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你好,欢迎收听随行汉语。 Welcome to Takeaway Chinese.
I'm Niu Honglei with Steve Heatherly in the studio.
Hello, Steve.
Hello, thanks for having me again.
Great to have you on the show.
So, you are a sports fan.
You love sports.
I do.
Exercise, different types of sports.
Very much so, yes.
I grew up playing ice hockey and baseball and golf and tennis.
And I love American football.
I'm not that big of a soccer fan or a football fan.
Ping-pong?
I'm not good at ping pong at all.
Is it because you're in China and you can now say you're good at ping pong?
I can't believe.
I thought the first floor of our building has ping pong tables.
And I thought it was the training center for the national team.
Because of how good they were.
And I asked our co-worker and they said oh no, that's just like people who work here playing during like lunchtime.
I was like, oh my gosh, that's the bar?
Like that's the quality?
But yeah, no, it's a very fast, exciting sport.
Basically all sports I'm a fan of.
I really envy people who can enjoy all kinds of sports.
Because for me exercising is something i know is good for me, but i cannot enjoy all of these sports, which means the motivation for me is not that strong itself.
Which one do you like the most?
I like the kind of sports that i can play with some people, so competitive ones, and also i like the kind of sports that has music to it or a certain rhythm to it.
But repetitive kind of sports are not my no, not my thing.
I do not like jogging And I'm not good at ping pong, not good enough in China.
So not playing it during lunchtime here in the building.
Yeah, you should check them out, though.
They're really good at it.
Well, though I'm not a huge fan of sports, I like watching sports games.
On TV, you mean, or live?
Both.
It's very exciting because yes, you know, some athletes are really good at something and their winning streak is just so long several years.
But it's always, always very, very exciting to watch.
And there are always different types of surprises in real life games.
When the Olympics were here in Beijing on two different occasions.
Did you go either time to watch any events?
I was very young for the 2008.
I was not in Beijing at that time.
So for that Olympic, I didn't.
But for the Winter Games in 2022, not only did I go to see many Not many, but several of the games.
I also live-coveraged the opening ceremonies and the closing ceremonies.
Yeah, it was very fun.
That's fun.
Yeah, watching sports live is totally different than seeing it on TV.
Yes, very much fun.
And in Chinese, there are so many different words related to sports.
For instance, the most common one, the umbrella term, would be 体育.
体育.
It's a good word.
体, here's the meaning of your body.
身体, body.
And 欲 is cultivating.
So cultivating your body.
You're doing exercise, you're doing sports, you're cultivating your body.
So any type of workout would be 体育.
Would be involved in the 体育 area.
It's a really big word.
It's talking about exercising.
It's talking about sports.
It's talking about basically when you move intentionally, right?
With no purpose of getting something, you are in the area of 体育.
We see 体育, we also say 运动.
运 is moving.
动 is also moving.
So 运动 talks about moving your body parts intentionally.
I think I'm explaining these words in weird English.
Yeah, that one sounds like dancing to me.
运 is moving and 动 is moving.
So moving, moving, moving, moving, double moving, moving your body parts.
That sounds like dancing to me.
Well, that's a good question.
Would dancing be considered a part of T.U.?
Depends certain kind of dancing?
I think so, and in a lot of gyms here in China they offer classes and many of those classes include street dancing or jazz, different types of dancing.
I've seen those classes are really popular.
I guess because there are two different gyms that I've gone to in my time in China so far and And they have classes at both of those places and the classes are always filled.
And I've seen different types of stuff.
I've seen K-pop classes.
And then, yeah, I think some sort of a slower... Maybe it was a jazz-style dance.
I'm not an expert, so I don't know.
But yeah, they were busy.
So I think... technically speaking, dancing is not a type of 运动 or 体育 yet.
For instance, we know street dancing 街舞, street dancing.
Street dancing is already included in some of the sports games.
And also, when people sign up for these kind of courses, they have a purpose of exercising.
