GIVE BACK MY RIVERS AND MOUNTAINS
9 min readTrees, roads, trees, lakes that gleam like mirrors, trees, crops, houses villages and more trees From the plane i tried to take in the details, all the time thinking: generous land, loyal means of support over the centuries to countless generations. There is not a tree that has not been planted by man, no lake that has not been worked by man, no plot of land that has not been tilled and fertilized thousands of times over the millennia.
Nanjing was founded in the spring and autumn period of ancient china Yangtze river or changjiang the most important river in China and the city’s strategic location was probably the reason for its historical mportance.
The mineral wealth gave rise to a population of blacksmiths and craftsmen later textiles such as the so-called veined brocade spread the city’s name and later still ceramics research and legends.
Nanjing, which is embraced rather than surrounded by its trees squaresand avenues, embraced rather than surrounded by its almost intact city valls, embraced rather than limited by the purple mountain, the long River and the hill of Stones and Rain. Nanjing, capital of the south, the city which was inviting me to share, to work, to live At the university four groups of young students awaited me along with fifteen Chinese teachers in the Spanish Department. Once I arrived they all came to visit me in turn, as scheduled by those responsible(this planning is typical of their attitude) in order to get to know me and to introduce me to my future colleagues and their families
Within days, the number of people i know has multiplied to the point here i not only feel at home, as people say, but I feel as if I am in my own neighbourhood.
Given that all the teachers, students, managers, employees and workers live on the same campus, one’s contacts never cease to grow teach the teachers in the Department courses in literature, linguistics and general culture. In tutorials, I advise them on their translations, preparation of their lessons and when possible i resolve any doubts theymay have relating to our professional activity With the young students I teach conversation classes translation and grammar interesting work, as you see, in this friendly, enthusiastic and welcoming atmosphereIn recent days i have been able to make a start on an unexpected tradition: Chinese first names and family names. As they introduced themselves, some of my students explained details to me that are worth recording.
One of them told me that his name is kun which is an unusual character Apparently his parents told him that soon after birth they met a friend Who was a monk and asked him to foretell the child s future. Taking into account the stars the weather books and other information the monk alarmed the parents by saying: this child is threatened by water. There is a chance that he could drown of the five natural elements water is the only one that surpasses all the others and it does so easily. However, the solution to such a terrible forecast is very simple: you give the child a name that has the earth element among its written components and this by its mere presence, will stop the water and all its dangers. The parents of the child were relieved and chose the name Kun which is represented phically by two fang on top, meaning “lots”, and by the earth element at the bottom, which is written as a cross with a long, descending vertical he.
And thanks to my name, I’m alive, I study Spanish and I am having this conversation with you right now-the young man said, smiling-and with my cubic metres of earth i feel so at ease that I would even dare to swim across the Long river.
Another case is the names of animals or objects considered worthy of contempt. In some places it is thought that evil spirits are evil because they are stupid and, therefore, they can be easily fooled. It is also thought that evil spirits only try to harm important beings. So for example, they ould harm a human being but would not be at all interested in animals or in commonplace objects. For example one of my students, who told me about this custom, was called Baigou as a child which means white dog so that evil spirits would be persuaded of his canine nature and would not attach any importance to him. It is easy to find children who are called rat, mosquito, flea or beetle; and indeed some are even called (and I swear this true) heap of rubbish, pan scourer, vomit or shit. the good thing is that at some point in their life, the child may change this given name to something more presentable.
A person could have six names or more: a superstitious name, the just I have just mentioned; the name taken when they go to school; their official name if they want to become a civil servant; their married name which is often related to a phrase or poem; writers, painters or poets could and indeed still can have several artistic pseudonyms the crown prince used to take a new name when he ascended to the throne; and, a very special case emperors used to be given a posthumous name shortly after they died The current practice is to use the family name in first place, usually a character and then a given name of one or two syllables there are about 400 family names currently in use and if you add those that are no longer n use or are rare the number rises to 1458(one wonders who counted them! ). Not a great deal of variety if one considers the huge population of the country which is why it is not unusual to find people anywhere you look with family names such as Liu, Zhao, Li, Xu, Mao or Lin. However the most extreme case is that of Zhang or Chang, depending how you write it as it is claimed that there are more than forty million people with this family name. Surely the most common family name in the history of the world.
