JetFable’s Gamer Writer’s Block

Being a Chinese means being proud of your culture and heritage, of that 4000 plus years of history, the only ancient empire that withstood time and remained intace, heavily influencing other Asian cultures, and being the largest population in the world. But thinking back over the years, we Chinese would always ask the question, why have we not taken over the world? Why did we not influence Western cultures like it influenced us. Why did we not popularize cars and electronics and video games and animes like the Japanese did? Why have we not invented more than the 4 great inventions? Just what does it mean to be Chinese?

We like fighting among ourselves, since the dawn of time. I have to admit, Chinese, as a race, is not a very united people. We believe in profiting, and that is usually from each other. Chinese TV dramas feature a lot of backstabbing, in the workplace, a lot more than other countries. We are bred to be wearied of Chinese merchants,  when we buy something, even when we are from the same village, perhaps espeically when we are from the same village. We dont trust each other very well. The biggest invention in the 21st century, I believe, from the Chinese, is the invention of piracy (not the kind from the Carribeans). I believe we are the first to pirate all kinds of softwares, music, anything. I have to admit, some of us are brilliant, but we use our brilliance in the wrong places. Our morales are misguided. After all, who can think of making soy sauce with human hair? And who can live with the consequences of deformed children just so that they can profit from using less ingredients in milk? I have to say, Chinese make the most devious, thus sucessful businessmen, because we will do what it takes to succeed. Why are we so economically driven?

I think our culture bred us so that our creative identity is destroyed, and only those who can creatively earn money remain, the rest of us, become mindless automatons, a slave to our own cultural ideals. How do I figure that? Its the law of genetic segregation, as I have previously mentioned, I believe in genetic destiny, that each of us are meant to do something that we are best at. I mean there are as many of us Chinese, that are capable of writing the best literature, creating the best art, inventing new inventions, just as any other races in the world. Afterall, there are more of us than anybody else. But why do we not make as much of an impact on society? At least, in the US, being Chinese means to be smarter. On average we are more successful. Why do they say middle class asian women score the highest on the SAT? A chinese kid is not genetically smarter than a black kid, but yes, a Chinese kid most likely get a higher score on the SAT. The simple answer is culture.

All of us fall victim to our culture, at a subconscious level. It takes a much smarter black kid to grow up financially sucessful in the US, than a Chinese kid, because he needs to break through that racial barrier.  Blacks fall victim to slavery, their heritage taken away from them, and they rebel by being different, and they end up with rap culture, ebonics. We see a black kid, if he doesn’t end up a criminal on the street, we think of him good at sports or singing. We see a Chinese kid, probably someone good at Math or programming. But are we all good at Math? Probably, because most of us are taught at a younger age by our parents. Just like most Black kids are probably better at basketball, not really because they all want to play basketball, just like maybe a lot of us hate Math. In College, I can sepereate most Chinese into 3 groups by the career they pursue, they are either engineers (studies Math, computer science, electrical engineering), pre-med (Biology, chemistry), or economics (accounting, marketing, business). Are we that dull of a people? What happened to the potential designers, artists, writers, philosophers?

Even I fell victim to the destruction of my own identity by my culture. How did that happen, while my parents did not force me to be a pre-med student? Why did I go through with it while I sucked at memorizing biological terms and analyzing problems in chemistry? I can only answer that by looking back 4000 years of history. In the ancient times we had these elaborate tests so that men can become officials of the government, and they study hard for it, and are respected by the levels they earn through their studies, so that they can be placed as government officials. This concept of hard studying (I wonder if any of the stuff has any usefullness in real-life situation) has gone on for thousands of years. Kids who don’t make it, they lose their respect from their parents, but have they ever realized that they could have been meant to do something else? Okay, we jump forward in time, and look at the modern society. Chinese women are pretty much taught to marry for money. They are hard-wired to look for sucessful businessmen, doctors, architects, accountants (Come on, who in the US like accountants? Aren’t they like the dullest people in the world?) And men, they have to accomodate, of course, you want to be successful so that women desire you (After all the we are all coded with genetic priority — continutation of the human species — procreation). But according to my law of genetic destiny, only a handful of us are meant to be doctors, engineers, and businessmen, so what happened to everyone else?

We are indeed lost, victim of our own culture. It takes us a lot more will-power to break through our cultural shackles, just like it takes a smarter black person to succeed in the US. I wanted to be a manga artist when I was a kid, but I gave up on that idea. Why do u think so? Because drawing comics is not respected in Chinese society. In Japan, comic artists and writers are called Teacher, respected by their peers. In US, people are taught to do the things they want to, and artists are looked upon with respect even if they don’t make money. Koreans and Japanese make much better video games than Chinese, not because most of us are not creative enough to do it, but we are simply trapped by the ideals of our culture. We want to be financially succesful, we want our parents to look at us with pride, we want the women to think that we can provide for them.

