Lost in Translation: A “Bāozi” Riddle

So in Day 2 of “motivated to study Chinese” I was browsing through my “Elementary Spoken Chinese: Part 1” book and the English translations of the dialogues in the lessons when I came to an interesting one. It read as follows:

“A bun with stuffing is a bun with stuffing. A bun stuffed with bean is a bun stuffed with bean. A bun stuffed with bean is not a bun with bean stuffing. Only a bun with meat or vegetable stuffing is a bun with stuffing.”

In pingyin for those Chinese speakers: “Bāozi shì bāozi, dòu bāor shì dòu bāor. Dòu bāor bù néng jiào dòu bāozi, ròu bāozi cài bāozi cái néng jiào bāozi.” (Yes, I did go through the effort of putting in those accents so you’d better read it with proper “shēng diào”)

Now I’m still puzzled at the purpose of this lesson which was titled “I like tea” and talked about “buns stuffed with bean paste” and “buns with stuffing” for the majority of the dialogue but I think the reason why there is a line around the corner for “bāozi” in Lù Găng has become a lot more clear. People take their “bāozi” very seriously as well as the task of defining the term.

I also enjoyed Lesson 18 that has the saying “shuō nĭ pàng nĭ jiù chuănshang le” which roughly translates to “when someone calls you fat, you start panting.” At first I was confused and was wondering (as did the character, Lisa, in the dialogue) why someone was being called fat and then I realized that it was a saying…such as “give a mouse a cookie and he’ll ask for a glass of milk.” Umm…or something like that, I don’t know if that’s really a saying or just in that book. Whatever, anyways, I am going to take a shot at the meaning behind the saying based on the context that it means when someone mentions something you, you take it and exaggerate it or go on and on about it. I’ll have to try to work that into all the Chinese conversations I’m having with myself nowadays. Kind of like the “ná lĭ ná lĭ” (where? where?) reaction to compliments and the oh-so-popular “shàng tù xìa xiè” (simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea) that I picked up while in Shanghai (referring to the phrase, not some kind of gastrointestinal disease). If you didn’t know Chinese before your read this, I’m glad I have given you a few handy sayings to use in times of crisis.

P.S. I recently finished a Free Cell winning streak…13 wins in a row! Overall 55% win percentage (and yes, I’ve played a total of 370 games, not counting those furtive games on Pat’s computer). After hearing that Sarah so cleverly changed her opponents in Hearts to honor the “Full House” characters of Danny, Joey, and Jesse I decided to do a little renaming myself. I have gone to the trouble of changing the opponents from the generic computer-given names to my 3 PC buddies (Sarah, Kasia and Lindsay) and I must say, they are quite worthy opponents, either I’m getting worse at Hearts (is that possible?) or the skill level of the computer opponents increases with the number of games that are played.