真不如当初死了更干净

[enaskitis]

14 years old 李光头 peeped women's asses in the public toilet and got busted. His mother was shocked; his father had done the same thing years ago, and in fact he had died ignominiously because he fell in the shit doing this. After having stopped talking to her son for a certain time, she finally concluded that "有其父必有其子“。 She told him that when her husband had died she at first had wanted to hang herself out of shame, but she had decided to keep on living only because 李光头, then a baby, wailed in his swaddle clothes:

她觉得无脸见人，曾想上吊自尽，是因为他在襁褓里的哭声才让她活了下来。

I hope I have understood accurately thus far. But now comes a sentence I don't know what to make of:

她说早知道他也会这样，真不如当初死了更干净。

She said that she had known early on that he (=her son 李光头） would be one of the same too (like his father), it could really not be compared to that old death more clean???

I don't know if I have understood well the first part of the sentence, but I certainly cannot make sense of the italicized part, so I ask for help.

[陳德聰]

She said that had she known he would turn out this way, it really would have been cleaner to just die in the first place.

不如...更 is the key construction here.

Kind of tragic

[imron]

I don't know if I have understood well the first part of the sentence,

She said that she had known early on that he

There is an implied 如果 here, which should make the first part make more sense:

她说（如果）早知道他也会这样，真不如当初死了更干净。

She said that if she had known early on....

In Chinese, it's very common for conditional constructions to be implicitly rather than explicitly stated like in English with 'if'.

[creamyhorror]

I find the use of 干净 here weird. Maybe it's regional.

[li3wei1]

当初死了

Is she talking about her death or the kid's?

[skylee]

I find the use of 干净 here weird. Maybe it's regional.

My blog is called 落了片白茫茫大地真乾淨, which is from 紅樓夢 . Such use is not weird at all.

Also, take a look at the explanations in the Taiwan MOE Dictionary. They should be helpful.

[陳德聰]

Is she talking about her death or the kid's?

Hers. She had wanted to hang herself because of the shame from her husband, and then she didn't because she wanted to live for her baby. But then her baby was "这样" so she should have just killed herself in the first place to avoid it all.

[roddy]

My favourite use of 干净 was what I once heard the commentator say when the Chinese women's team scored in a football came: 一个漂亮干净利索的进球！

May have got the adjectives in the wrong order...actually I may be completely misremembering.

[anonymoose]

I don't see what's so odd about that. I mean, one could even imagine saying in English that that was a clean goal.

What I find more confusing about the sentence is the 不如 together with 更. Surely 不如什么什么干净 means not as "clean" as so and so. So what is the 更 doing here?

[skylee]

Re #9, I think you can regard it as a short form of 倒不如。

[anonymoose]

Regard what as a short form of 倒不如? What does that have to do with 更?

[andysun731]

Sometimes you can not translate directly. "真不如当初死了更干净" means "当初自己死了就好了". "更干净" has nothing to do with "clean", may be more like "peace in mind without worry or broken heart now".

[陳德聰]

X不如Y更好 just means Y is better than X.

If you try to translate it piece by piece you will never be able to understand it. The sentence works as a whole unit, not always a perfect composition of each individual part.

You can translate 干净 in this instance as "clean" since in English it can be metaphorical like that too.

[anonymoose]

OK, so X不如Y更好 is just a fixed structure then. Funny, I had never really noticed that one before.

[roddy]

I don't see what's so odd about that. I mean, one could even imagine saying in English that that was a clean goal.

Who said anything was odd about it. I just liked it.

[enaskitis]

Thank you very much! That was quite a response to my query.

Let me recap: 1) there is a hidden 如果, 2) there is an X不如Y更干净　formula, although there is no stated X, 3) "真不如当初死了更干净" means "当初自己死了就好了", 4) it's all a question of opening the door, never mind the structure of the lock!

As for 干净，I think it's very fitting to the context as an antithesis to such "unclean" things as toilet peeping and falling in the shit, plus that you can "clean" shame with suicide.

[crystal123]

I think Here 干净 mean 干脆

[陳德聰]

I think it means 干净.