Chinese Fruits and Vegetables

My ma sometimes tells me about herbs and I have no idea how to translate them into English typically. This is to provide a quick guide in case I am asked again in the future.

Myrica rubra

Also called yangmei, (Chinese: 杨梅; pinyin: yángméi; Cantonese: yeung4 mui4; Shanghainese: [ɦiɐ̃².mɛ⁴]), yamamomo (Japanese: ヤマモモ) Chinese bayberry or Chinese strawberry and often mistranslated from Chinese as arbutus. It is a subtropical tree grown for its fruit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrica_rubra 

Brassica juncea

Commonly called Chinese mustard, Indian mustard, leaf mustard, vegetable mustard, it is a species of mustard plant. In Chinese it is called 芥菜 (jiècài). One variation of it is called snow mustard (雪里红）.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassica_juncea

Chinese Lit Links

Aino Kishi 💘 reading east Asian literature. Why shouldn't you?

The Serious Links:

http://www.kehuan.net.cn/

https://paper-republic.org/

http://jiaindex.com/the-chinese-version/

https://www.shigeku.org/xlib/xd/sgdq/beidao.htm

More technical:

http://www.spaceflightfans.cn/

Just for fluff aka light novels:

https://hikokitranslations.wordpress.com/kimiboku-volume-1-illustrations/

Food - Yuxiang Shredded Pork (鱼香肉丝)

A signature dish of Sichuan cuisine, shredded pork with garlic sauce delivers a sophisticated and addictive taste: tangy, spicy, sweet & sour. 

Yuxiang shredded pork (Chinese: 魚香肉絲; pinyin: yúxiāng ròusī; sometimes translated as fish-flavored pork slices, or more vaguely as shredded pork with garlic sauce) is a common dish in Sichuan cuisine. Yuxiang is one of main traditional flavors in Sichuan.

References
https://redhousespice.com/sichuan-shredded-pork-garlic-sauce/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuxiang_shredded_pork

Food - Chinese

Seriously, China has some dishes with some weird names. The dishes themselves aren't even that weird; it's just the names. Check out the following.

Ants Climbing a Tree

Ants climbing a tree (simplified Chinese: 蚂蚁上树; traditional Chinese: 螞蟻上樹; pinyin: Mǎyǐshàngshù) is a classic Sichuan dish in Chinese cuisine. The name of the dish in Chinese, Mayishangshu, has been translated as "ants climbing a tree", "ants on the tree", "ants creeping up a tree", "ants climbing a hill" or "ants climbing a log". It is so called because the dish has bits of ground meat clinging to noodles, evoking an image of ants walking on twigs. The dish consists of ground meat, such as pork, cooked in a sauce and poured over bean thread noodles. Other ingredients in the dish may include rice vinegar, soy sauce, vegetable oil, sesame oil, scallions, garlic, ginger, and chili paste.

References
https://thewoksoflife.com/ants-climbing-a-tree/

[IT] Display Chinese in Command Prompt

Recently, I wanted to read some Chinese document in the Command Prompt. Unfortunately, I could not display Chinese characters by default. I learned a handy technique to do it:

chcp 936

In the Windows shell, the "code page" determines how bytes are converted to characters on the screen. Using the CHCP command changes the shell's code page. Please note that before the CHCP command can be used, the nlsfunc must be loaded and country.sys must be loaded into the config.sys.

Automation
To remove the need to do this every time, you can create a simple batch file to change the code to whatever you wish. Here, it's changed to 65001 which is Unicode. This will not be able to display East Asian characters but you will be able to type other characters.

@ECHO OFF
REM change CHCP to UTF-8
CHCP 65001
CLS

You can save this in the folder C:\Windows\System32 as a bat file such as switch.bat.

Then, create a shortcut to cmd.exe on Desktop and change the shortcut's properties to C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k switch

Now whenever you need to type in a different script, you can use this shorcut.

Politics: Shoot Japanese Devils Game

I heard recently that the Chinese newspaper People's Daily recently put up an online video game where the player shoots Japanese "devils", world war war criminals. Worsening relationships between the two countries have made it perfectly legal to throw the anger at Japanese. "Japanese devil" is a common racial slur for China's regional rivals. The game marked the same day as the Chinese government approved two national days, September 3 to mark Japan's defeat in World War II and December 13 to commemorate the victims of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, where six weeks of slaughter ensued on the wartime capital of China and ultimately culminated in over 200,000 casualties.

Both my parents attended university in Nanjing and my parents have many friends and some relatives there. My feeling about this is that neither country should stir up angry popular sentiment like this. The Japanese should stop paying respects to war criminals at the Yasukuni shrine where 14 class A war criminals are honored. Mutual respect requires both sides to own up to history and not continually bring up the past to assault the other.

If you're curious, the game can be found here. The game is all in Chinese.

Literature: Translations of Wang Xiaobo's Prose "An Unique Pig Who Goes His Own Way"

I really like Wang Xiaobo's prose. Unfortunately, some of his most insightful writings have not been translated into English. With my moderate literary skills I have decided to correct that injustice and allow more people to have access to this man who has the ability to express the profound in such simple terms. Personally, I find his writing style to be similar to that of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's or the prose of Tagore if the reader is familiar with these works, in other words, they are simple stories that express some truth which is most often ignored if someone just says it directly.

I have translated one of his prose since I know you can learn something from it. Like many of his writings, the story is simple but the meaning is far deeper:

When I went out to the countryside back in the day, I fed pigs and herded cattle. If there were no one around, these two kinds of animals would still know how to live. They would wander around idly, eating or drinking when needed. When spring comes, they'll make love. Just like that, their lifestyle is very simple, lacking anything to take advantage of. The arrival of man gave their lives certain arrangements: every cow and every pig now has a purpose. For most of them, this new lifestyle was quite sad with the former working in the fields while the latter growing meat for slaughter...

Read more: http://www.mendedreality.com/docs/translations/wangxiaobo_pig.pdf