The could’ve been next great artist could be now stuck doing bookeeping for the big corporation, the could be great movie director programming puny computer programs at the IT firm, The person who could have revolutionalized design patterns could be pirating software on the street, the person who could have made the next great video game is performing surgery with a shaking hand in the ER, the could have been greatest musician alive is running his Dad’s big firm jipping poor people their savings. The next big writer could be just immersed in his scheme of real estate price manipulation.

It’s a cynical way of looking at things, but I believe that to be the truth. Regardless of race, gender, many of us are going to be stuck doing what we don’t want to do for various reasons, and we maybe stuck doing it for life (like my previous posts have stated). But being Chinese, I believe, statistically speaking, make us more prone to be stuck doing what we are not meant to do, and less likely to break away fom it. After having said all that. There’s a lot of good aspects of Chinese culture, and one should still be proud to be Chinese. But we should not let our culture destory our identities, instead we should shape the future of our culture with our destiny.

In classic Da Vinci Code Style? Not quite… But have you ever wondered why today is Wednesday? Just what does it mean? Well in order to decode the hidden truths behind weekdays, you probably need to know more than at least one language, or a few more at that. Well, learning languages are fun.

I picked up Japanese again last year, trying to learn it from scratch for the 10 million times, and now I’ve forgotten most of it again. Hack, I’m just going to read subtitles, until I have a lot of freetime again. But this is besides the point, the Japanese weekday systems is based on the five elements, plus the sun and the moon, which makes seven days (Korean is the same). It is actually much easier to remember the system than I thought, but it got me thinking, since the Japanese borrowed pretty much a lot of their words and culture from Chinese, why do they name Weekdays differently? It is true that Chinese is perhaps one of the easiest language to learn to speak, but one of the hardest one to master reading/writing, because Chinese is simply comprised of building blocks, with minimal grammatical rules, I like to refer to it as legos. You learn the number “1″, you learn the word “day”, you can pretty much create the word “monday”, you can’t do that in any other language. Okay it doesn’t sound exactly as simple, but the weekdays in chinese are simple, they are either called Star Date or Worship Day, numbered from 1 o 7. Okay, so you ask, if the Japanese borrowed pretty much most of their numbers from Chinese, why do we not call the weekdays the same way? Before I exlain that, I need to map everyday with English, and French. Why French? Just because, that well, that it is interesting. And while I’m at it, I’m maping the elements that is the literal translation of the Japanese, and whatever comes after, I’ll explain it in later.

English / French / Japanese / Chinese / Element / Norse god / Roman gods (Greek names)

Monday / lundi / Getsu youbi / stardate 1 / moon / — / –

Tuesday / mardi / Ka youbi / stardate 2 / fire / Tyr / Mars (Ares)

Wednesday / mercredi / Sui youbi / stardate 3 / water / Odin (Woden) / Mercury (Hermes)

Thursday / jeudi / Moku youbi / stardate 4 / wood / Thor / Jupiter (Zeus) 

Friday / vendredi / Kin youbi / stardate 5 / gold / Frig / Venus (Aphrodite)

Saturday / samedi / Do youbi / stardate 6 / earth / — / Saturn (Cronos)

Sunday / di manche / Nichi youbi / stardate day / sun / sunna / –

Okay, now the chart is done, and it may look confusing at a glance. To first know why the Japanese draw their namings from elements but the Chinese name their days “Worship” or “Star”, you must know the history. The five elements is a buddhism concept (called the five ways, translated loosely), which spread across Asia sometime before Christ. Now the seven weekdays are associated with elements (even English and French, although not at a glance), so it is fairly accurate to probably assume that the Chinese once did as well, like the Japanese, who borrowed from the Chinese. Now “worship” day is a Christian concept, which depicts that the Chinese renamed their naming system after heavy influence of the West, while the Japanese retained their naming, so one mystery is solved.

Now we move forward to understand how the English and the French, both Latin based languages, derived their namings. We’ll start off with sunday and monday, the easiest of the bunch, they are in fact, named after the sun and the moon, for all of them, which doesn’t take a genius to figure out. Lunar in french, even in english, means moon. Dimanche is french for sunday, which comes from latin dies dominicus (day of the lord) from biblical account, while in English, well Sunna is the sun in norse mythology, thats where it came from. By now you should know the most of the English naming derives from Norse mythology, and you can map the French to Roman/Greek gods, and you can associate the god with the element (from buddhism), and well you know we name our planets after the Roman gods, while the Chinese/ Japanese name their planets after the elements.

