十字岗?

[Lu]

Another translation question:

Someone in the story has died, and two people are going to the memorial service. Then: 从我们这到十字岗殡仪馆还还有好远呢。 殡仪馆 is a funeral home/funeral parlour, the dictionary tells me, but what is 十字岗? I tried dictionary, google and baidu and those last two tell me that it is something, but what?

Thanks for any pointers, and apologies for any bad luck had from reading about funerals.

[xianhua]

It looks like it's a village in Hunan, so the funeral parlour was based in 十字岗. Your question is now third in the Google entries on this place.

[chenpv]

The name of the funeral home or the location where it is located, grammatically and functionally the same as '八宝山'.

[leeyah]

One basic interpretation for 十字岗(区) is intersection, crossroads, & as far as I know, graveyards are traditionally associated with crossroads, worldwide, not sure about China, though. So it could be simply "from our place to the funeral parlour is a long way."

BUT then I found this, in a ghost story:

02年的某一天傍晚，在某个地方停着3辆马子达，有个司机正准备回家了，这时候来了一个清瘦，穿着黑色大衣戴着礼帽的男人要求把他送到十字岗。一般到了下午很少有人去那边的，一般去殡仪馆都是早晨。司机也没有多想，只是疑糊了一下，又想正好家在十字岗下面，回家顺路把他送过去。

My guess is it is part of cemetery architecture, same as 殡仪馆, as in the ghost story, or like posts #2 & #3 said, name of the place, in/near Nanjing as in the title here

[Lu]

Thanks, all. The link with Hunan or Nanjing is a bit confusing, because as far as I can tell the story takes place in Dongbei (it doesn't say where exactly, but it's implied). So I guess it's the name of the funeral parlour then.

[phyrex]

Well, 十字 = "The symbol X/十" = a cross = a christian cross

Wenlin tells me 岗 = ①hillock; mound

So it's the little hill with the crosses. I don't know about you, but when I picture a graveyard, it's always a little hill with tombstones and crosses.

So either it's just a euphemism for graveyard, or the name of the funeral parlour is a euphemism for graveyard (or something like that)

[roddy]

Not many crosses in a Chinese graveyard, I'd wager. If you Google Earth (mere Googling is no longer enough) there's a number of 十字岗's in central China. At a guess I'd expect it to be a place where two ridges meet, but who knows . . .

[Meng Lelan]

What's the name and author of this story in question?

[kailong]

岗 means "mound" or "ridge." 十字 just describes the shape as being intersecting (as someone previously mentioned). For example, a 十字路口 is just a four-way intersection. So 十字岗 was probably just describing a feature of the landscape, like an X-shaped ridge or mound, and then was adopted as the name of a place. It's common for towns and cities in China to be named after features of the landscape.

[Lu]

Meng Lelan: 小谢啊小谢 by 朱文. It's been translated into English, but that translation tends to skip over the parts I also have trouble with.

phyrex: christian crosses on a hill => I immediately thought of Golgotha. But that didn't make any sense in the story.

Reading the whole story again today I saw that I was wrong earlier and it does actually take place in Nanjing, so it most likely is the graveyard/funeral parlour that that link pointed to. Shizigang funeral parlour.