Seriously I admire Chinese people and all of you who can speak mandarin because that alphabet is so difficult.…
Actually native speakers learn to speak long before they learn to read ; non native speakers usually use a transliteration which will make it easier to understand and imitate the pronunciation. Sometimes they don’t bother tackling learning to read in the complicated looking script, and that's fine if they can talk and understand.
In the case of Chinese, there are several forms of transliteration including one called "bopomofo" that is used for primary schools to teach mandarin to Chinese children and even adults. There are also several forms of "romanization" to transcribe Chinese characters into latin alphabet letters. Some are still in use in universities abroad, despite the only PRC and UN accepted one is the "pinyin" (or Hanyu pinyin). Hanyu pinyin (pinyin for short) was adopted as the accepted romanization by the Chinese Congress on 11 Feb 1958. This pinyin is taught in schools in the PRC and used to "subtitle" street signs or other signs in public spaces so foreigners don't feel too lost when they arrive in China : that "subtitling" in pinyin started as early as the 1980s, but was stepped up in view of the opening to trade, tourism, and to events such as the 2008 Olympics, the 2010 World Fair in Shanghai, etc. But of course, Chinese people don’t use pinyin in daily life to write, even though it can also be used parallel to another system, to type on computers or on smartphones. It’s a chore for kids to learn it in primary schools and they only find it useful when they start learning English or other foreign languages that use Latin alphabet.
Contrary to the Wade-Giles system still in use in the US and other anglophone countries (the French and the German use a different romanization) the Hanyu pinyin does not build on mimicking English pronunciation, so some classes are needed for foreigners to learn to handle it. Teachers of Chinese are needed to understand the pronunciation of for instance r, q or x, s, sh, ch, z in mandarin Chinese (Hanyu) and tone system notation ā, á, ǎ, à. Many foreigners who have not been coached about these different uses of familiar looking letters are incapable of pronouncing, say, Xí Jìnpíng, or Hángzhōu.
As for Chinese original writing system, the characters are not an alphabet but pictographs or ideograms, derived from ancient glyphs that changed form as they became normalized with time, so the characters look different according to whether they are in print or in the many styles of handwritten script. Some look like flowing algae or grass (it's called cǎoshū and you can have a look at the Cursive_script_(East_Asia) page in Wikipedia to see the difference between that one and present day printed characters) ; these scripts are used for calligraphy but there is also a daily life version which you sometimes could notice in the letters that people look at in dramas.
As for the "little lines", this is indeed the code and counting method to write characters in the learning and printed form. (Counting strokes used to be the way to look up a character in dictionaries). Reading or writing a character follows a method involving the knowledge of parts : usually they start from the upper side of a square form, going down, and there are parts which are related to pronunciation or classification, for instance in the "cat" 猫 character the upper part is the grass, one starts writing the left part (which is the classifier for small animals) and next the upper part over the square window-like below (which is the character for "field"). Each stroke follows a coded order (see video below). But this was the simplified form in use in mainland China and the UN ; the traditional form that still is in use on Taiwan (and other places that prefer them) writes cat as 貓 . You will notice that in the traditional character, the left part classifier key looks different, and understand why it could easily be simplified to one that used "less strokes" of the brush.
Now to complete the explanation, here are some notes borrowed from friends on Quora : "The Chinese character 猫 consists of 2 parts, 犭 and 苗. 犭is the simplified version of 豸, meaning a little animal (not only "dog") 苗 is pronounced “miao”, giving the very pronunciation of 猫 (māo) As the language evolved, Mandarin lost the “i”, so you hear people say Mao. But in some southern Chinese dialects, like Hakka, it’s still pronounced as miau. The origin of the character is also closely related to “苗”, which means crops. Ancient people kept cats to get rid of mice and protect harvest, so the word cat literally means small animals that protect crops, thus we have this combination 猫. If we go further into the word 苗, it is usually considered a pictograph describing grass 艹 (cǎo) on the field 田 (tián), thus “crops”. It has been pronounced “miao”."
An interesting breakdown of the character is used in the following video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dra668Jp93U This video also gives the names of the individual basic strokes (little lines) : there are more, and these are the first ones to learn, in Chinese before even tackling writing the first easy characters.
Now all words are not transcribed in one character. 猫 / 貓 (māo) is cat, but 永远 / 永遠 (yǒngyuǎn) is forever.
