China Night (中文之夜) is an annual variety show that the students and teachers at our school put on, mostly just to give the students a fun way to use their Chinese. This year there were songs, games, comedy routines, dancing, a play, skits, crosstalk; it was really funny – I think partly because this year we could actually understand what was being said. The audience is mostly people associated with the school and their friends, plus some local university students.
Some of the acts were hilarious. In one game the students had to blow out ten candles as fast as they could by speaking vocabulary words that require aspiration (words starting with f, p, etc.), which they had to think up on their own and weren’t allowed to repeat. Another game used a line of ten people, with the first person acting out a vocabulary word for the second person, who then has to act it out for the third person, and all the way down until the last person has to guess what the vocabulary word was. One sequence that started out with “elevator” ended up with “squatty potty with no toilet paper.” We weren’t the only couple singing ridiculously cheesy love songs; the host and his wife sang the “I love you like mice love rice” song (老鼠爱大米).
Mouseover the photos to see the captions. Click them to see them bigger. We didn’t take any of these.
We sang a sappy duet (梁山伯与茱丽叶) and tried to ham it up for fun. It makes allusions to both Romeo and Juliet and the ‘butterfly lovers’ Liáng Shānbó and Zhù Yīngtái, Romeo and Juliet’s ancient Chinese equivalent. Like the Shakespeare play, they want to get married but the family says no and they end up dying. But they become butterflies fly away together after Zhù Yīngtái jumps into her lover’s tomb while on the way to her arranged marriage. (You can read more of the story here.)
Here’s the lyrics with a rough translation:
| 梁山伯与朱丽叶 / Liáng Shānbó & Juliet | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 我的心唱首歌给你听 歌词是如此的甜蜜 可是我害羞我没有勇气 对你说一句我爱你 为什么你还是不言不语 千言万语里 千言万语里 我爱你 你是我的茱丽叶 把爱 我爱你 你是我的罗密欧 美丽的爱情 |
My heart sings a song for you to hear The lyrics are so honey-sweet But I blush, I don’t have the courage To you to say the words ‘I love you’ Why do you still not speak? A thousand words in ten-thousand languages A thousand words in ten-thousand languages I love you, you’re my Juliet Hold love… I love you, you’re my Romeo Beautiful romance |
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(You can see karaoke music video here.)
Canada:
China:
Taiwan:
The States:
Ecuador:
Brazil:
Haiti:
UK:
非常有意思的夜晚~
不过“中文之夜”正规的拼音应该为“Zhong wen zhi ye”(我不会打声调)
对，我们知道。用”Yay”是一个笑话，因为”yay”跟”yeah”差不多，而且”yay”听起来像”夜”。”Yay!” 有很高兴很好玩的意思，差不多是”加油！”
可是，谢谢你帮我们学汉语。我知道我还常常写错了 。 真需要很多帮助！
那是我没弄明白你的用意。
不过这样来看，真是一个一举两得的好标题。