Interviewed!

It's not the first time I've talked to interviewers, journalists, or panels, but it's the first time I've done so and been sent a direct link to the footage by the interviewer. Who, not so incidentally, is the one and only Frederick Noronha, tireless journalist, chronicler of literally all things Goan, and head of Goa 1556, the publisher that put out my translations of O Signo da Ira, Leonor Figueiredo's bio of Sita Valles, and the collected Portuguese poems of Laxmanrao Sardessai.

The video quality's kinda weird—it was fine during the interview—but you can still hear me talk about translation, what remains of the Goan literary corpus, and other stuff. Enjoy!

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 27

坐朝問道

zuò cháo wèn dào

"Sitting in court, asking about the Way" 

Asking others, presumably one's ministers and advisors, about how to govern seems like a reasonably imperial or kingly thing to do. Better than taking only one's own counsel, at least.

道, "the Way," is the same character used for 道教 Daoism, where its meanings are no less numerous than they are in other aspects of Chinese culture. Here, the Way in question is the way of governance, which our two rulers from the previous line must have grasped fairly firmly, if their reputation is any proof. I'd be curious to know who their ministers were, since they're the ones who provided the rulers with answers. Maybe they weren't ministers at all; maybe they were wandering sages, or the rulers' friends, wives, concubines. Whoever they were, their advice left its mark.

We'll see what that advice was, or at least how it was put to use, in the next line.

微臣
史大偉

Links 1.25.2022 — Molly Cook, Weird Studies, Peace Labor May, Tokozenji, SHWEP

Hey, folks. I thought I'd post some links to people and things that have been occupying my mindspace as of late.

In no particular order:

Tokozenji is a Rinzai Zen temple in Yokohama, Japan, that offers zazen via Zoom twice a month, with instructions and brief dharma talks in Japanese and English. I've joined both January meetings, and it's a very worthwhile experience. 

Peace Labor May is a Marxist vlogger and writer from Kazakhstan whose work I discovered last month. I like her open, honest approach to things a lot. She's one of the few voices I've heard directly from Kazakhstan in the wake of the unrest there earlier this month.

I met Molly Cook at the end of December, not long after she'd filed to run in the Democratic primary against John "prisoners don't deserve air conditioning" Whitmire for Texas Senate district 15. Whitmire, who wants to be mayor of Houston, figures he'll run that campaign while also serving as state senator for the 40th year in a row. To which I say: fuck you, man, way to disregard your constituents. Molly, on the other hand, is an ER nurse, DSA member, and tireless community organizer. Read an interview with her here in the Texas Signal.

Weird Studies is a podcast about, well, weirdness. Wide-ranging, entertaining, deeply knowledgeable, and possessed of a spirit of inquiry well-suited to the many varieties of human experience, it's one of my favorite things to listen to when I'm driving, which thankfully is not that often.

The Secret History of Western Esotericism is another podcast, one I started listening to just today (or was it yesterday?). It looks to be devilishly detailed in its analysis of the history of western traditions of ritual magic, theosophy, gnosticism, occultism, alchemy, and the like over the course of roughly two millennia. Seriously, check out the episode list and tell me that's not dense as hell.

If that's not enough to keep you busy, I'll post another thrilling installment of the Thousand Character Classic project tomorrow.

 

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 26

 周發商湯

 zhōu fā shāng tāng

"Fa of Zhou and Tang of Shang"


This is not a line I would have immediately figured out on my own, because I didn't recognize any of the names. 周發, "Fa of Zhou", is 周武王, King Wu of Zhou, founder of the Zhou dynasty (which I have heard of!) sometime around 1046 BCE. 商湯, "Tang of Shang," is 成湯 Cheng Tang, founder of the Shang dynasty, established around 1600 BCE. The Shang dynasty was overthrown by what would become the Zhou dynasty.

Based on the previous line, these two rulers did right by their people. In the next couple of lines, we'll find out how they accomplished this. 

If you wanted to read this line for amusement alone, you could interpret 周發 as "sending in circles" and 商湯 as "business soup." Combined, these images make me think of a protracted business dinner, with dishes constantly revolving on a lazy Susan between guests.

微臣
史大偉

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 25

弔民伐罪

 diào mín fá zuì

"condole with the people and punish the guilty"

 

Here we have a line that's passed into regular usage as one of the many four-character set phrases known as 成語 chengyu. My pop-up online dictionary (all hail Perapera, even if it's no longer being updated) translates it as "to console the people and punish the tyrant." I don't know how 罪 ended up meaning "tyrant" here, but it's a pretty good phrase.

