Variants!

[SimL]

Taiwanese se-seng-khu 洗身軀 vs. Penang chang-ek for "take a shower" (in NZ we always say "have a shower")

In my variant, 'sue2-sin1-khu1' is different from 'cang5-ik8'. The former means to have a body wash with a piece of cloth, the latter is to take a shower.

Hi Niuc & Ah-bin,

I think "cang-ek" has shifted in meaning too, anyway. Nowadays, I would use it to mean "have a shower". But certainly, when this term was used in Penang up to (say) the middle of the 20th century, it would have had a slightly different meaning. My father tells me in the interviews that the first "shower" he ever saw was at the Chinese Swimming Club, in the 1930's and 40's. Even then, the first shower he actually used on a daily basis was when he was at university, just after the end of the Second World War. Up to then, no family homes had showers (or bathtubs). Instead, in the bathroom, there was a large trough, made of rough cement, and filled with water. One went into the bathroom, scooped some water onto oneself initially (just to get the body wet), soaped and scrubbed oneself, and then used a number of scoops of water to wash the soap off. This entire sequence of actions was what was meant by the term "cang-ek", up to the end of the Second World War. Even in my youth in the 60's and 70's, I can still remember the water-scoops used for this type of "bathing".

From about 1950 onwards, as bathtubs and showers became more and more common in the homes of middle class Chinese, the term "cang-ek" shifted in meaning, to mean "take a bath" or "have a shower" (for the obvious reason that it covered the activity of washing oneself clean), even though, strictly speaking, it was a slightly different activity. I suppose there would have been a period of time when it could have meant any one of the three: "scooping water over oneself", "having a bath in a bathtub", "having a shower".

I don't know how many people still bathe in the "old way" nowadays. Perhaps not very many, because the water is a lot colder, and it's more effort than standing under a running shower.

BTW, as another little snippet of historical information: in those days, many people in Penang believed that the water-meter wasn't able to detect very, very small amounts of water flowing, so in many families, the tap above the trough was left constantly to drip into and fill the trough. This meant that the trough only needed to be topped up with a fully flowing tap very rarely - most of the water in it was filled using this slow and constant drip, drip, drip (and was hence (they believed) free). This was standard procedure in all the bathrooms of my extended family which had such a trough, perhaps again confirming the stereotype of Penang people being very stingy (my father would say "careful with their money") !

se-seng-khu-keng 洗身軀間 in Taiwan (I think) and today in an Amoy dictionary I saw se-seng-khu-pang 洗身軀房

Mine is 浴間 'ik8-king1'.

For bathroom, I say "cang-ek-keng", so very similar to niuc, but the "cang-" is obligatory. For "toilet", I read in the article on North Sumatran Hokkien that they called it a "pang-sai-keng", but I have never used anything but "jam1-man5" (pseudo-sandhi tone on first syllable), borrowed from Malay. Somehow, it seems less coarsely explicit than "pang-sai-keng" (and besides, one also goes to "pang-jio" in a jamban, not just to "pang-sai").

[SimL]

a farmer - Taiwanese choe-chhit-lang (forgot how to write it 做[]人 Penang cho-chhan-e-lang 做田e人

做田人 'co3-chan5-lang5' or 'co3-chan5-e5-lang5' is also used in my variant. Usually we pronounce 做 as 'cue3', but in this term 'co3' / 'cue3' both sound OK.

I too have always used 田 for "chan5". But, the Sumatra Hokkien article gives 塍 as the character to use for "chan5". I'm a bit suspicious of it. It's character #10,000+ (in a frequency count of characters, where character #1, #2, and #3 are 的, 是 and 不 respectively, so the higher the number, the more rarely the character is used) - i.e. it is a dialect or rather obscure character. But it's not the obscurity which makes me doubtful. More because Unicode gives the pronunciation and meaning as "cheng2: a raised path between fields, a dike", so both the pronunciation and meaning don't match very well.

Does anyone else have an opinion on this one?

[niuc]

Hi Sim

Thanks for your posting about 'cang5-ik8'. In Jakarta many houses still have water container (trough) in bathroom instead of shower, while in Singapore shower is the norm. Same as you, I also use the term regardless taking bath from a trough or shower.

We too call a toilet 'jiam1-gan5' (as usual, 'j' is pronounced like 'd'), from "jamban".

Regarding 'chan5', I think we can be sure that the proper hanji is 田 (literary: 'tian5').

[Shawn.Lin]

In Medan Hokkien we say "cang cui" to take a bath or shower.

In regards to Penang people being stingy, apparently Medan Hokkien people are known to be stingy as well. My uni friends from Jakarta said this is a popular stereotype of Medan people. I didn't know until I went to uni about this stereotype as I left Indonesia when I was 8 years old.

