yesterday, feb. 14, was chinese new year. there's this chinese descendants' museum in our town and all last week they were setting off fireworks. on feb. 13, our chinese friends stayed up late, made dumplings, watched the celebrations in china on a big screen tv (i think it'd be something like us watching the ball drop), and exchanged those red envelopes with money in them. when i came into the office this morning, i asked efei, our resident chinese teacher, how her new year was. then i asked her if they say gung hay fat choi, just like every american kid learned to say during our super short lessons on chinese new year.
efei: "what?"
me: "gung hay fat choi...you know, like what you maybe say on new years. i dunno, that's what i always learned in school."
efei: "OHHHH gong shi fa tai. you say it like southern chinese people."
turns out that gung hay fat choi (which she said way differently, like an actual chinese person would say it and not the americanized way) is part of a more rare south eastern dialect of chinese. it's not the most popular way to say "good luck and you'll make lots of money in the new year" in china. i wondered why americans everywhere (seriously, hasn't everyone learned gung hay fat choi?) learned this rare version of the phrase. efei guessed it might be because they speak that in hong kong, where people are very rich and can travel/up and move to america.
new knowledge, learned and stored.
Fucking fireworks. They go off all the time but they're almost never worth interrupting the movie you're watching to look out the window.
ReplyDeleteOur teacher taught us "Gong xi gong xi." Taiwanese people like to say things twice--she said it sounds better.