"Condole" is an English word you don't hear much. Sure, there's "condolences," but I don't think I've ever heard "condole" on its own. It means to lament or express sorrow in sympathy with someone, which to me comes across differently than "console" in the translation above. (Weirdly enough, the translation of 弔 alone in that same dictionary is "to condole with.")

弔 also represents a string of 100 copper coins, the kind with a hole in the middle. I usually avoid leaning too heavily on the pictographic aspect of Chinese characters, but here you can kinda see it—either the curved stroke as a string winding around and through the vertical stroke of a coin seen edgewise, or the vertical stroke is the string passing through a series of coins, also seen edgewise.

Who's condoling with the people and punishing the guilty? We're about to find out.


微臣
史大偉

 

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 24

有虞陶唐

yǒu yú táo táng

"You Yu and Tao Tang"

 

有虞 ("the holder of Yu") is the clan or lineage name of 帝舜 Emperor Shun, who lived over four thousand years ago and was a descendant of the Yellow Emperor. Shun was the successor of 堯 Yao, also known by his clan name of 陶唐 Tao Tang. Both of them are included in the 三皇五帝 Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors I mentioned a few posts back—basically, they're among the mythological founders of the Chinese state.

Yao abdicated his throne to Shun after ruling for more than 70 years, which makes you wonder what took him so long. Apparently, it's because his sons were useless, and didn't deserve to rule. Yao and Shun were apparently quite popular with Confucians, who found their behavior, particularly their stepping aside in favor of better men, exemplary. While 70 years on the throne seems absurdly long, when you realize there are American politicians who've been serving for over 50 years, it's not quite as far-fetched.

Yao also is the legendary inventor of the game 圍棋 weiqi, better known as Go. That's pretty cool.

More emperors and their deeds tomorrow, or later today, depending on how busy I am. 

 

微臣
史大偉

 

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 23

 推位讓國

 tuī wèi ràng guó

 "abdicate the throne and give up the country"

 

Once again there's an unspoken grammatical element, namely an indication of who's abdicating, which means this can be read as "those who abdicate the throne and give up the country." My copy of the 千字文 has this in the past tense, which is another of those things you have to figure out from context, since there are no particles here indicating time. So who was it that abdicated and gave up the country? We'll find out in the next line. Prepare for more references to people by names by which they're not best known! 

推 is most commonly seen these days on the doors of restaurants and other businesses in China, along with its opposite, 拉. They mean "push" and "pull," respectively. 位 here means "seat" or "position of influence," hence "throne," but it's also a polite way for counting people. Instead of 兩個人, two people, you can say 兩位人.

微臣
史大偉

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 22

乃服衣裳

nǎi fú yī shang

"and also clothes and garments"

So we've got writing and clothing coming into being at roughly the same time. I don't think that tracks historically, but whatever.

This line struck me as funny because three of the four characters mean "clothes," both by themselves and in conjunction with other characters. 衣服 is what's used in modern Chinese; 衣 on its own can mean "upper garment" (per Kroll's dictionary) as well as "to wear" or "to put on." 裳, when pronounced "chang," means "lower garment" or "skirt." 衣裳 means—you guessed it—"clothes," since you now have upper and lower garments.

I don't think the phrase that's run between lines 19-22 actually requires a post of its own, since I explained the grammatical framing earlier, but just so it's all in one place, here you go:

龍師火帝 鳥官人皇 始制文字 乃服衣裳

"In the time of the dragon masters and fire emperor, the bird officials and the sovereign of men, Chinese characters began to be made, and clothes began to be worn."

You'll note that I translated line 22 differently than I did before. I think it sounds better this way when considered as part of a phrase.

More tomorrow, folks!

微臣
史大偉

 

 

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 21

 始制文字

 shǐ zhì wén zì

 "Chinese characters began to be made"

 

Pretty straightforward, I'd say, especially as part of the phrase begun a couple lines ago. "In the time of the dragon masters, the fire emperor, the bird officials, and the sovereign of men, Chinese characters began to be made". I have nothing interesting to add, so I'll go ahead and write up the next line, which by  my reading wraps up this part.

微臣
史大偉

 

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 20

 鳥官人皇

niǎo* guān rén huáng 

"Bird officials and the sovereign of man"

Dragon masters, fire emperors, bird officials, and the sovereign of mankind—so many monikers and titles to learn. 