So it That's why it's hard to define whether or not dancing is part of 体育.
And sometimes, by the way, people put 体育运动 together.
Just, you know, Chinese people sometimes like four-syllable words.
So 体育运动 is sports or exercising.
And there's also a word like 锻炼.
Both 锻炼 carries the meaning of refine.
So, for example, make iron into steel.
You make...
Get out the unwanted element and make the wanted element more focused and more concentrated.
So that would refer to like making your body stronger and harder and faster.
It's exercising.
What was that one again?
锻炼。 锻炼。 We say 锻炼身体。 锻炼身体。 Yes, 锻炼身体 is like making your body stronger.
Okay.
In the sense of getting rid of the fat.
And making your muscles stronger, bigger, bulkier.
So there are so many different words.
And when it comes to a sports game, we usually say 运动会.
运动会.
You can think of it, 会 is meeting.
You can think of it as a meeting where everybody move, move, move.
Like a match, you mean?
Or some type of competition?
Like a games competition.
The kind of games with a lot of different sports, for example, the Olympic Games or the Asia Games or the National Games of China.
And why do you bring that up?
Because the National Game of China is going to start on November the 9th in 2025.
And it's in the Greater Bay Area.
What a great place to hold that event.
So we're going to talk about the National Games today.
Maybe a couple of examples of what's happening within those games.
Because it's not like the Olympics.
We have different types of sports in there.
Yes, definitely.
And National Games... of China is called 全运会.
全运会.
全 stands for 全国, the entire country.
全 is the entire, and 国 is the country.
So the entire country is 运动会, a sports games for the entire country.
Yeah, it's an exciting event for sure.
Yes, it is.
全运会.
And we talked about this year's national games, which is the 15th national games.
It's in the 关东
Hong Kong, Macau Greater Bay Area.
It's in Chinese 粤港澳 大湾区, so 粤 stands for Guangdong Province and 港 is Hong Kong 香港, and 澳 is 澳门, Macau.
So 粤港澳, the Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macau 大湾区大 is big and in English it's greater.
And 湾区 is a bay area, so greater bay area.
The Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macau, greater bay area.
粤港澳大湾区.
That's a long one.
That is a long one.
And here in China, if you say 大湾区, people basically understand you.
Oh, okay, 大湾区.
大湾区, so the greater bay area.
It's a really good area.
I've visited the 粤港澳大桥, the huge... bridge linking, I think it's Zhuhai and Macau.
And through that bridge it shortened the time to travel in both places from more than half an hour to 10 minutes.
Less than 10 minutes.
And you can drive through, right through.
And for those who are able to purchase a car in, for example, Macau or Hong Kong and they can drive their car right through, even though in Hong Kong you drive on the left side of the road.
Oh, do you?
Yes, yes.
It's a little bit different.
Well, when you're driving on the left side, the driver's seat would be on the right side, which would be a little bit difficult.
Have you done that before?
Yes.
It's very disorienting, though.
Very much.
You need to get accustomed to it.
It really takes time to do that.
I did that in Japan and I felt like I was driving a car for the first time in my life when I did that.
Funny question.
Do you know why Yue is Guangdong?
No.
It's okay if you don't.
Since here in China we have all these provinces and all of them have a one character nickname or easy to refer to kind of name.
And there are different reasons to designate that one character for the entire province.
Sometimes it's the first character in the official name.
For example, Heilongjiang.
Heilongjiang is in the northeast area of China.
And people call that Hei?
Yes, yes, Hei.
It's easy.
And sometimes it's because of historical reasons.
For instance, my province, Shanxi province, our short nickname is Jin.
Jin.
Jin is historically the Jin state in ancient China was in Shanxi province.
So Jin is our nickname.
I think maybe this happens a lot everywhere because I'm thinking of where I'm from.
Toronto, for example, they call it Tiao.
I think.
Oh.
