I have been trying to learn more Chinese and Japanese vocabulary, which obviously includes learning to recognize characters. As I’ve been approaching this more attentively I’ve become even more aware than usual of the number of objects in my environment that have written language on them that I do not know the meaning of. With a word in Pinyin (the written form of Mandarin that uses the Roman alphabet, with diacriticals indicating the tones) or Romaji (the system for writing Japanese using the Roman alphabet), it is fairly easy to determine the meaning in English. It is not such an easy matter to translate a Hanzi (Chinese) or Kanji (Japanese) character into English, unless the character is available in electronic form and can be copied and pasted into a dictionary. If the text exists only on a physical object it can be quite a challenge.
The saucer in the accompanying photograph above is terribly vexing for this reason. I immediately recognized the tea character (cha = 茶), and I was able to identify the character in the lower right (器) as qì which means tool or utensil, but the other two I can’t find. In addition to visually scanning through lists of tea-related characters with definitions, I even tried guessing what sort of other words might be used on this item with “tea” and “tool,” but my detective skills have failed entirely so far. It doesn’t help that the burned in character isn’t all that sharply defined. I have four of these bamboo tea saucers and this one is the clearest to read.
My other example, which is inscribed into the clay on a tea mascot shaped like a foot, I have not been able to translate at all. Given the nature of the object, which is incorporated into gongfu cha with the intent of influencing luck and/or prosperity, I would expect the text to be something related to those ideas. I’m quite curious about this one in particular because I’ve seen this foot/insect or spider theme on various Chinese items and I don’t know anything about the origin of it. I’m curious whether the little sculpted arthropods are insects or spiders. These particular two have six legs and antenae and not very spider-like bodies, but they’re somewhat stylized.
I have a very strong aversion to abstracting language into decorative elements as I am not willing or able to divorce writing from meaning. My lack of ability to read Chinese doesn’t render it meaningless, just puzzling. As a rule I try to avoid having anything in my possession that bears language of any kind unless I know what it means, so I find these bits of unidentified language a little frustrating. In the case of tea items this is hard to avoid, and hard to resolve, but at least I can safely assume that they do say have something relevant about tea. They’re not likely to be lyric essays on the beauty of broiled salmon or something pornographic.
Would any of you Chinese-speaking tea people like to help me out with a translation?
March 17, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Zhi Zu Chang Le: “be happy with what you have” or something close to that. I recognized the characters but asked my wife to confirm the meaning.
Jason Walker
walkerteareview.com
March 17, 2009 at 7:46 pm
茶器典藏 cha qi dian cang
典 – is a picture of a book on a table and refers to “ceremony or elegance”
藏 – save, collect or hoard (I often see this word on puer cakes)
so… my translation would be: “Elegant and collectable tea tools.”
I enjoy your blog and look forward to drinking tea and practicing Chinese with you sometime.
Xiexie Ni!
Brett
March 17, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Thank you for the translation! And thank you for reading. I will come in and visit you at the shop one of these days.
March 17, 2009 at 9:41 pm
The characters on the coaster should probably be read up and down starting from the left, 典藏茶器.
The translation above of the four graphs on the spider-foot tea mascot is good, but does not follow the logic of the original Chinese. May I suggest “Knowing [when] enough [is enough leads to] eternal happiness.”
March 17, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Thank you. That translation makes sense based on what the object is (and makes sense in general, for that matter).
March 18, 2009 at 3:35 am
That’s actually a gorgeous example of classical Chinese, the short, meaning-intense characters saying so much in so few words!
I wish I’d known about this interest (if it was one) before I left, I could have probably taught you Chinese well enough to make you semi-sufficient with a character dictionary. That said, it can be hard to take that and use it to make sense of classical Chinese.
March 18, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I like the way the characters look, inscribed on the foot too.
I think that the thing I’m going to find hardest is pronunciation, but what I most want is to be able to read. If I get really brave I’ll go hang out in the ID and try to speak to people.
January 22, 2010 at 2:37 am
Hello, I love reading your blog and it also expand my knowledge about the tea.
For the translation of 茶具典藏，I could also provide one option for you to understand. 典， in Chinese, could also be translated as classical (经典). So here 茶具典藏 could be translated as classical collection of the tea tool.
茶具could be thought as one word, it means that all the tools you used in making a cup of tea such as the tea pot, or you could call them teaware.
Hope it would help. I am so glad to see that you are quite interested in the Chinese learning. 🙂 If you have any question, glad to email me and have a discussion.