia elements, so unless you're familiar with that, you might struggle a lot to get through it. this is a lot of peoples' entry into cdramas, though, so it's not utterly inaccessible, and has decent english subs. i would put this around an hsk 5, if you want to watch it without subs, though you'll probably still have to pause and look up some words here and there even then. 50 episodes, 45 minutes each, making it the longest on this list. (mdl link)

山河令/word of honour: arguably the hardest on this list, i would say, because it's so plot-heavy. i, as a native speaker, struggle to follow along with this for extended amounts of time because there's a combination of 1. a lot happening, 2. a lot of wuxia terms, and 3. a lot of references to literature/art/etc. i would put this up at an hsk 7 level, honestly. that said, the subs for this are very good. 36 official episodes with a 37th mini-episode, 45 minutes each for the regular ones. (mdl link)

天官赐福/heaven official's blessing: one of the easier shows on this list; i would put this at an hsk 3 or hsk 4 level; there's some words you probably won't know, but while it does fall under xianxia, it doesn't go into that as much in terms of vocabulary as cql/the untamed does. i believe both seasons have both official subbing and official dubbing into english available, but that's not how i watched it, and i've only seen the first season, which is 11 episodes and about 20 minutes per episode. (mal link)

致命游戏/the spirealm: not particularly challenging in terms of actual vocab, but as of yet, only the first few episodes are subbed, since it came out literally this month, and the other subs are all auto-generated and.............very lacking. that said, it's a contemporary setting, and i would put this at an hsk 5 level, give or take; there are some references to folklore, but the characters research and explain or deduce the explanations of what is happening as it occurs, and you aren't left to struggle to figure it out yourself. 78 episodes, but each one is a bit under 20 minutes long, so it actually isn't that much content in total. (mdl link)

[mostotherthings]

I'm fully caught up with The On1y One and I'm really looking forward to the last 2 episodes.

I've never been a fan of the "high-school romance" kind of show, (I think it's because I have to fully suspend my belief because wow, my school days were... not ideal), but I've been won over by the soft charm and romantic literary... of the show

Best thing - Jiang Tian absolutely sucks at writing 文藝文 literary writing, or translated as lyrical writing in the show) because he's a trauma-filled child. Basically, he's a robot. A robot who developed feelings at a boy who tripped over the stairs and is struggling with his feelings because he thought he was a robot. His teacher threw the guidebook at him so that he would "grow some feelings". This is delicious.

I also particularly enjoy the content of the classes- the history lesson where the boys have a much too adult conversation about boundaries and wars, and how boundaries are sort of made to be overcome. It means something that Jiang Tian hates it- he would like his walls to be in place and keep feelings out, thank you very much. Plus the Chinese literature lesson which talks about full stops and the ellipsis- it indicates their story is ongoing and will be continued.

Whenever I watch Benjamin Tsang here, I think about Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. I once read an interview where Colin Firth talks about how absolutely difficult it was to act as Mr Darcy- because he just holds everything back and has no expression but you still have to somehow show what he's feeling inside. So I'm full believe it when Benjamin Tsang says it's a 200% difficulty role, and basically I've been calling Jiang Tian "Mr Darcy" in my head. Nice to know he one-upped Colin Firth with a naked butt though (heh)

It took me a while to get over the accents (look it's a Taiwanese production, but the two main leads talk in 1- Mainland Accent, 2- Cantonese tinged Accent). And the jump-scare of An Jun Peng appearing as a gangster kid - SIr, you last appeared as a CEO ready to be married, I can't... you in that uniform... I just... No.

[linghxr]

4 years of Anki: How I make my Chinese flashcards

My first post on this blog was about 4 years ago on July 12th, 2019! That's also around the time I started consistently using Anki. I still review flashcards on Anki nearly every day, but a lot about how I make my cards has changed.

Fields:

Front: The word/phrase, in simplified characters.

Traditional: At some point I decided I wanted to improve my recognition of traditional characters, so I added this field. If the simplified and traditional forms are the same, I leave this field blank.

Back: The definition, written in Chinese and/or English. I try to use Chinese as much as possible, but sometimes I have to resort to English or mix both languages. I didn't start using Chinese definitions until a couple years ago, so my older cards only have English definitions.

Example: Example sentences or phrases that I usually get from Pleco or some other Chinese dictionary source. I replace the word/phrase in question with underscores because I used to mimic cloze deletion-style cards. Now I mostly do it this way out of habit.

Pronunciation: The pinyin with numbers for tones (since that's easier to type on my laptop). I also include variant pronunciations. Above I have both the Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese standard pronunciations.

Alternate: If I notice in the dictionary that there is some alternate form of a character or word, I'll often include it here.

Card front:

Here's how the front of the card looks. I use a cursive-style font called Swim the Wolf to hopefully improve my ability to read others' handwriting. It also forces me to slow down and focus on the example sentences.

This is how the front template looks in Anki:

{{Front}} {{#Traditional}} / {{Traditional}} {{/Traditional}} {{Alternate}} {{Example}}

This template is configured so that if there is text in the traditional field, the card will be displayed with a "/" separating the simplified and traditional text. If the traditional field is empty, the "/" separator will not be displayed.

Card back:

And here is the back. When I started using Anki, I actually had the definition on the front and the word/phrase on the back. That was back when I only wrote the definitions in English. I would try to guess the Chinese word/phrase based on the English definition and Chinese example sentences (thus why I had to use underscores in the examples). At some point, it got unmanageable, so I switched to word/phrase on the front and definition on the back.

Here's the back template:

{{FrontSide}} {{Back}} {{Pronunciation}}

So there we have it, my Anki set up! My method for making cards has changed so much over the years as I've learned more about what works for me and as my goals have evolved. I don't use any add-ons or extensions (unless the added font counts), so you definitely don't need to do anything fancy to get a lot out of Anki. I hope you can glean some inspiration from this!

[buried-in-stardust]

Do you learn how to write mandarin in zhuyin/bopomofo in school? Or just in pinyin and simplified chinese?

I personally am a heritage speaker with Taiwanese parents and was born/grew up in Canada, so I went to Saturday morning Chinese school for a few years when I was little instead. The program was run by Taiwanese people, so everything was in traditional Chinese, although we learned both pinyin and zhuyin and had a chart to help us convert one to the other. While the program taught both, all the material had more emphasis on zhuyin (although that didn't seem to help me, since I barely remember any zhuyin and I type exclusively in pinyin lol). For instance, books aimed at kids also have the zhuyin next to each character and worksheets will have the kids match zhuyin (but not pinyin) to characters that start with or end in that sound.

In Taiwan, they do learn zhuyin instead of pinyin, so the main method people use to input characters on computers is with zhuyin (pic under cut). There's another romantiziation method that people in Taiwan may be more familiar with: Wades-Giles. This system is the reason why you see 國民黨 written as Kuomintang instead of Guomindang. I'm not really familiar with how it is nowadays in Taiwan, so I can't say anything about if younger people can read pinyin or not, but older generations usually cannot. Taiwan uses traditional characters, but people can kinda read simplified, and it's generally easier for people who know traditional to read simplified than vice-versa.

As for the mainland, it's not standard for them to learn zhuyin, so most people can't read it, and very few elementary schools will teach it. They also don't learn traditional characters, but often they will know a few, if only from exposure. Again, it's not difficult to guess what the traditional may mean since most characters are the same. They are also less likely to get exposure to traditional characters than a Taiwanese would to simplified purely due to the numbers.

If there's anything that you'd like me to expand on, let me know and I'll do my best!