According to my edition of the 千字文, 少昊 Shao Hao, a legendary emperor, "designated his officials with the names of birds." The "sovereign of man" is 黃帝 Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor; he is the father of 少昊 Shao Hao. Huangdi is referred to here as the "sovereign of man" because each of the first three legendary emperors of China was associated with one of the 三才** Three Powers, i.e., 天 heaven, 地 earth, and 人 man. (Fu Xi and Shen Nong, discussed in the last post, are the emperors of heaven and earth, respectively.)

The Yellow Emperor is a major figure in Chinese history and mythology: the legendary ancestor of numerous emperors, inventor of Chinese medicine, symbolic center of the universe. I'd never heard of Shao Hao until I started reading about lines 19-20 of the Thousand Character Classic, but I've never been well-versed in Chinese mythology, or the part of Chinese history so shrouded in the mists of time it might as well be mythology. 

In the last post I mentioned a grammatical element connecting this line and the previous one. I'm still bad at catching unwritten contexts in classical Chinese, so I'm glad that my copy of the book situates line 19 temporally: "In the times of the dragon masters". It's not readily apparent that this should be read as starting with a "when" statement, but it makes perfect grammatical sense. (I also need to get better at reading ahead a bit to help establish context.) So,

龍師火帝  鳥官人皇

can be read "In the time of the dragon masters, the fire emperor, the bird officials, and the sovereign of men...", which in turn sets up the following lines.

Only five more lines and I'll be 10% finished! See you soon, dudes.

微臣

史大偉

*鳥 in modern Chinese is also pronounced "diao," and used as an alternate character for 屌, which  is also pronounced "diao" and means "penis" or, in Cantonese, "to fuck." Reading this line as "dick officials" seems like a not-so-subtle jab at the nature of bureaucracy, but amusing as that is, it seems unlikely.

**There's a Chinese martial arts form called 三才劍, "three powers sword." You can see a wonderfully grainy performance of it here.

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 19

 龍師火帝

lóng shī huǒ dì 

"Dragon Master and Fire Emperor"

We've seen so far that each four-character line often forms a couplet with another, and together they comment on the world in some way. The last couplet (lines 17-18) told us a little something about the natural world, and the one before that about human preferences with regards to food; with this one, we're entering mythological-historical territory again.

Here begins a longer description of the earliest days of mankind, as depicted through the Chinese lens. It runs several lines, so I'm questioning the value of breaking it (and similar future passages) into single lines. On the other hand, I'm not in a rush to get through this, nor am I prohibited from writing up summary posts of particular passages, which is what I think I'll do once I've done line-by-line readings of this section.

龍師, "dragon master," refers to 伏羲 Fu Xi, the legendary creator of the human race in Chinese mythology; according to my copy of the 千字文, he "designated his officials with the names of different colored dragons." 火帝, "fire emperor," refers to 神農 Shen Nong, the agricultural god and inventor of, among other things, acupuncture (but apparently not fire-making; that was 燧人氏 Suirenshi). Why is Shen Nong the fire emperor? Because the "first five emperors of the Legendary Period ... were each associated with one of the five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water)."

You can read more in English about both of these figures on Wikipedia or elsewhere; if you want to read about them in Chinese, and in the context of the Thousand Character Classic, check out this blog. That's where I got my start, since my edition of the book is a bit thin on details. The blog, however, associated the Fire Emperor with Suirenshi, so I'm confused about the exact correspondences between one name and another.

While it's not obvious from this line, there's an unwritten grammatical element that connects it to the following lines, as we'll see shortly.

 

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 18

Happy new year, dudes! Chronos has been pretty unkind to the human race these last couple years, and I don't have a lot of hope for that changing anytime soon, alas. Still, I'm trying to cast off the seemingly omnipresent pall of dread, not only because it's exhausting to live under, but lending it more weight than it deserves ignores the incontrovertible fact that life is not a static thing, but an endless cycle of change. Locking into one groove, be it positive or negative, may be comforting in its predictability, but it's no way to really live. 

On to the 千字文.

鱗潛羽翔

lín qián yǔ xiáng

"Those with scales are submerged; those with feathers soar."

Not much to say about this one, either. We've got another typically terse observation of nature in which properties of the things being talked about—fish and birds—stand in for the things themselves: 鱗 is fish scales, and 羽 is feathers. I vacillated between the translation above and just saying "fish" and "birds," opting for the former mainly to present this explanation.

看官再見！See y'all soon.

微臣

史大偉