There is no way to tell from the name if a person is male or female. Any word in the dictionary can be used as a proper name both for a boy or a girl. I was told of one family who had four daughters and the last of them was called”male phoenix as a way of expressing the couple’s desire to have a son So the name that appears to refer to a man is in fact that of a woman By contrast some men live with names that we would think of as being female, for example: flower, butterfly, peach scent or doll. Thishappens for the same superstitious reasons that we talked about earlier as it is thought that evil spirits are more likely to pursue men than women since they believe(it would appear that evil spirits are male chauvinists too) that men are worth more than women and therefore must be eliminated.
Couples with the same family name were not allowed to marry (a huge problem for the Zhangs! ) unless expressly authorized by the Emperor andfor this they had to prove that their ancestors originated in different places.
Within the family setting there are currently two customs of note. the given name is only used between husband and wife or, very rarely, by someone with a similarly close relationship The usual way of referring to people is to use the surname, preceded by the adjective xiao (young) or lao(old) according to very precise rules. other relatives are usually referred to using the degree of family relationship. This may mean, among other things, that with a single word may express the concept that the person is one’s maternal, not paternal, uncle, that he is older or younger than the mother of his nephew and also the exact position occupied in the sequence of uncles so for example: maternal aunt number two, old than my mother; or fifth-in-order paternal cousin whose father is older or younger, as the case may be, than my own father. In my previous letter, you may recall I mentioned the case of Third Brother Li, the great friend of the drunken concubine.
All of this reveals not just how strong the integration of the Chinese family is but also the difficulty of learning all this vocabulary The function of the family name is so important that sometimes it is used to express the highest degree of comparison, for example in the saying He has eaten so much that he has forgotten his family name On the other hand there is no formal distinction between noble and more common surnames as happens in European languages(e.g. the way Spanish and French use the particle de or German uses von ). I remember once asking why this distinction is not made and one witty student replied: Chinese history is so long and at different times in that history we have had so many kings and emperors, and each of these has had so many wives and children that all chinese people, without exception, are descendants of one king or another somewhere along the line The most interesting case for me among all is that of xiao huan a third year student who gave me the opportunity to learn something unexpected i know my family has its jiapu and, moreover, that there is a story about its origins. Since i do not know the details, I’ ll write to my father and get him to send me the missing information.
Days later, the response arrived In beautiful, meticulous handwriting(at the moment that is all i dare to judge about Chinese script), Xiao Huan’s father wrote the following.
During the Song Dynasty(960-1279), the Jin invaded part of the country and the famous skilled general yue fei, whose imposing monument can be seen to this day in hangzhou, was tasked by the emperor with repelling the invaders. This general, among many other qualities, possessed the gift of the Muses-he was a poet and on this occasion hewrote some verses alluding to the campaign he was about to undertake, which circulated rapidly. The poem begins with the famous words: Give back my rivers and mountains. However a treacherous, envious and fluential official collaborated with the jin so as to ambush our generalwho was killed. Fearing that his relatives would seek revenge he devoted much time to pursuing them and eliminating them one by one, until he as convinced that no trace of the family remained.
However, he was wrong a few relatives escaped without being identified and they hid near the Yellow Sea，in an area quite close to Nanjing and both xiao huan and her father descend from them.
He went on to tell us that，in order to keep the compromising relationship a secret，the family had changed their name.as they could no longer use the name Yue like the general，they had opted to use the family name Huan which means”give back in memory of the verses written by their famous ancestor.
Something else is that this family has a jiapu-a family registration bookor a sort of family tree，and they also have a family motto or phrase that serves to distinguish them.This charming tradition is still preserved in certain families，what one might call historical families and consists of a motto or phrase，sometimes written in calligraphy on silk，sometimes exhibited in the main room of the house，and which expresses a kind of family ideal and is related，in an original way with the names of the men in the family.
In the case of Huan family，the motto has ten characters that express the following idea：Like the spring this family abounds in virtues.Like the many good things such as energy and good officials，amongst others.