Yeah, or T-Dot is a nickname.
I'm from Nova Scotia, so it's referred to as NS sometimes.
Ah.
And then in America, like Alabama, they'll call it Bama.
Yes.
Different reasons and different types of nicknames.
New York is NYC.
Well, that is... Or the Big Apple.
That's a different kind of nickname, though.
That's a different type of nickname.
And the reason nicknames are quite important in...
China is that these nicknames are used in a lot of different scenarios, especially when naming, for example, a major highway or a major railway, and that the ending and opening of the railway is in two of these provinces or two cities.
If you name it as, for example, Beijing Jiu Long Tie Lu, it's just really long.
But if you call it Jing Jiu Tie Lu, We like to shorten things.
Now you must have noticed, we shorten the names so that it's easier for people to say it and use it in different scenarios.
Yeah, makes sense.
I didn't notice that because I didn't realize it was shortened from different words.
But again, that happens in different languages, too.
But that's good to know.
But interestingly, they take the Jing from Beijing, not the Bei.
Because 北 is north.
North is considered a bit too, with too many meanings, right?
And 京 means capital.
Capital, it also makes sense.
And here for 广东 province, this is also a bit more complicated.
For example, it has something to do with history.
It also has something to do with different characters using similar pronunciations.
In a certain period in history.
The character 月, which was a name for a group of people living in the Guangdong area, has been misused, as the other Yue and people continue using it for really long, and they decided to stick with it.
So now it's this character 粤 for the Guangdong area, but it's also very, very useful.
For example, when we talk about Cantonese food or Guangdong style food, we say 粤菜 菜 is dish or vegetable, but here it means dish.
So cuisine, Guangdong cuisine is 粤菜, and Cantonese, the language is 粤語.
Yes.
So these are all examples of how it is important to have a so-called nickname or one character name for these provinces.
I feel like we've gotten off track.
A little bit.
Apologies to our audience.
We're supposed to be talking about sports here.
But the sports game is.
In the Yueganghao Greater Bay Area.
So it's important to know about the area.
And in that area, people eat Yueyue.
Yes, yes.
Yeah, they talk in Yueyu.
They eat Yuecai, the Cantonese food.
So yeah, knowing a little bit, you know, knowledge adjacent to the theme is also important.
Yes.
And the greater.
And since we're already a little bit off topic, allow me to also include this information.
That is, the Yue Gang Da Wan Qu.
The greater Bay Area is the largest and most populated urban area in the world, with a total population of around 86 million people.
Surrounding the Pearl River Delta, it is the largest and the richest economic region in South China.
The cities are definitely livable and they have different characters.
Some cities are very tech-savvy, industry-driven.
Some are quite so clean and new.
And some are very international.
And I think it's a great place to visit.
And if you happen to visit the Greater Bay Area during the National Games, you are in much treat because there are so many different fun events, fun sports games, demonstrated even.
And of course, people compete. within this period of time.
I think for the national games, like Steve has just said, the games or the sports events are very much different from the Olympic Games or the Asia Games.
One of the sports that stood out to me was orienteering.
Orienteering, and what is that?
Orienteering is where you have a destination and...
The goal is to get to that destination as fast as you can.
And there are check marks or checkpoints, excuse me, checkpoints along the way.
So places to stop.
Yeah, where you have to, like I don't know, maybe punch your card or something to prove that you've checked in at that specific location.
But it's kind of a combination of, like cross-country running with hiking, with whatever you want to call it, where the goal is to get to that place as fast as you possibly can.
It's a real fun way to exercise.
Is the locations that I'm checking in as well as the destination in the city, or it's in a certain venue, a sports venue?
I've never heard of it being done indoors.
Not to say that it can't be, but to me it wouldn't make sense if it were done indoors.
Indoors because again, the goal is to reach your destination as quickly as possible.
Now, this can be done in a non-competitive way, and you can do it throughout a city if you want to.
