{"id":178,"date":"2010-01-13T20:05:04","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T00:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/?p=178"},"modified":"2010-01-13T20:05:04","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T00:05:04","slug":"riding-the-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/riding-the-train\/","title":{"rendered":"Riding the Train"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hello readers!  I am currently in <strong>\u5357\u5b81<\/strong> (Nanning) city in the <strong>\u5e7f\u897f<\/strong> (Guangxi) autonomous region, which is home to the <strong>\u58ee\u65cf<\/strong> (Zhuang ethnic minority).  Taking the train over here, I took the <strong>\u786c\u5367<\/strong> (hard sleeper) option along with my friend, because all of the tickets for <strong>\u8f6f\u5367 <\/strong>(soft sleeper) seats had already sold out.   As we climbed into our <strong>\u5367\u94fa<\/strong> (berths), we drew the attention of a woman underneath us.  During our 13 hour train ride, I wanted to see what she would say to others if she didn&#8217;t know that I could speak Chinese.  It turns out that the woman referred to me and my friend as <strong>\u5916\u56fd\u4f6c<\/strong> (&#8220;gringos&#8221; but much stronger than that, see below), which is a <strong>\u6781\u7aef<\/strong> (extremely) <strong>\u8f7b\u8511<\/strong> (disdainful) way of speaking about non-Chinese people.  At this point I could not remain silent anymore, and instead suggested that she refer to us as <strong>\u5916\u56fd\u670b\u53cb<\/strong> (&#8220;foreign friends&#8221;).  She was surprised that I had understood, and quickly tried to sweep her choice of words under the carpet, insisting that she had been speaking too quickly to know which word to use.\u00a0 When I pointed out that there were more neutral phrases that could be said, she ceased to speak and neither she nor her traveling companion said a single thing for the remaining hours of the trip.<\/p>\n<p>\u5357\u5b81 nan2ning2 &#8211; Nanning city, capital of Guangxi autonomous region<br \/>\n\u5e7f\u897f guang3xi1 &#8211; Guangxi autonomous region, home of the Zhuang people<br \/>\n\u58ee\u65cf zhuang4zu2 &#8211; Zhuang people, the largest ethnic minority in China with 18 million people<br \/>\n\u786c\u5367 ying4wo4 &#8211; hard sleeper<br \/>\n\u8f6f\u5367 ruan3wo4 &#8211; soft sleeper<br \/>\n\u5367\u94fa wo4p41 &#8211; berth (on a vehicle)<br \/>\n\u5916\u56fd\u4f6c wai4guo2lao3 &#8211; a term used for foreigners which is particularly disdainful, not like the [now-neutral] \u8001\u5916 (lao3wai4)<br \/>\n\u6781\u7aef ji2duan1 &#8211; extreme, extremely<br \/>\n\u8f7b\u8511 qing1mie4 &#8211; disdain, disdainful<br \/>\n\u5916\u56fd\u670b\u53cb wai4guo2peng2you3 &#8211; &#8220;foreign friend&#8221; one linguistic register lower than \u5916\u5bbe (wai4bin1 &#8211; [distinguished] foreign guest)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello readers! I am currently in \u5357\u5b81 (Nanning) city in the \u5e7f\u897f (Guangxi) autonomous region, which is home to the \u58ee\u65cf (Zhuang ethnic minority). Taking the train over here, I took the \u786c\u5367 (hard sleeper) option along with my friend, because all of the tickets for \u8f6f\u5367 (soft sleeper) seats had already sold out. As&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/riding-the-train\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[2659,378679],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-culture","category-vocabulary","tag-chinese-language","tag-culture"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}