{"id":3545,"date":"2016-04-29T23:24:05","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T15:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.com\/?p=3545"},"modified":"2016-04-29T23:24:05","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T15:24:05","slug":"y-for-yuan-fen-%e7%b7%a3%e4%bb%bd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=3545","title":{"rendered":"Y for &#8220;Yuan Fen&#8221; \u7de3\u4efd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For Y, I chose the Chinese term\u00a0\u7de3\u4efd, which is written as\u00a0<em>yuan fen<\/em> in\u00a0<em>hanyu pinyin.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Yuan Fen<\/em>\u00a0is most often translated into the word &#8216;fate&#8217; in English. While it comes close to it, &#8216;fate&#8217; doesn&#8217;t entirely encapsulate everything that the term embodies. The beauty of the Chinese language is that so little can mean so much.\u00a0<em>Yuan Fen <\/em>is a nebulous concept but\u00a0can be said to be a mix of fate, destiny and serendipity; similar but not entirely the same concepts or circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>\u7de3 (<em>yuan<\/em>) is said to be laid out in the stars, and that something is going to happen whether or not you choose it. <em>Yuan<\/em> is what makes people meet as acquaintances, friends or lovers. \u4efd (<em>fen<\/em>), on the other hand, emanates from one&#8217;s own will. Effort is needed to keep in contact to maintain the\u00a0<em>yuan<\/em>, so to speak. Therefore by logic,\u00a0there needs to be\u00a0<em>yuan<\/em> before\u00a0you can have\u00a0<em>fen.\u00a0<\/em>This is also why there is a Chinese saying that goes \u6709\u7de3\u7121\u5206. Which means two persons may meet but they are not destined to be together. The story of my life. So far. Bleah.<\/p>\n<p>The beautiful thing about the term is that it doesn&#8217;t necessarily apply only to lovers. It simply refers to any type of relationship between two people. An interesting thing I learnt about the word\u00a0\u7de3 is that its left radical\u00a0\u7cf8 refers to thread \/ cloth while its right radical\u00a0\u5f56 refers to a pig&#8217;s mouth. Pairing the two radicals to form the character\u00a0\u7de3 would mean covering the mouth with cloth, and originally referred to the seams of clothes. (Don&#8217;t ask me why!) And so the meaning of the term \u7de3\u4efd\u00a0was extrapolated to refer to the threads that bind one&#8217;s fate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Y, I chose the Chinese term\u00a0\u7de3\u4efd, which is written as\u00a0yuan fen in\u00a0hanyu pinyin.\u00a0 Yuan Fen\u00a0is most often translated into the word &#8216;fate&#8217; in English. While it comes close to it, &#8216;fate&#8217; doesn&#8217;t entirely encapsulate everything that the term embodies. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=3545\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-literature-writings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3546,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions\/3546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}