jon's blog

Thursday, July 13, 2006

idioms of tedium in a picturesque medium

i used to hate learning chinese.
learning chinese is a lot like reading the yellow pages and having to memorize it at the same time. two points worth noting on both issues:

1) i don't give a fuck.
2) why memorize when you can always refer to it as and when you please?

note that i USED to hate learning chinese. now, it's more like i REGRET that i USED to hate learning chinese. the problem with the mandarin cirriculum back in the late 90s was that it mainly involved rote learning. students had to memorize 1000 different chinese characters within a few months. and only less than a 100 are supposed to be spewed out as answers during the 'O' level exams. it was senseless and many kids didn't see the big picture of leanring chinese. i was one of them. during my upper secondary years, i had a really passionate teacher who was very witty and punny with her chinese idioms and such. and she was what kinda 'upped' my F9 preliminary exam results to a B4 post-O-levels. which i daresay is a miracle short of turning Evian into a Cabernet.

and one of my favourite chinese idioms back then was FANG MA GUO LAI. it literally means to release the horse over. but idiomatically speaking, it's basically a taunt saying 'show me what you've got'. as in,

Rapper 1: you think you've got more bling than me?

Rapper 2: yeah?

Rapper 1: aight then?! FANG MAH GUO LAI!!!

(the DJ spins an electro breakbeat tune and the crowd goes insane)

one of the great ways i memorized this particular idiom was a pictureqsque scene that my chinese teacher described to the class. and basically, a picture paints a thousand words and a few million dollars if it's a Van Gogh. let's just look at the end product:

if you're chinese, it's punnier.

posted at 12:34 pm by the nurse | Permalink |

8 Comments:

LOL... you should draw 'luo hua liu shui'
By JY, at 1:15 am

dude, did you draw that yourself? hahaha!
By cynic, at 7:54 pm

Man! I really love the way you write and perceive things..Its unique in a way and make my sunday night not so boring readin thru ur entries...cool blog u got here...

Write more..i wanna read..haha....

Cheers,
Khai
By Anonymous, at 12:42 pm

hahaha that pic is so cute!!! that horse has buck teeth. :D
By Anonymous, at 4:54 pm

thanks. actually fang mah guo lai is my favouritest chinese idiom of all. it's understandable. and it brings back memories of my chinese teacher and arid afternoons of rote learning. boring. but nostalgic.

and thanks, khai and cynic and li an and sun.
By the nurse, at 12:00 pm

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By Anonymous, at 6:31 pm

eyey..

well..jus started reading ur blog n i find it real cool..

interestingly, we have similar happenings..

haha..continue writing !!
By Anonymous, at 1:07 am

Hi Jon,
thanks for the clarification on this idiom - FANG MA GUO LAI. I was trying to find the meaning of this and saw your blog. I'm terrible in mandarin and didn't quite understand what the other party was trying to tell me. On top of this, my friend had spelled the hanyu pinyin of this horsey idiom wrongly.

I wish that the MOE curriuclum could include learning mandarin in a more meaningful way. Not sure about now but I doubt it has changed much at the moment.

Cheers
Sharon
By Sharon, at 3:00 pm