Clock (鐘) or China (中)
A tip from an UK forum has lead me to a Chinese guidebook published by Lonely Planet. I am still trying to figure out if the publisher wanted the cover to say "clock" (鐘, simplified version: 钟) or "China" (中), since both pronounciations for "clock" and "China" are homophonetic (zhong1).
posted by tian at
1:44 PM
7 Comments:
Hi. Your site is fun. It inspired me to Google on "chinese characters" and see what images I would find. I found this that you might enjoy: http://www.brassunicorn.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=55162&Category=1324
This topic reminds me of an incident. On my front door (in Baltimore, Maryland) my wife and I have an upside down hanging "fu" (blessings) character. You probably know that "blessings upside-down" in Chinese sounds the same as "blessing come". Therefore it is a custom to hang the character upside down. It is considered lucky.
A Korean friend came to visit me one day and immediately assumed that I had made a mistake in hanging the character upside down. She knew how to read Chinese characters, but she didn't know the custom.
Alaric
I always wondered why Lonely Planet used that character on the cover, especially since some of the authors could speak and read Chinese. I don't remember if the inset offered an explanation or not.
Alaric, I know the custom of posting upside down "blessing" (福) on the front door during Chinese New Year. Phonetically "fu upside down" is "fu dao le (福搗了)", which is the same as "fu is here (福到了)".
Remember that the character is a surname, too. Maybe author Zhong got away with the publishing coup of the century. Only kidding. I never understood this one either. Is it something about time for China to arise? The bell tolls for China? Okay, that does it. I gotta write to LP about this.
I always thought it was a picture of a random character on a wall. I never thought the meaning ("clock", "bell") was considered in the selection of the cover art; I just see it as having been chosen on the merit of its looks.
Chosen just because of its looks? So when you you write a book (in any language, including English), you should just title it with whatever word or phrase that looks "good"?
in japanese the sound of that character is Chin... and in french China =Chine maybe they were trying to "cute"... And actually if they Use that kanji twice it means C**k in Japanese
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