Next, have fun with this video of the now classic song by Jay Chou. It has traditional (first line) and simplified (second line) mandarin characters, pinyin transliteration, and English translation, to become fearless of little lines :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al7USRMI6Ug
PS. YouTube had this character in suggested videos ; very appropriate for the summer time! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlhKTGXNzAA ( it also shows how horizontal strokes always come before the vertical ones when "building" a character from top to down.)
Scandles are her best shoes. But her main reason was that she was hurt before. And like she said she had given…
I think Excalibur got it right. SZ just did not want to appear as dressing up for him but not for the reasons you suspect. I don't agree that SZ truly believes JX still thinks about her as a kid, she has doubts after coming back to the dorm and that's also why she let herself talk it over with dorm roommates to sound them out. I maintain SZ simply and now certainly just had "cold feet" again, insecure issues about being too young compared to him, so she felt tongue tied about letting him know her repressed feelings that are certainly not yet dead. Also afraid that if she blurted out the truth to him, she'd make him uneasy and scare him away. So, she was prepared to continue the 'meimei' charade until things evolved naturally. If she was over a supposed past puppy love and she had grown indifferent, she would just have joked about her past kid's infatuation and told him upfront how she put the toys away and ghosted him to not be bothered by too many calls, instead of coming up with lame excuses that she was too busy. And she would have upfront asked him even that long after the fact, who was that woman at the airport, and why he let himself be rumored to have a gf, and now "could they perhaps just stay 'putong pengyou' with no further misunderstandings?" The fact that she chose not to tell him means she still had something important to hide, that was far from dying, and well growing too. Hidden love indeed. And what happened at curbside before they took the taxi will have it grow stronger.Plus the wiping face moment too, of course.
Her friend said," if you like someone, you want to look good in front of them" Sandals was her best shoes and…
No, I think Excalibur got it right. You got the timeline wrong, Angie: she could not know she would need a pair of practical shoes to stay there at the time when she chose those.
Did anyone have an explanation for why she chose sneakers/tennis shoes instead of closed toed sandals ? It did not look like it was weather related : dry and warm, from what they were wearing. Was it because the heels would be signaling too much that she was an adult open to dating, and had she a sudden nostalgy for the "safe" meimei status?
The accidental kiss on the forehead was adorable! Poor DJX have to go through the funeral of losing a family member...…
In the drama, it is not yet quite clear what his background was (was he an orphan with his mom in hospital and he had to pay for fees and for funeral, so turned to Sang Yan family for help and loan? I know the trailer showed more, but I did not want to watch it before so perhaps should do it now for the murder story?),. As Sang Zhi understood well after taking Duan Jiaxu to hospital, no one else would be coming to check on him in his time of need. So her realization that he indeed had no girlfriend or near family was confirmed. Playing compassionate volunteer nurse is a dangerous game for those who just want to stay polite, grateful for past kindness, and unconcerned. Of course there's the accidental "kiss" with lips touching her forehead while they stood waiting for the taxi, which certainly will lead to more, as well. Jiaxu is supposed to stay in hospital for a few days more : can he work on his urgent and difficult project that needs overtime, from there? Ep 10 is tomorrow.
I was wondering about that closing scene. What it was suppose to mean.
tks, ikr 🤣 Those seemingly disjointed clips before end credits are, if not a new feature (other dramas uses them too), an interesting "precision", not-to-miss part of episode. Those who skip to next, as soon as the episode reaches what looks like end, may miss these, so I consider them as a bonus for those who don't derail. Anyway HL is so good that I don't feel bored and tempted to skip any part, adding those pieces to the puzzle, so it is fun also to see where they fit in, and what had been left as a slight, easily overlooked gap in the main story.
It is fun too, how well this drama ties in with the manhua version that serves as storyboard (thanking those who posted links to it here in conversation!). ZLS, CZY, MBQ, cast and production, are doing a good job, bringing HL to life for us.
I was wondering about that closing scene. What it was suppose to mean.
Means he cared enough for "meimei" that he got the pot for her while she was finishing with the birthday party, came back with it, loaded her in his car to drive her to the dorm, and gave her the pot to have honey water cure ready in case of hangover. (Drunk females are so common in c-dramas, tsk tsk tsk... ^+^) Ok : so this was a bit like the mine wagon jumping the gaps on broken rails in the Looney Tunes cartoon .... Watching c-dramas is an exercise in imagination.
I totally agree, I was shocked that she's supposedly 14 as I was certain she's 8-10. The character itself is not…
Noted. Europeans don't watch that kind of shows, but you know that's what the girl might risk to stumble on if she was watching shows on tv or online in China. So you still see her as from your cultural perspective.