But the point here is this is that there are checkpoints along the way to your destination, but you don't have to follow a specific path to those checkpoints.
You can go whichever way you you like that is interesting and hard to manage from the host the city's point of view you have your map so a standard course it has a beginning of course but then it has its control points like its flags or its electronic devices or whatever those would be your checkpoints i guess and then you've got your finish line and those checkpoints they have to be visited You don't have to follow a specific path to get to those checkpoints.
You got to figure it out the fastest way you think you can get there.
So the beginning point can be in, for example, Hong Kong and the destination can be in Guangzhou.
Oh, I'm not sure where the start line is and where the finish line is.
But yeah, it could, I mean, it could be anywhere.
You could have your start line be in Beijing and your finish line be in Nova Scotia, Canada.
If I'm not allowed to use transportation, that'll be a bit hard.
Yeah, right.
So the equipment for this particular sport, you have a detailed map and you have a compass.
And I don't have a taxi money for it.
No.
Okay, I get the gist of it.
And in Chinese, by the way, I just checked, it's called 定向越野.
定向越野.
Yue Ye.
Ding means decided or determined.
And Xiang is actually destination.
So I think in this scenario, it's not a decided direction.
It's more like a decided destination.
But the general direction is clear.
And Yue Ye is cross-country.
So it makes sense, right?
You're crossing countries.
Yeah.
I don't think for these national games, they'll be crossing countries.
No, no, no.
But it absolutely can be.
And it's a fun way because you've got the exercise aspect of it.
But then you've got the mental challenge of strategy making, strategy making.
And if you choose a wrong path, with obstacles in front of you, what do you do?
Do you go back around or do you try to overcome those obstacles right in front of you?
So there's a lot of decision-making.
And that is so cool because, if you think about it, the entire city or, if we're being very ambitious, the entire Greater Bay Area is the sport venue for the sports.
And when we say starting line or starting point, in Chinese it's 起点.
Qi means 开始 or 起始.
起始 is starting and 点 is point and finish line.
In Chinese, it's finish point.
It's 终点.
终点.
So 起点 and 终点 is the starting line and the finishing line.
And 定向越野, oh, I need to explain this, because even though 越野 is cross country, in Chinese it's not.
In Chinese 越 occurs the meaning of cross, get across, and 野 is filled.
Different types of landscape, different types of field, right.
It makes sense, right?
So even though we say 定向越野, we say it's cross-country and in national games it's not cross-country.
But in Chinese it makes sense, because you are going to cross different types of landscape or in the city's situations.
The other cool thing about this sport orienteering, is that it can be adapted for cross-country skiing, right.
It can be adapted for mountain biking.
So you can include different athletics or different forms of exercise into the orienteering itself.
Yes.
Fun, right?
I know why it's included in the national games.
It's exciting.
And it's very particularly exciting for those residents living in the greater Bay area.
You are going to work in a rush and someone is more in a rush next to you because they are the athlete.
You have to watch that TV show, the amazing race.
I think you would really love it, because what they do there is, for example okay Okay, so the start line is in Beijing.
And the first leg of the race is you have to get to this landmark in Tokyo.
That's leg number one.
And when you arrive at that landmark, there will be your next clue about where you need to go.
And then the host says, okay.
Go.
And then people get on their phones and they're trying to catch a taxi to the airport.
And then in the taxi, they're trying to book flights.
They're trying to find the fastest flight to get to Tokyo.
Very competitive and intense.
Oh, it's super intense.
And people fight.
Oh, the partners.
That's what I was about to ask.
Oh, the drama is intense because they're screaming at each other.
You said we have to take a taxi, but we didn't get there.
Like that kind of intensity.
Oh, that'll be so fun.
And the other fun part of that is you get to see the cities and the countries that they've go-to for their travel experience.
You're right.
I think I would love that show.
I would go definitely check it out.
And besides that, this game can be super competitive.
