Fujian Puppet Theatre

Andrew · Post by **Andrew** » Sun Oct 09, 2005 11:50 am

Sim: the phrase to came to mind is quite vulgar and common in Penang, though I have never before considered its exact meaning - Douglas puts it thus:

"hau1-siau5, a great lie! (very vulgar, but probably originally an imitation of the Mandarin "hau2-siau3 [he is probably giving the literary Hokkien equiv.]", ridiculous; absurd)."

A.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Oct 09, 2005 4:42 pm

I'm pretty sure it meant "very funny" though, because for about half a minute all he (the puppet) said was: "hau siau, ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!", hau siau, ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!", hau siau, ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!", while slapping his thigh, and rolling around on the floor etc. I think he said something like "hau siau, cen hau siau" (but with that other word 'cen' I'm much more unsure about the pronunciation, so that's why I didn't include it in my original question).

Sounds more like Mandarin "好笑，真好笑" (funny, very funny) to me.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 11:22 am

Anonymous wrote:Sounds more like Mandarin "好笑，真好笑" (funny, very funny) to me.

Yeah, that's what I thought too, but Hong has explained that apparently this is Ming Dynasty Hokkien.

Regards,
Sim

Sim · Post by **Sim** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 11:47 am

Andrew wrote:Sim: the phrase to came to mind is quite vulgar and common in Penang, though I have never before considered its exact meaning - Douglas puts it thus:

"hau1-siau5, a great lie! (very vulgar, but probably originally an imitation of the Mandarin "hau2-siau3 [he is probably giving the literary Hokkien equiv.]", ridiculous; absurd)."

A.

Andrew,

Thanks for this. I look forward to 2008, when I will get started on Hokkien seriously

.

Sim.

Andrew · Post by **Andrew** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 2:03 pm

Sim: why 2008?

niuc · Post by **niuc** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 2:29 am

Sim, I enjoy reading this thread, thanks

. Like Andrew, I also curious: why 2008? You really plan ahead, don't you?

hong · Post by **hong** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 5:47 am

the series of cuanchiu books with a few on 木偶戲 but other are 梨園戲﹐etc
http://202.119.47.14:8080/opac/item.php ... 0003118513

Sim · Post by **Sim** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 8:16 am

niuc wrote:Sim, I enjoy reading this thread, thanks . Like Andrew, I also curious: why 2008? You really plan ahead, don't you?

Hi Niuc,

Wonderful to see that you're still reading regularly.

. One of the things I worry about if I haven't seen you post for a while is that you might have got too busy with other things!

Well, the reason for specifying the year 2008 (September, in fact!) is that there are two major projects which I'm occupied with before then.

First, I'm doing my "family history" project until 2006. This is a series of interviews with my parents and uncles and aunts, covering the period from about 1930 to 1960. I'm trying to record as many details of their lives as possible (particularly their childhood and early adulthood). I want to record little details of what they ate, how they interacted with their elders, Chinese customs of the time, what school was like, etc. Basically I want to try and record as many aspects of their lives as possible.

I already have material from about 50 hours (!) of interviews, which I have organised in a way which is easily readable - i.e. not transcribed word-for-word, but summarized to show all the important information which they have related.

I started this project in 2000, and so far I have had 3 rounds of interviews (2000, 2001 and 2004). This year should be the final consolidating round of interviews, and another 6-9 months of effort after that should get the project to a stage where I'm satisfied with it.

So, that takes me to September 2006.

Then I need to get some basic Mandarin mastered. I did Mandarin for a full year last year (i.e. in the evenings, the academic year of September 2004 to September 2005), and I realised that it would probably take a full 2 more years of the same amount of effort to reach basic conversational fluency and have basic reading / writing skills (those characters are tough!).

So, September 2006 to September 2008 will be occupied doing Mandarin

. After that I will be able to start doing Hokkien properly. I’m thinking of perhaps even a month-long course in Taiwan or Fujian (for which I'll need some basic Mandarin, of course, which is one of the reasons I've put Mandarin ahead of Hokkien for the moment).

Of course, in the meantime I'll still keep up my interest in Hokkien - for example by reading and posting here on the Forum. In fact, starting next year you will probably see quite a number of postings from me with questions about various Hokkien terms my parents use in the interviews.

Anyway, long answer for a short question (as is very common with me!). Like I said, nice to see you again Niuc.

Take care,
Sim.

Oops, sorry, in previewing this, I saw that Andrew also asked the same question (it was on page 1 of this topic, and initially I only noticed Niuc's question on page 2). Please consider the above answer as addressed to you too, Andrew.
-S.

niuc · Post by **niuc** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:53 am

Hi Sim

Thanks for your cordial greeting and answer!

Wow, family history is indeed a very good and admirable project. Kudos!

You're always welcome to write long postings. I always really enjoy reading them. Wish you all the best for your projects!

ong · Post by **ong** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 3:46 am

www.taiwanus.net/news/show.php?id=7220