Miscellaneous HK Articles & Movie Reviews

Meaning of "Gwailo" - posted on alt.asian-movies by Peter Lee

It means "gwei"="ghost", "lo"="man" (as oppose to"Gwei-por" = "ghost-woman"). It was definitely a derogatory term in the old days. The origin of this term probably goes way back to the last century when foreigners first enetered South-China for missionary work or trade. However, it's so widely used these days that it doesn't carry the negative meaning anymore.
Now it's used in conversations among Cantonese-speaking people as a quck (and lazy) way of identifying that they are talking about a Caucasian, man or woman, not a fellow Chinese, or a black person, for that matter. And don't forget, political correctness was originally a Western idea. It's not observed in a lot of the Eastern cultures. So Caucasian may find terms like "gwei-lo" "gwei-por" offensive, but within the Cantonese-speaking society, it's normal.

How are Japanese names rendered into Cantonese ?
Article by Tetsuo Takagi.

In the Japanese usage of Chinese characters (kanji), there are essentially two different ways of vocalizing the sound of a Chinese character; one is a phonetic trans-vocaliztion ? of the original Chinese sound, essentially pronouncing the character by what the original Chinese sound sounded like to the Japanese ear at the time it was incorporated into Japanese (in Japanese this way of reading is called "on-yomi"), and the other is just reading the character by assinging the sound of the indigenous Japanese word for what the character represents in its meaning (in Japanese called "kun-yomi").

Take the character "water" for example. In Mandarin it's shui, in Cantonese it's sui; in Japanese on-yomi it's "sui", somewhat like the Chinese sounds whereas in kun-yomi it's reads "Mizu" as "mizu" is the indigenous Japanese word meaning water (but no resemblance to the original Chinese sound). The on-yomi "sui" is used in combination character words whereas when it's water alone it's invariably "Mizu". In this way, when Kanjis are read in on-yomi, they will somewhat resemble the original Chinese sounds (at least to the Japanese ear), whereas when the kanjis are read in kun-yomi, they turn out radically differently because the kun-yomi sounds have nothing to do with what the original Chinese sounded like, and hence the divergence as shown above with "water".

With regard to people's names in Japanese, it is more common that people's names are constructed primarily using kun-yomi sounds, so it will likely be read differently in Chinese, as in Rena Murakami's example cited in the origianl posting, and most Japanese names of acotrs or singers well known to Chinese audiences will be read very differently. But the point is that this is not something specific to celebrities but all Japanese names in general; most Japanese names becomes unrecognizable when read in Chinese (by the way Rena Murakami's name when read in on-yomi would turn out something like "Son-jou Rei-na", which theoretically is supposed to be equivalent to "Chuen Seung Lai Noi", but I don't know if you feel any correlation between them...).

Take another example, the current Prime Minister of Japan. He has (absolutely) nothing to do with the subjects of these NGs but I bring him up because his name is an example of his family name constructed in kun-yomi whereas his given name is in on-yomi, a good example to show the contrast between on-yomi and kun-yomi in one name. His Japanese name is "Hashi-moto Ryu-ta-ro", and this when read in Cantonese becomes "Kiu-Bun Lung-Tai-Long". You might see some correlation between "Lung-Tai-Long" and "Ryu-ta-ro" which is in on-yomi, whereas it's hard to see any correlation between "Kiu-bun" and "Hashi-moto" which is in kun-yomi. If "Hashi-moto" was in on-yomi it would be "Kyou-hon" which might sound a little more like "Kiu-bun" (by the way it could've been possible that his given name was given a kun-yomi sound and was read "Tatsu-ta-ro" instead of "Ryu-ta-ro" which still makes sense as a proper Japanese name. Not all Japanese names make sense in both on-yomi and kun-yomi).

Half Taiwanese half Japanese Gam Sing Mo / Kaneshiro Takeshi's naming is an ingenious one, it uses the same characters in Chinese and Japanese and reads and makes sense both ways as a Chinese name and a Japanese name at the same time; just that the "Sing" character which is a part of his given name in Chinese becomes a part of the family name as "shiro" in his English/Japanese name, but it's still interesting as not many names either in Chinese or Japanese work out this way. Kaneshiro Takeshi is also kun-yomi and if read in on-yomi it becomes "Kin Jou bu" (sound like Gam Sing Mo at all?).

Now how do the Japanese know when to distinguish between the usage of on-yomi and kun-yomi? It's one of those things which for native speakers are something built-in, and by the time we come out of school we know by heart and can't give much of a scientific explanation; maybe the non-Japanese learners would be in a better position to do that.

Just as a footnote, many Japanese on-yomi sounds sound more like their current Cantonese counterparts than would be with Mandarin, because current Cantonese sounds are more like classical and medival Chinese spoken at those times when kanji characters and words were incorporated into the Japanese language (modern Mandarin has lost some of the phonetic characteristics of the time). This relative similarity of Chinese character sounds with Cantonese than Mandarin is something that applies to the sounds of Chinese character words in Korean too.

(This article was posted on alt.asian-movies in Feb 98, and appears here with the author's kind consent).

The meaning of "Wu'xia" - Article by Jeff L Harris

"Wuxia" apparently isn't usually translated exactly. Generally it can be called Martial Arts Fiction.

In a similar way, that Westerns refers to a particular genre of adventure stories with specific connotations of historical settings, types of action, and so forth.

Wuxia wraps into itself :

Jin Yong is a recent master and the author of the wuxia novels that so many quite confusing HK films are based upon, eg, Kungfu Cult Master.
"Wu" provides the martial arts part while "xia" more strictly means "picaresque romance" or something similar. Unfortunately, many wuxia novels are not strictly speaking picaresque romances. So martial arts fiction seems to be the most commonly accepted translation. Sometimes, as in this case, it is easier to simply lift the term used straight out of its language of origin and make it an English usage.

Wuxia seems to be an obvious Pinyin romanization. Presumably there is a Cantonese rendition. Don't know what characters this term is based on.

Also, I'm trying to remember where I saw the original reference. I know it was in connection with the fiction of Jin Yong (who is also called Louis Cha), a HK publisher, editor and writer who originally hammered out a whole raft of these wuxia sagas in the 1950's (??), 1960's through to the early (??) 1970's.

No longer writing but with an enduring best-selling legacy of about a dozen novels (some of which are in multiple volumes). They were originally published as newspaper serials. This may explain their frenetic pacing and endlessly complicated storylines.

For more info, see pages about Jin Yong. If they're still working, they may have some useful information about the wuxia genre.

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