Tuesday — Tyr, the Norse god of war, Mars (Ares), the greek god of war. It is the day of Fire, well isn’t War really about lots of fire? Mars is the “fire planet” in Chinese and Japanese.

Wednesday — Odin, the all-knowing god of gods in Norse, it is pronounced Wu-din, thus arrived the English naming. The french came from Mercury (Hermes), the greek god of commerce and market, the elment is Water. Well, how do they associate? Knowledge flows from water? (just a pure speculation)

Thursday — Thor, the lightning god in Norse, Jupiter (Zeus), well he’s the god of gods in Greek mythology, but he uses lightning, a lot. The element is Wood, what does wood have to do with lightning? Lightning strikes wood?

Friday — Frig, Norse god of love. Venus (Aphrodite), greek god of love. Element is Gold. Do I have to explain, women love gold !!

Saturday — well this it the easy one, both French and English is named after the roman god Saturn, the god of agriculture and sowing of seeds, apparently it is an adapted god of the greek god Cronos, who’s an overthrown Titan by Zeus. The element is Earth, well, you can’t really farm without the earth.

After all this information overload, well now you know, all languages really just came from this one place, and we’re all a happy family. Maybe not, but at least, now you know why today is Wednesday, the day of knowledge, the day of water, well its the day to learn something.

People complain that my blogs are like thesis paper, well, I’ll try my best to write a short one, but in fact, I’m not very good with anything short. I tried writing a short story all my life, but it never comes out right.

This isn’t about the movie, if you haven’t guessed already. Well, I have an ongoing discussion with my fellow otaku that which language is better at translating japanese manga, English? Chinese? (Well for those of us who knows both and can pick one or the other to read) My friend tends to think that Chinese is a better language for it because gramatically Japanese is closer to Chinese, than to English. Personally, I find that in a comic based on Japanese daily lives, or mythology based on the East, it is better to be translated in Chinese, because at least the names are familiar, but then when it is a setting based on a western world with most English names, its a easier read in English. For example, Monster takes place in Germany, its much easier to read it when the original German names are not verbally translated into Chinese, but then with 20th Century Boys, its a easier read in Chinese.

But things by default, are always lost in translation. Jo Jo’s Bizzare Adventure has two translated chinese version, a Hong Kong version and a Taiwan Version. I’ve read both. The Taiwan Version is literally translated better (arguably a better read), but then the HK version keeps more authenticity. Names of stands: like Aerosmith, Beach Boy, is kept in English within the Chinese text in the HK version, but then they are translated in the Taiwanese version. I’m personally a lover of the HK version, because I hate things to be lost in translation, the author picked the names from American bands, if they are translated, then it loses the point. But then, one of my friends argue that it isn’t clean to have English within the Chinese and ultimately the Taiwan version is a better read. He has a point in that, well, what if the kids in Taiwan can’t read a word of English, then isn’t ultimately a translated product to be intended to be read by people who only know that language? I think manga translaters should take a lesson from fansubbers and try to include footnotes in their product. Go ahead and translate the names, but then add a footnote and include the original so the otakus can enjoy it in its more original form. But then, the publishing houses only want your money, what do they care?

We talk about the comic One Piece a lot, which is about a group of pirates, which I hated reading the chinese translation, because I couldn’t even tell the original names from the translation. Some of the names of the move is done in French (Sanji’s move), and Spanish (Nicole’s move), no matter how they translate it, it won’t sit right unless they leave the original text in. But when you think about it, those are really just jibberish even to a Japanese person who reads the manga, especially when it is a kid. So are we simply over analyzing something?

There are a lot of puns in Japanese Manga, and there’s not going to work in any forms of translation, one of the exmample is Yakitate Japan, a story about cooking bread. Even the title is a pun because Ja-Pan means Japanese Bread. In one of the episodes the naive young boy (the main protagonist) is presented with a problem in the competition, that he must make Croissants. He obviously has never heard of Croissants, which is pronounced Ku-ra-wa-san (in Japanese), which is a pun with Mr.Black, so he thought he needed to find this Mr.Black to make his bread. Funny? Maybe not to a non-japanese speaker.

Perhaps the conclusion is that we should just learn a new language, if we like the culture. Why settle for second-hand translation, subs, or whatever. And this turned out to be long again, my bad.