Two Thousand Zhuang Proverbs from China with Annotations and Chinese and English Translation

304 Pages·2016·1.61 MB·English

by  Zhou Yanxian

Alan Dundes
Founding Editor
Wolfgang Mieder
General Editor
Vol. 11

This book is a volume in a Peter Lang monograph series.
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PETER LANG
New York • Bern • Frankfurt • Berlin
New York • Bern • Frankfurt • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw
Zhou Yanxian
Two Thousand Zhuang Proverbs
from China with Annotations and
Chinese and English Translation
PETER LANG
New York • Bern • Frankfurt • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Zhou, Yanxian (Professor), editor, translator.
Title: Two thousand Zhuang proverbs from China with annotations and Chinese and English translation /
[edited and translated by] Zhou Yanxian.
Description: New York: Peter Lang
Series: International folkloristics; Volume 11 | ISSN 1528-6533
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016014987 | ISBN 978-1-4331-3445-6 (hardcover: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4539-1892-0 (ebook pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4331-3652-8 (epub)
ISBN 978-1-4331-3653-5 (mobi) | DOI 10.3726/978-1-4539-1892-0
Subjects: LCSH: Proverbs, Chinese. | Zhuang language.
Classification: LCC PN6519.C5 T96 | DDC 398.9/951—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014987
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed
bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.
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All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard,
and offset strictly prohibited.
About the author
ZHOU YANXIAN is Professor of English Language and Literature and Dean of the School of Foreign
Languages at Baise University in Guangxi, China. Her research interests include translations, linguistic and
cultural comparisons of Chinese and English, and oral traditions of the Zhuang ethnic group in China. She
has conducted several research projects, including a National Social Science Fund Project titled “A
Comparative Study on Zhuang and Thai Proverbs,” and a key provincial project titled “Oral Narration of
Zhuang People’s Long Folk Poems.” She has published five volumes of Zhuang long folk poems with
English translation, studies of ethnic cultures, and more than thirty academic papers. Among them, Liao
Songs of Pingguo Zhuang and On the Zhuang-English Translation of Zhuang People’s Liao Songs in
Guangxi won provincial awards for Outstanding Achievements in humanities and social sciences.
About the book
China is home to one of the largest and oldest societies in the world, and presently contains fifty-six ethnic
groups. Among them is the Zhuang, the largest of the minority populations, which partakes in a very long
history of preliterate oral traditions. This volume presents an introduction to Zhuang language and culture in
Zhuang proverbs. The two thousand proverbs explored in this text bear the weight of Zhuang history and
culture, and embody the wisdom collected from publications, manuscripts, and the speeches of the people
who live in Zhuang villages. These proverbs are grouped into nine sections: Truths; Morality; Family;
Everyday Life; Social Life; Labor; Nature; Customs; and Politics. Together, they form an essential
distillation of the Zhuang history, tradition, philosophy, and most importantly, its legacy. This accessible
introduction—which includes translations in Zhuang Pinyin letters, Mandarin, and American English for
each proverb—provides an important corpus for the study of the Zhuang ethnic group by scholars, students,
and others who are interested in Zhuang language, culture, folklore and oral traditions, and proverbs.
This eBook can be cited
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CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1. Saeh Leix 事理 Truths
Chapter 2. Coih Ndang 修养 Morality
Chapter 3. Ndaw Ranz 家庭 Family
Chapter 4. Gwndaenj 生活 Everyday Life
Chapter 5. Doxgyau 社交 Social Life
Chapter 6. Guh Hong 生产 Labor
Chapter 7. Gwnzbiengz 自然 Nature
Chapter 8. Mbanj Ranz 乡土 Customs
Chapter 9. Haenh Guek 时政 Politics
Glossary
Notes
Index
← vi | vii →
PREFACE
It is an honor to offer my preface to this superb collection of 2,160 Zhuang proverbs assembled by my
colleague Zhou Yanxian, Ivy as she is known to us in the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition, with the
assistance of her Chinese colleagues at the School of Foreign Languages, Baise University, and scholars in
the United States and Europe. During Ivy’s yearlong residence in the Center, she has accomplished her
objective of translating the Zhuang proverbs into English and compiling them with scholarly apparatus in
this book. Let me review its contents before turning to proverbs and my experience of learning about
Zhuang proverbs with Ivy.
Ivy’s introduction offers a comprehensive overview of the genesis of this monograph. She includes a
definition of the proverb, a thorny matter, together with characterizations of proverbs’ various themes and
functions, such as weather lore, agricultural practices, and ethical advice. She points towards the widely
held tenet that proverbs constitute indices of a society’s worldview (Mieder and Dundes, 1994, x; Finnegan,
1981: 31, 34) and mirror cultural beliefs and expressions of attitudes related to festivals, customs, taboos,
and religious rituals. She underscores how certain proverbs compress a complete anecdote or story into two
concise balanced clauses (Abrahams, “Proverbs and Proverbial Expressions,” 120). If, as Ivy contends,
Zhuang ← vii | viii → proverbs’ capacity to sustain longer phrases marks them as different from English
proverbs, both exemplars make use of the poetics of parallelism and metaphor, hallmarks of the and
essential components of proverbial speech among numerous human societies.
Ivy’s presentation, chosen from more than 11,000 proverbs in her 中国壮族谚语, a collection of
Zhuang proverbs in China, is organized by first letter of the Zhuang proverb’s headword, followed by a
Mandarin version, then an English translation with gloss. Each proverb is assigned to one of nine themes or
abstract headings—Truths, Morality, Family, Everyday Life, Social Life, Labor, Nature, Customs, and