In the course of the international spread of the Chinese language, a large number of precious Chinese textbooks have recorded the history of exchanges between Chinese and foreign civilizations. These "relics" connect the "portraits" of ancient and modern China, and also condense into the collective understanding of China by overseas Chinese learners. Extracting pieces of "Chinese stories", we will encounter the merchant horse team that marched in northern China in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, and hear the ...... of "Chinese voices" left by record technology nearly a hundred years ago
A business trip in The Old Beggar.
Companion, where does it come from?
I'm from Wangjing of Goryeo.
Where to go now?
I'm going to Dadu.
Written in the Yuan Dynasty, Lao Qida was a textbook for learning Chinese conversation on the Korean Peninsula at that time. "Qida" is a transliteration of the Mongolian word "Khitan", which at the time referred to the Chinese or Han Chinese. The title of such a book is similar to how people who studied Chinese more than 600 years ago called us "Lao Zhong", which is similar to what we affectionately call our foreign friends "Lao Wai" today.
This textbook leaves 108 conversations, showing the use of Chinese on the way to business. The plot includes accommodation in the inn, entertaining and giving gifts, negotiating business, signing contracts, treating diseases and taking medicines, seeing a doctor and divination, and purchasing goods, etc., with a wide range of topics. These texts show the life and commercial culture of the common people in China in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties.
The textbook begins with the merchant leaving the capital of North Korea and passing through Uiju (north of present-day Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province) to begin a dialogue with the "companions" he encountered.
The caravanserais' cargo was the "standard" of the two countries** - horses, wool sebu (Korean linen) and ginseng. Focusing on the bulk of horses, the book not only lists the names of more than 20 kinds of horses, but also covers the harness and equipment, the experience of feeding and drinking horses, bargaining in the process of selling horses, and the clerical deeds. When purchasing goods from China, from satin, silk, silk, and cotton to wooden combs, bead strings, knives and scissors, the merchants mentioned more than 100 kinds of commodity details, reflecting the grand occasion of textiles and daily necessities gathering in the capital at that time. In addition to the goods, the Yuan Dynasty also "exported" Confucian classics such as "Mao's Poems" and "Shangshu", as well as famous anthologies and historical books, which showed the strong interest of the cultural circles on the Korean Peninsula in Chinese academic thought and literature at that time.
In addition to trade routes and commodity information, for small businessmen engaged in transnational affairs, clothing, food, housing and transportation are also their concerns. The caravan often ate fried meat, and the merchant surnamed Wang did this: "When the pot is hot, put half a cup of clear oil." When the oil is cooked, add the meat, add some salt, and stir with a spoon. When it is half-cooked, add some sauce, green onions, and ingredients and mix it, cover the pot, and rest to breathe. After settling in the capital, the businessman set up a big meal, "let's make Han'er tea and rice", so the eight dishes of meat and vegetables, hot and cold, thick and thin matching were served one after another, from fine powder, fish soup, to filling lungs, steamed cakes, and then to flour soup, steamed bread, "fruits and vegetables" appeared cucumbers, eggplants, dates, dried persimmons, molasses chestnuts and so on nearly 30 kinds. In terms of accommodation, there are different ways to go to acquaintances, settle down temporarily, and stay in hotels for a long time, and the Chinese hosts who "appear" in the dialogues are hospitable and ...... are cautiousThe characters in these scenes are flesh and blood, real and believable.
There are also some proverbs and sayings directly used in "Old Beggar", such as "The horse must not be fertilized at night, and the person must not be rich or rich", "When you are hungry, you can get a mouthful, and when you are full, you can get a fight", "Hugh Dao ** expensive, peace and happiness are the most valuable" ......It shows some of the folk wisdom of the Chinese people at that time.
Citizen life in the Speech Sound Film.
What is your country?
We are the United Kingdom.
Does the gentleman speak Chinese?
Not really. The Speech Piece was published as one of the Lingle Oriental language courses, around 1926. At this time, Lao She started his life as a writer on the "Monthly News" in China, "Lao Zhang's Philosophy"; On the other hand, Shu Qingchun (c.).c.Shu) taught at the Oriental College and co-authored the textbook with two British teachers. The "Speech Film" they collaborated on includes an introduction to "Student Guide" and "Chinese Phonetics", and the main body is 30 lessons of spoken Beijing Mandarin texts. The first volume uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to spell the text, with an English translation. The next volume is the corresponding Chinese, according to Lao She's handwritten photographic version. The publishing house also used the advanced gramophone technology at that time to record the "Chinese pronunciation" and texts read by Lao She on 16 bakelite records.
In this way, through Mr. Lao She's ink and voice, more than 500 single sentences and 15 dialogues composed of fragments of the citizen's language life have been preserved, like a sketch scroll, outlining the story of Chinese cities in the early 20th century. At that time, the Chinese people were dressed in Henan silk summer clothes and silk ties, and the meals included fried sea fish, roast steak, and foreign dim sum provided by the hotel room service, and they had to go to the railway station and the steamship company to buy tickets ......In such an urban public space, the basic training of Chinese learners is to go to the post office and ask how to send ** letters and parcels, "which way to send letters to Europe"; Go to the bank to know how to "open a live account", how to exchange checks for cash, and send money to Yingkou is to open a bill of exchange; Of course, you must also be able to understand the bargaining routine on the fruit stall and find a fair price for the 3 catties of bananas you bought.
In some conversational scenes, some modern elements emerged after the New Culture Movement. For example, in the twentieth lesson entitled "Games", the two talked about their respective sports activities, from swimming to basketball and tennis, to horseback riding and cycling. And the next lesson "Look**" is simply a "sequel" to the cultural and sports activities of citizens. The two characters compete for reading** and share their experiences, and have made the enjoyment of literature a part of their spiritual life. Among them, "A" was greedy to read until ten o'clock at night, praised ** "The layout is wonderful, the pen is sharp", and he also made a comparison: "The new ** is to describe a thing with all its might, with affection, scenery, and ism." The old ** is long and dull, and there is no vitality at all." At this time, "B" was about to borrow a book, but was taken by the "second sister". The text is not only vivid and humorous, but also more like the twenty-seven-eighteen-year-old Lao She speaking for new literature and vernacular literature, incorporating a strong editorial perspective and the modern experience of urban youth.
The Chinese-foreign co-edited "Speech Sound Film" has been used for more than 30 years, not only reflecting the spiritual outlook of modern Chinese through daily dialogues and teaching materials, but also outlining the visual image of Chinese and Chinese characters with the help of optical and acoustic technology at that time, leaving the phonetic image of Beijing official dialect.
Since the publication of Mr. ** Xi's "Chinese Textbook" in Bulgaria in 1954, there are currently more than 20,000 international Chinese textbooks published worldwide, in more than 80 languages, and distributed to more than 100 countries every year. Like the above-mentioned textbooks, they carry the innate Chinese cultural genes and use advanced technological means to continuously empower the benign interaction between Chinese and foreign societies, and tell more wonderful and diverse "Chinese stories" to the world.
Author: Bao Xueju is a teacher at the School of Humanities, Communication University of China
*: Bright**).