I totally agree, I was shocked that she's supposedly 14 as I was certain she's 8-10. The character itself is not…
It depends a lot on country and upbringing, and economical circumstances.
To me, the character is totally believable morphing from relatively unrestrained tomboy child to shy adolescent, so self conscious as to hide and not send messages. I am even surprised that she had the courage at 17 to take the plane alone to check out the situation in Yihe, but not that, once there, she acted every bit as if she got cold feet. And that she was too tongue tied to blurt out the burning question, so was mistaken. Reacting next to hide away (or throw away) everything that reminded her of crush, is totally natural, and "drown sorrows" and mourning in dogged work, while ghosting former crush, is also very logical.
She is not a North American or northern European girl raised in permissive families and taught how to be more independent and how to think about relations with opposite gender. She is probably not even watching sweet dramas at home because bossy CEOs and ravished secretaries are not what the parents would want her to think about, just focus on studies, studies and studies.
2 
5 
1 
2 
1 
In the case of Chinese, there are several forms of transliteration including one called "bopomofo" that is used for primary schools to teach mandarin to Chinese children and even adults. There are also several forms of "romanization" to transcribe Chinese characters into latin alphabet letters. Some are still in use in universities abroad, despite the only PRC and UN accepted one is the "pinyin" (or Hanyu pinyin).
Hanyu pinyin (pinyin for short) was adopted as the accepted romanization by the Chinese Congress on 11 Feb 1958. This pinyin is taught in schools in the PRC and used to "subtitle" street signs or other signs in public spaces so foreigners don't feel too lost when they arrive in China : that "subtitling" in pinyin started as early as the 1980s, but was stepped up in view of the opening to trade, tourism, and to events such as the 2008 Olympics, the 2010 World Fair in Shanghai, etc.
But of course, Chinese people don’t use pinyin in daily life to write, even though it can also be used parallel to another system, to type on computers or on smartphones. It’s a chore for kids to learn it in primary schools and they only find it useful when they start learning English or other foreign languages that use Latin alphabet.
Contrary to the Wade-Giles system still in use in the US and other anglophone countries (the French and the German use a different romanization) the Hanyu pinyin does not build on mimicking English pronunciation, so some classes are needed for foreigners to learn to handle it. Teachers of Chinese are needed to understand the pronunciation of for instance r, q or x, s, sh, ch, z in mandarin Chinese (Hanyu) and tone system notation ā, á, ǎ, à. Many foreigners who have not been coached about these different uses of familiar looking letters are incapable of pronouncing, say, Xí Jìnpíng, or Hángzhōu.
As for Chinese original writing system, the characters are not an alphabet but pictographs or ideograms, derived from ancient glyphs that changed form as they became normalized with time, so the characters look different according to whether they are in print or in the many styles of handwritten script. Some look like flowing algae or grass (it's called cǎoshū and you can have a look at the Cursive_script_(East_Asia) page in Wikipedia to see the difference between that one and present day printed characters) ; these scripts are used for calligraphy but there is also a daily life version which you sometimes could notice in the letters that people look at in dramas.
As for the "little lines", this is indeed the code and counting method to write characters in the learning and printed form. (Counting strokes used to be the way to look up a character in dictionaries). Reading or writing a character follows a method involving the knowledge of parts : usually they start from the upper side of a square form, going down, and there are parts which are related to pronunciation or classification, for instance in the "cat" 猫 character the upper part is the grass, one starts writing the left part (which is the classifier for small animals) and next the upper part over the square window-like below (which is the character for "field"). Each stroke follows a coded order (see video below).
But this was the simplified form in use in mainland China and the UN ; the traditional form that still is in use on Taiwan (and other places that prefer them) writes cat as 貓 . You will notice that in the traditional character, the left part classifier key looks different, and understand why it could easily be simplified to one that used "less strokes" of the brush.
Now to complete the explanation, here are some notes borrowed from friends on Quora :
"The Chinese character 猫 consists of 2 parts, 犭 and 苗.
犭is the simplified version of 豸, meaning a little animal (not only "dog")
苗 is pronounced “miao”, giving the very pronunciation of 猫 (māo)
As the language evolved, Mandarin lost the “i”, so you hear people say Mao. But in some southern Chinese dialects, like Hakka, it’s still pronounced as miau.
The origin of the character is also closely related to “苗”, which means crops. Ancient people kept cats to get rid of mice and protect harvest, so the word cat literally means small animals that protect crops, thus we have this combination 猫.
If we go further into the word 苗, it is usually considered a pictograph describing grass 艹 (cǎo) on the field 田 (tián), thus “crops”. It has been pronounced “miao”."
