半生缘

[Fred0]

Shijun and Manzhen are taking Shuhui to lunch as his farewell party (饯行). When it's time to pay the bill Shuhui says that he didn't bring any money. Manzhen says that she will advance him the money and he can pay her back later. (I assume that it's a joke because he would not be expected to pay for his own farwell lunch in any case.) My question is what is the meaning of the following sentence. Shuhui from beginning to end won't agree to relax sentence mouth. It makes no sense to me.

 

到付账的时候，叔惠说没带钱，曼桢道：“那么我替你垫一垫。待会儿要还我的。”叔惠始终不肯松这句口。

[Publius]

松口 is a verb with a internal structure of verb-object. It means 'to relent, to yield, to soften, to stop insisting'.

Since 口 is a noun and is used figuratively here, it can be modified by a determiner 这 + classifier 句.

[Fred0]

Perfectly  clear explanation. Thanks very much.

[Fred0]

Shijun is tells Yi Peng that he is meeting a female co-worker for lunch. Yi Peng says:

 

怪不得你赖在上海不肯回去，我说呢，你在上海忙些什么──就忙着陪花瓶吃馆子呀？嗨嗨，你看我回去不说！”

 

Does this mean that when he returns to Nanjing he will, or he won't talk about it.  How do you decide when the 不 is rhetorical and when it is literal?

[Fred0]

A  fabric is described in this way: 是一段瓦灰闪花绸，闪出一棵棵的小梅桩.  What does  闪 （闪花，闪出） mean?  Could 桩 mean a stem, or a sprig,  a bunch?

[陳德聰]

On 9/7/2018 at 10:34 AM, Fred0 said:

怪不得你赖在上海不肯回去，我说呢，你在上海忙些什么──就忙着陪花瓶吃馆子呀？嗨嗨，你看我回去不说！

“Just watch me go back and not say anything!”

I don’t think you can derive whether it’s rhetorical or not from the syntax. I think you’d have to just deduce from the fact that the guy is kind of nudging and saying things like “就忙着陪花瓶吃馆子呀？嗨嗨” this is a rhetorical question, because he already knows since Shijun literally just told him.

 

8 hours ago, Fred0 said:

是一段瓦灰闪花绸，闪出一棵棵的小梅桩.

 

 梅樁 looks like this:

 

閃 here essentially means shiny/shimmery/glimmery. Think taffeta or satin.

[Publius]

On 9/8/2018 at 1:34 AM, Fred0 said:

 How do you decide when the 不 is rhetorical and when it is literal?

I don't think there's hard and fast rules.  In the expression 看我如何如何, adding a 不 doesn't seem to change the meaning.  Perhaps an elision of 看我不說才怪！ Anyway, he (jokingly) threatens to tell.

 

8 hours ago, Fred0 said:

Could 桩 mean a stem, or a sprig,  a bunch?

Judging by the classifier, it seems to mean stump.  But I really have no idea how it looks.  I think 闪花绸 suggests the patterns are 若隱若現, only visible from certain angle or under certain lighting condition.

[Fred0]

Thanks to both for both responses. 

[Fred0]

Manzhen is entering the bedroom of her sister's opulent new house for the first time.

 

卧房里迎面一排丈来高的玻璃窗，紫水晶似的薄纱窗帘，

人字式斜吊着，一层一层，十几幅交迭悬挂着。

 

In the bedroom, she confronted a row of  8 feet-high glass windows, with layer upon layer of amethyst-colored gauze curtains, hanging down in ten or so repeatingly intersecting secetions, each one in the shape of a slanting ren character.

 

Is this traslation accurate?

[陳德聰]

Pretty much. The descriptions in this book seem to be just... not for actually allowing you to imagine clearly what anything looks like.

[Fred0]

In discussing the literary revolution of the May Fourth Movement, the author says:

 

说到五四的文学革命，我们绕不开晚清。

 

Does that mean that we shouldn't by-pass, go around, or ignore the late Qing period?

[陳德聰]

Can’t get around, as in, cannot avoid the topic of.

[Fred0]

The author is naming writers who were important influences on what would become the May Fourth movement, and she mentions Gong Zizhen, and quotes a line that is apparently well known.

 

有我们熟悉的说“我劝天公重抖擞，不拘一格降人才”的龚自珍等一些有识之士。

 

My question is what does 等一些 mean in this sentence. Does it mean “an equal to some of the 有识之士？“

[Publius]

No. 等 =  et al. / et cetera

有[龔自珍等]一些有識之士

[Fred0]

... so  could one say   "Known to us by the familiar quotation, ",,,," Gong Zizhen, and others, are among the intellectuals (of this period)?"

[陳德聰]

More like “there are some familiar intellectuals like Gong Zizhen who said blahblahblah”

[Fred0]

Manlu is tossing and turning in bed, remembering that  her husband, Hongcai, came home drunk after a visit from Manzhen, her sister, telling Manlu that he wanted to make Manzhen his concubine.

 

曼璐在床上翻来覆去，思前想后，她追溯到鸿才对她的态度恶化，是什么时候开始的。就是那一天，她妹妹到这里来探病，后来那天晚上，鸿才在外面吃醉酒回来，倚风作邪地，向她表示对她妹妹有野心。被她骂了一顿。

 

It seems that 倚风作邪 might be a chengyu, but I can’t find it in any of my usual references. Is it a chengyu, and whether it is or not, what does it mean?

[陳德聰]

http://www.zsbeike.com/hy/20301389.html says it’s Jiangsu dialect but I suspect it’s probably more widespread than that:

乘機做令人討厭的事

 

Seize on an opportunity and do some detestable stuff

[Fred0]

Thanks! For the answer and for the new resource.

[Fred0]

6 hours ago, 陳德聰 said:

http://www.zsbeike.com/hy/20301389.html

This website totally defeats me. Can you give me some guidannce how to look up such things as a chengyu on it. Am I correct that they require a 100 yuan fee?

 

I would like to find more resources I can use without having to bother you folks so often.