On my last trip to Taiwan, three weeks in sweltering July and August, I faced a noticeable disadvantage of not being able to type in Chinese. I couldn’t google my father’s name to see the books he had written nor could I get accurate google map directions.
In the past, I had an excuse for not typing e-mails in Chinese and not participating in Chinese discussions and messages on Facebook. Without the right software, I could read but not type. It was a lame excuse to save time.
Apple products such as the macBook, iPad, and iPhone all offer Chinese keyboard options. It’s a very simple matter of specifying which keyboard input options you want to add. My cousin 志華 showed me how. I first chose Traditional Chinese. Then I chose the handwriting option, pin yin, and the Chinese phonetic system of zhu yin fu hao.
Being able to type in Chinese on my iPhone and iPad opened an entirely new world for me.
I found my father’s college classmate near Boston. They last saw each other in 1968 when they visited Cape Cod together. We exchanged e-mails in Chinese — I in Traditional Chinese, he in Simplified Chinese.
I replied to my father’s colleague from Okinawa in Chinese. I texted my cousin 一開 in Taipei. I showed my sister and my mother how to enable Chinese typing on their iPads.
And now, I can inject Chinese characters into my blog posts.
The Chinese characters in the title of this blog represent nine moon nine sun. In other words, ninth month ninth day. Moon 月, pronounced yue, also means month. Day 日, pronounced rih, comes from the sun.
The character for nine 九, pronounced jiu, sounds just like 久 which means long time. Interestingly, the phrase long time no see is a literal translation of 好久不見 hao jiu bu jian。
Because there are so many characters that sound exactly the same, it’s necessary to hear the context. When we hear jiu yue jiu rih we’ll know immediately it’s September ninth. Yet, it’s also possible play on the nine nine sound to have it represent a double long time.
Why is the number eight auspicious and four so unlucky that hotels and other high-rise buildings avoid numbering their fourth floor four? Eight 八 in Cantonese sounds like fa 發 which, when combined with wealth 財 (pronounced cai or tsai) means to become rich. On the other hand, four 四 sounds like the character for death 死, no wonder a word to be avoided.
Such phonetic similarities explain why Father’s Day doesn’t fall on June 19th in Chinese-speaking countries but on August the eighth. Eight eight 八 八 in Mandarin sounds like 爸爸 (pronounced ba ba) which means father.
Dad with his English newspaper in March 2014