Our next guest post in Chinese English month comes from Kieran McGovern, author of the Macmillan Reader Love by Design. He blogs here, where you can find his ‘Shakespeare and the English Language’. He also edits this website.

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Few will be surprised to discover that William Shakespeare never visited China. Nor was his work widely known there until comparatively recently. The first confirmed appearance of the name ‘Shashibiya’ in a Chinese language publication was a brief mention in a translation of Milner’s The History of England in 1857.

It was the publication of Lin Shu’s Tales from Shakespeare in 1904 that first brought the Bard to a wider Chinese audience. Shu appealed to his readership by selling the plays as ‘stories of gods and spirits’. One of these tales provided the script for the first professional production of Shakespeare in China: a staging of The Merchant of Venice in 1913.

Full translations of the original plays were not published until the 1920s. By this point, Sha Weng, or Old Man Sha, was already an icon of modernity amongst Chinese intellectuals. The Communists, who came to power in 1949, were also Shakespeare fans, as the playwright came with the personal endorsement of Karl Marx.

But poor old Bill suffered a dramatic fall from grace during the Cultural Revolution. The new culture secretary, Jiang Qing (aka Madame Mao) had no time for Stratford’s ‘bourgeois counterrevolutionary’. She promptly banned the Bard, a prohibition that remained in force for ten years.

Interestingly, the removal of the Shakespeare ban in May 1977 was one of the signals that the Cultural Revolution was over. Shakespeare was once again officially feted as a ‘renaissance giant’ and the plays are now more popular than ever.

Contemporary productions sometimes incorporate elements from traditional theatre, like music and dance. But they usually treat the original text with reverence – you’re unlikely to find a rapping Romeo on a Chinese stage.

In the end it comes down to those compelling stories. One of the most famous is summed up in these lines from a song:

Where a ghost and a prince meet.
And everyone ends in mincemeat.

Can you guess the name of the play? And, for a bonus point, the name of the song?

Answers next post…

Here is our first guest post for English for China month, written by Jamie Zhang … a small Chinese woman. Enjoy!

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Like Bill Bryson in Notes from a Small Island, when I came to study in the UK for my MBA and DELTA, I was confused by everyday English. It was like nothing I’d learnt at school. For example:

Why did people keep call me darling?
When I wanted to buy some apples in the open market, the stallholder said, ‘How many, darling?’ My cheek turned pink. Were we about to become lovers or get married?

Why did I get kicked when I forgot to say please?
The first day I arrived at university, I asked the porter, ‘Can I have my key?’ Right after I finished the sentence, my Chinese friend kicked me and hissed in my ear, ‘You forgot to say please’. How would I survive in the UK if I forgot the magic word every time?

Why did the nurse keep saying Lovely! every time she gave me an injection?
What’s so lovely about hurting someone?

Why did I have to thank the shop assistant for giving back my own money?
When I went to the supermarket, the shop assistant gave me my change. My friend said, ‘You didn’t say thank you’. But it’s my money! Why do I need to say thank you?

Why did people keep saying cheers? Are they going to make a toast?
People kept saying cheers every time they said goodbye or thank you. I thought they were going to make a toast. So where’s my glass?

Why are ‘fish tails’ crow’s feet in English?
In China, when we talk about the wrinkles at the side of our eyes, we call them ‘fish tails’. But in English they’re crow’s feet. I love seafood, but I don’t want fish tails anywhere near my eyes! And I certainly wouldn’t like to be clawed by crow’s feet.

How can you touch type?
My classmate asked me, ‘Can you touch type?’ Of course I can, how can you type without touching the keys? Do English people type in the air instead? We say ‘blind type’ in Chinese.

Why do we see colours differently?

Blue movie vs yellow movie
In China, if a movie is yellow, it is an X-rated movie, but they turn blue in English. So when English people get the blues, are they X-rated?

Green-eyed vs red eyes
In Chinese, when we’re jealous, we have red eyes. So why does this become green-eyed in English? In China, green is always associated with peace, harmony and the environment.

Brown sugar vs red sugar
OK, on this point, I have to agree that the English are right about the colour. Brown sugar really is brown, although we call it red.

The longer I stay in the UK, the more I find out about everyday English. Even after several visits, I still have many questions. So these are just a few notes from a small Chinese woman.

The IATEFL (International Association of Teacher’s of English as a Foreign Language) event has put me slightly behind on this month’s trumpeting. But here we go: It’s Chinese English month, yeeha!

This is exciting for a number of reasons: we recently rolled out the Chinese version of the Macmillan Dictionary Online. You’ll see that all of the informational content is in Chinese. Also, the Shanghai Daily has adopted the Dictionary’s double-click feature, which means that their readers have direct and immediate ‘pop-up access’ to definitions for words they don’t know … yet.

So: we’re all about China in more ways than one. Mostly, though, I’m excited because I taught English in Taiwan for ages and so it’s nice to be back in touch with Chinese in some way. My favourite (relevant) story about teaching English to Mandarin-speaking students was when I first said the word McDonald’s in a kindergarten class. Speaking Chinese at school was strictly forbidden for teachers and pupils, and the class of 5-year-olds gasped at my transgression and yelled in unison and with glee: ‘MissLaineyouspeakchinese!’ I sort of wished it were true as I spoke hardly any Chinese at that point. After a bit of ‘No, I didn’t’, ‘Oh yes you did!’ back and forth, it became apparent that McDonald’s had been claimed as a Chinese word by my tiny charges and that no amount of explanation or incredulity would convince them otherwise – it was all in the pronunciation.

Also I, personally, want to thank Chinese for words like:

ketchup
chow
chop-chop
honcho
silk
typhoon
lychee
tea

Happy Chinese English month! Keep your eyes peeled for our first guest post tomorrow!