After the Thanksgiving holiday, have you ever wondered: How to say ” It is time to lose fat ” in Chinese: 减肥时间到了。Jian3 (减 verb, to subtract, to decrease) fei2 (肥 noun, fat) shi2 jian1 (时间 noun, time) dao4 (到 verb, to arrive) le5 (了 sentence- final particle to show the change of status. Before Thanksgiving, time not yet arrived, but now, it is the time. Thus, we use le5 here. If you ask me why after Thanksgiving is the time, I would say think of those turkeys, pies, hams and all those mei3 wei4 jia1 yao2 美味佳肴 deliciously wonderful food? Then do your calorie count.).
Have you ever heard this phrase : Kung hei fat choy? Does that sound like a vegetable to you — bok choy? Bok choy (Chinese cabbage) is a very common Chinese vegetable; we call it xiao 3 bai2 cai4 小白菜 （literally speaking, it means little white vegetable, but, the standard English name for it is bok choy. Say bok choy and Bai2 cai4 carefully. Did you hear some sound similarity between them — I think bok choy these two English words came from Cantonese. ).
Kung hei fat choy is nothing to do with fat bok choy or anything vegetable related. It is a Cantonese phrase means – congratulate you for getting rich, it is one of many lucky phrases people would say when Chinese New Year comes. Kung hei fat choy is written as 恭喜发财 ( pronounced as – gong1 xi3 fa1 cai2 in Mandarin).
In Hong Kong, there is a famous actor called Yun Fat Chow. Don’t say that actor fat either, even though he got the fat in the name. That is his Cantonese name, and Chow’s Mandarin name is Zhou1 Run4 Fa1 周润发. （He must love running ? with the run in the name now.)
There are a lot of Chinese people named Fat in Hong Kong, but, those people are not necessarily fat. Fat in Cantonese means fa1, and fa1 stands for fa1 cai2 (发财 getting rich), so now you know why Cantonese people love Fat names. In his name – Yun Fat Chow, there is a chow in it. This chow is nothing to do with chow mein (fried noodles) that you can eat in Chinese restaurant. We will talk about it some other time.
Enjoy the Chinese music piece — Xiao3 bai2 cai4 小白菜. What a nice title for a song? Is it a Green Day’s song? Mmmm think of green…
The Chinese music instrument is called pi2 pa2 琵琶 (lute).
Enjoy time of your life — a great song by Green Day.