And because there are so many different factors, you are winning or losing with so many reasons.
And it's really easy to regret a certain decision, like you said, and maybe to blame your partner.
And that, in my opinion, is also quite important in sports games.
Because Everyone wants to be a winner, which, by the way, is 赢.
赢.
赢 means to win.
And 胜者 or 胜利者 is a winner.
So 胜利 is also win, but it's the modern day win, 胜利.
And 输 is to lose.
输. Like book.
Same pronunciation.
Okay, okay.
And 输家... would be someone who loses.
赢家 and 输家, 胜利者 and 失败者, 失败 is fail.
So 赢家 输家 胜利者 失败者, these are the winners and losers, not to call names, it's just, you know losers, in a game.
But I think once someone is devoted in sports for long enough, they started to realize the resilience comes more from losing.
We need to take losses seriously, because unless you're just that good, no one's that good that you always win, and you even win in a global scale.
Even you are one of the best athletes in the world, you can't always win.
Are you a sore loser?
I could be, depending on the games we're talking about.
Depending on the competition.
Yes, yes.
Yeah, I think you're right.
You could argue that there's more to be learned losing than winning.
You have to learn that you can't win every single time.
You have to learn how to deal with disappointment, with regret, with heartache, all of those things that come with defeat.
And I think that's why a lot of parents here in China started to think that one type of sport game is definitely necessary in the bringing up of a child.
100%.
And I think yeah, individual sports are also great, but team sports are.
There's so many extra benefits than just the exercise itself.
It teaches the kid to know how to strive for For the best, for the Jin Pai, the gold medal.
Jin Pai.
Jin Pai.
Jin is gold.
Pai is the medal.
So Jin Pai.
But also know how to restart after maybe a failure.
Yeah, I remember when I was a kid, my dad was my ice hockey coach.
And our team lost the game because one of our players he put the hockey puck into our net by mistake.
Oh, in Chinese, we have a name for it.
We call it Wulong.
Wulong.
Like Wulong Chao?
Yes.
Wulong means you did something for the opposite team.
Oh.
It's specifically for that.
Okay.
So that's what happened.
And we lost the game because of that.
And we were in the parking lot, walking to our car.
I'll never forget this.
And I said to my dad, oh, I'm so mad because, you know, we lost because of him.
If he didn't do that, we wouldn't have lost.
And he stopped me in my tracks.
And he said, you never ever say that.
You win as a team and you lose as a team.
One individual does not lose the game.
That's very wise.
I was like five.
So I was like.
A bit too deep for you.
I was like, can we get into McDonald's?
But that's the thing when you play sports game, especially team sports, you learn about things that you might not even be able to comprehend at that, But that's the life lesson that you can benefit from your entire life.
And those lessons are applicable when you're five years old or 25 years old or 65 years old.
Definitely.
And that's another beauty of sports.
But besides that, great games held in great area, the greater Bay Area, a great area.
And you have fun. the sports to enjoy, the games to watch.
You have delicious Cantonese food 粵菜 to taste, and fun Cantonese language which I cannot speak to.
You know, learn one word or two from.
And whole thing is a huge treat.
Yeah, I remember one of our first Takeaway Chinese episodes.
That was one of my questions was about Cantonese and Mandarin.
So different from each other.
I assumed that maybe they were similar somehow, and you said, no.
Either you speak one or the other, or both, maybe if you're lucky.
But if you speak one, it doesn't mean you can understand the other.
Not at all.
But you can definitely learn a little.
It's just a different language always. has a different culture and history behind it.
And I think every language is worth learning.
Yeah, it's one of the things that Canada and China share actually, because within China, within the same country, you have different languages spoken.
Just like in Canada, we have English and French spoken as well.
Yes.
And for this year's National Games.
I'm very excited to see all the different sports events and especially the orienting.
And that brings us to the end of today's Takeaway Chinese.
I'm Niu Honglin with Steve here in the studio.
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