[xng]

I too have always used 田 for "chan5". But, the Sumatra Hokkien article gives 塍 as the character to use for "chan5". I'm a bit suspicious of it. It's character #10,000+ (in a frequency count of characters, where character #1, #2, and #3 are 的, 是 and 不 respectively, so the higher the number, the more rarely the character is used) - i.e. it is a dialect or rather obscure character. But it's not the obscurity which makes me doubtful. More because Unicode gives the pronunciation and meaning as "cheng2: a raised path between fields, a dike", so both the pronunciation and meaning don't match very well.

Does anyone else have an opinion on this one?

You should ask this in the benzi/original character thread instead of here. I've some idea.

[SimL]

In Medan Hokkien we say "cang cui" to take a bath or shower.

Hi Shawn,

Nice! My Amoy speaking relatives use exactly this term. And, correspondingly, "bathroom" is "cang-cui-kiəng".

In regards to Penang people being stingy, apparently Medan Hokkien people are known to be stingy as well. My uni friends from Jakarta said this is a popular stereotype of Medan people. I didn't know until I went to uni about this stereotype as I left Indonesia when I was 8 years old.

Haha! Very similar to me too. I left at 14, but up to that time I mostly lived in Penang, so I never heard about this until much later as well (perhaps well into my 30's or 40's).

[Andrew]

In Medan Hokkien we say "cang cui" to take a bath or shower.

In regards to Penang people being stingy, apparently Medan Hokkien people are known to be stingy as well. My uni friends from Jakarta said this is a popular stereotype of Medan people. I didn't know until I went to uni about this stereotype as I left Indonesia when I was 8 years old.

In Penang both 'chang-ek' and 'chang-chui' are used. Douglas says that 'chang-chui' simply means to dash water on something, whereas 'chang-ek' specifically refers to dashing water on the body.

What is the proportion of Chinese in Medan?

[SimL]

Hi Sim

Thanks for your posting about 'cang5-ik8'. In Jakarta many houses still have water container (trough) in bathroom instead of shower, while in Singapore shower is the norm. Same as you, I also use the term regardless taking bath from a trough or shower.

We too call a toilet 'jiam1-gan5' (as usual, 'j' is pronounced like 'd'), from "jamban".

Regarding 'chan5', I think we can be sure that the proper hanji is 田 (literary: 'tian5').

Hi Niuc,

You're welcome! As I hinted in my posting, I always dreaded bathing using those troughs because there is no such thing as a "warm-water trough". Even in the tropics, I wasn't fond of cold water, and always took a hot shower. Hehe!

It'll be very interesting to see what xng's ideas are about "chan5" in the other thread.

[niuc]

Hi Sim

To add on, in Bagansiapiapi most houses have (or used to have) a well [ 古井 'ko`2-ci*2' ] in the bathroom. So 'cang5-ik8' for me there was from a well rather than a trough. The well could be half in the bathroom and half outside, so we still could get water from the well when the bathroom was occupied. However, the well water there is brackish (half saline), so it is not for drinking/cooking. We used to have huge cylindrical container [ 水桶 'cui2-thang2' ] for storage of rainwater. I am not sure if that is still the practice nowadays.

[SimL]

Hi niuc,

I really love little historical insights like what you gave, so thank you very much.

Being a city boy, I never heard the word 古井 'ko`2-ci*2/cE*2' in my youth, but in interviewing my parents about their childhood, this word came up many times. They were city people too, but they both (independently of one another, as they were still children) spent a lot of the Japanese Occupation living out in a rural area: no school, just gathering firewood, growing their own vegetables, and raising their own chickens. There was no work in the cities for the adults to do, and it was considered "safer" in the countryside anyway, so retreating to the countryside was one way for a family to survive. It must have been a difficult time for the adults (my grandparents), but both my parents - being children at the time - look back at this period of their lives as completely untraumatic, actually quite "idyllic", and they really enjoyed life in a rural setting.

My mother in particular enjoys giving telling me about her childhood, so I have detailed descriptions of the different 古井 that she used. One of the things she speaks about is the fact that there was always a (metal) bucket attached to the well with a rope. One would throw the bucket down into the well, where it would sort of float on the surface of the water. Using a special wriggling motion of the rope, one could get the edge of the bucket to go into the water, after which the bucket would fill up and could be lifted up and the water used.

Gosh, I was already "complaining" about the effort required to bathe from a trough - for you, bathing from a well would have been even more effort, as you would have had to lift the water some distance, bucket by bucket, instead of just scooping it out of the trough!

Your description of the well being half inside the bathroom and half outside - for use by other people outside the bathroom - is also very familiar from my parents' childhood. In a number of houses they lived in (in the city too), the trough would be half in the bathroom and half in the kitchen (with a "wall" coming down from the ceiling, all the way down to the surface of the water of the trough, so that you could have privacy while having a bath). This meant that people working in the kitchen could also scoop the water out, for washing dishes (and cooking?), while someone was bathing in the bathroom itself.