Saturday, 5 September 2009

Two birds in the hand are worth all the tea in Taiwan

You'll no doubt be as relieved as Our Man that school has started again. Yep, for Our Man that means his surreal Japanese classes have started up. Today he learnt:

His teacher's first name means crane (presumably the bird, not the machine).
A fellow student from Shanghai's first name means sparrow.
Taiwan is famous* for its uron-cha (a kind of not particularly pleasant tea).

*This "fact" was amazingly unknown to the fellow Chinese students in the class.

5 comments:

ThePenguin said...

Ulon-cha comes from Fujian Province, which is on the coast opposite Taiwan. Can't say I've ever heard of Ulon-cha from Taiwan itself. Unless this is an oblique reference to the islands still occupied by the Republic of China just off the coast of Fujian.

One of the lessons I hope to have learnt from life is take anything a "teacher" says with a pinch of salt.

BTW you do know you live in "Our Grandchild", I hope?

Our Man in Abiko said...

Actually, smarty penguin, Abiko means Grandparent, parent and child, so there.

ザ・ペンギン said...

Well if you deconstruct it to the base characters:

我 - our / my (as in 我が国, "our nation")
孫 - grandchild
子 - child

I was labouring under the assumption that "孫子" was a funny way of writing 孫, as one encounters so often in Japanese (particularly in place names). Anyway no parents or grandparents mentioned; maybe "My / our children and grandchildren"?

(PS Smarty Penguin has an MA in Japanesey Things, nehneh. Though to be disarmingly honest the only thing it is useful for is obscure linguistic arguments...)

dr kildare said...

Ho chi minh had it wrong

Our Man in Abiko said...

Dang, bested by a flightless bird. Again.