Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Cows
Hello people,
Cows, earth cow, stone cow, iron cow, blowing cow, flying cow, ...
In the East Coast village where I grew up, the community composed mainly Hainanese and Teochews. The Teochews lived inland and farmed while the Hainanese lived near the sea and fished. A provision shop and a coffee shop were the central gathering place for all. In such an environment, it was easy for one to understand and speak a smattering of the other's dialect. Traditionally, my father, a Teochew, operated the provision shop and my best friend's father, a Hainanese, the coffee shop.
All the children went to the local Chinese primary school while me and my brothers an English school two miles away. It was not that my father was not chauvenistic; he had a problem with the earth cows (teegu in Teochew) to want to send us to study English. The earth cows were the government inspectors who checked coffee powder for excessive adulteration with maize. They were people who never completed secondary school but who spoke English. They came regularly to take samples for laboratory testing, each time they took a few tahils of coffee powder, four tahils is about 150 grams. They were bullies, bullying people who did not understand English.
A teegu or earth cow is a creature somewhat like the frog. It is about the same size, but brown and spotted in darker colour with shorter limbs. It is bulbous, like puffed up with air. Usually, after heavy rain, it will whined or mooed like the cow, louder than the toad which noise is many times louder than the frog. In fact, the frog makes the least noise, only croaking now and them, sporadically. Perhaps that explains why the inspectors are called teegu, puffed up with air and intimidating.
"Cows are flying, cows are flying !" (niu fey le, niu fey le in Mandarin) my friend's brother repeated loudly, to nobody in particular but to all who could hear; he did things like this often, just like the way he studied his Mandarin lessons by rote.
"Have you flipped", I said to him. He explained that the stone cow (cheogu in Teochew) and the iron cow (theekgu in Teochew) were sent flying. These two cows were bullies in his school, and they were beaten up by a new schoolboy named little dog (kowkia in Teochew).
In those times, people were superstitious and they gave their children weird, animal, names to keep them safe from being lost untimely. These two cows themselves like to blow cows (chuiniu in Mandarin , meaning boast and brag), and they also insulted the little dog, one dog who could fight, and they were sent flying.
During those times there were many Ah Ter (pig), Ah Kow (dog), Ah Gu (cow), Ah Ngiow (cat), etc.. What had happened to names like these ? Perhaps the cows didn't want to fly.
Have a nice day.
Ronald
Cows, earth cow, stone cow, iron cow, blowing cow, flying cow, ...
In the East Coast village where I grew up, the community composed mainly Hainanese and Teochews. The Teochews lived inland and farmed while the Hainanese lived near the sea and fished. A provision shop and a coffee shop were the central gathering place for all. In such an environment, it was easy for one to understand and speak a smattering of the other's dialect. Traditionally, my father, a Teochew, operated the provision shop and my best friend's father, a Hainanese, the coffee shop.
All the children went to the local Chinese primary school while me and my brothers an English school two miles away. It was not that my father was not chauvenistic; he had a problem with the earth cows (teegu in Teochew) to want to send us to study English. The earth cows were the government inspectors who checked coffee powder for excessive adulteration with maize. They were people who never completed secondary school but who spoke English. They came regularly to take samples for laboratory testing, each time they took a few tahils of coffee powder, four tahils is about 150 grams. They were bullies, bullying people who did not understand English.
A teegu or earth cow is a creature somewhat like the frog. It is about the same size, but brown and spotted in darker colour with shorter limbs. It is bulbous, like puffed up with air. Usually, after heavy rain, it will whined or mooed like the cow, louder than the toad which noise is many times louder than the frog. In fact, the frog makes the least noise, only croaking now and them, sporadically. Perhaps that explains why the inspectors are called teegu, puffed up with air and intimidating.
"Cows are flying, cows are flying !" (niu fey le, niu fey le in Mandarin) my friend's brother repeated loudly, to nobody in particular but to all who could hear; he did things like this often, just like the way he studied his Mandarin lessons by rote.
"Have you flipped", I said to him. He explained that the stone cow (cheogu in Teochew) and the iron cow (theekgu in Teochew) were sent flying. These two cows were bullies in his school, and they were beaten up by a new schoolboy named little dog (kowkia in Teochew).
In those times, people were superstitious and they gave their children weird, animal, names to keep them safe from being lost untimely. These two cows themselves like to blow cows (chuiniu in Mandarin , meaning boast and brag), and they also insulted the little dog, one dog who could fight, and they were sent flying.
During those times there were many Ah Ter (pig), Ah Kow (dog), Ah Gu (cow), Ah Ngiow (cat), etc.. What had happened to names like these ? Perhaps the cows didn't want to fly.
Have a nice day.
Ronald
# posted by chunmu @ 7:09 PM 