An interesting breakdown of the character is used in the following video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dra668Jp93U This video also gives the names of the individual basic strokes (little lines) : there are more, and these are the first ones to learn, in Chinese before even tackling writing the first easy characters.
One character that uses all the 8 basic strokes is 永 (yǒng) : eternity/forever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6IE5-T_oZg
Now all words are not transcribed in one character. 猫 / 貓 (māo) is cat, but 永远 / 永遠 (yǒngyuǎn) is forever.
Next, have fun with this video of the now classic song by Jay Chou. It has traditional (first line) and simplified (second line) mandarin characters, pinyin transliteration, and English translation, to become fearless of little lines :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al7USRMI6Ug
PS. YouTube had this character in suggested videos ; very appropriate for the summer time! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlhKTGXNzAA ( it also shows how horizontal strokes always come before the vertical ones when "building" a character from top to down.)
But if you are impatient and want spoilers, she has been discussed before in previous conversations.
We'll see in ep 10, but I bet this is what happens, even without spoiling myself by reading on the manhua version :)
I don't agree that SZ truly believes JX still thinks about her as a kid, she has doubts after coming back to the dorm and that's also why she let herself talk it over with dorm roommates to sound them out. I maintain SZ simply and now certainly just had "cold feet" again, insecure issues about being too young compared to him, so she felt tongue tied about letting him know her repressed feelings that are certainly not yet dead. Also afraid that if she blurted out the truth to him, she'd make him uneasy and scare him away. So, she was prepared to continue the 'meimei' charade until things evolved naturally.
If she was over a supposed past puppy love and she had grown indifferent, she would just have joked about her past kid's infatuation and told him upfront how she put the toys away and ghosted him to not be bothered by too many calls, instead of coming up with lame excuses that she was too busy. And she would have upfront asked him even that long after the fact, who was that woman at the airport, and why he let himself be rumored to have a gf, and now "could they perhaps just stay 'putong pengyou' with no further misunderstandings?"
The fact that she chose not to tell him means she still had something important to hide, that was far from dying, and well growing too. Hidden love indeed. And what happened at curbside before they took the taxi will have it grow stronger.Plus the wiping face moment too, of course.
As Sang Zhi understood well after taking Duan Jiaxu to hospital, no one else would be coming to check on him in his time of need. So her realization that he indeed had no girlfriend or near family was confirmed.
Playing compassionate volunteer nurse is a dangerous game for those who just want to stay polite, grateful for past kindness, and unconcerned. Of course there's the accidental "kiss" with lips touching her forehead while they stood waiting for the taxi, which certainly will lead to more, as well.
Jiaxu is supposed to stay in hospital for a few days more : can he work on his urgent and difficult project that needs overtime, from there? Ep 10 is tomorrow.
It's that time again. 10 is tomorrow...
Those seemingly disjointed clips before end credits are, if not a new feature (other dramas uses them too), an interesting "precision", not-to-miss part of episode. Those who skip to next, as soon as the episode reaches what looks like end, may miss these, so I consider them as a bonus for those who don't derail. Anyway HL is so good that I don't feel bored and tempted to skip any part, adding those pieces to the puzzle, so it is fun also to see where they fit in, and what had been left as a slight, easily overlooked gap in the main story.
It is fun too, how well this drama ties in with the manhua version that serves as storyboard (thanking those who posted links to it here in conversation!). ZLS, CZY, MBQ, cast and production, are doing a good job, bringing HL to life for us.
Ok : so this was a bit like the mine wagon jumping the gaps on broken rails in the Looney Tunes cartoon .... Watching c-dramas is an exercise in imagination.
Thanks for the juicy anecdote ! :)
To me, the character is totally believable morphing from relatively unrestrained tomboy child to shy adolescent, so self conscious as to hide and not send messages.
I am even surprised that she had the courage at 17 to take the plane alone to check out the situation in Yihe, but not that, once there, she acted every bit as if she got cold feet. And that she was too tongue tied to blurt out the burning question, so was mistaken.
Reacting next to hide away (or throw away) everything that reminded her of crush, is totally natural, and "drown sorrows" and mourning in dogged work, while ghosting former crush, is also very logical.
She is not a North American or northern European girl raised in permissive families and taught how to be more independent and how to think about relations with opposite gender. She is probably not even watching sweet dramas at home because bossy CEOs and ravished secretaries are not what the parents would want her to think about, just focus on studies, studies and studies.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FzKAVBcaAAAA-Vq?format=jpg&name=900x900