Chops away

[caddyman]

Of course, today hasn't been entirely crap.

A friend of mine, Murph, teaches English as a second language in China. At the strangely named Beijing Normal University. Although because I am old fashioned about these matters, I shall now revert to the use of Peking.

Anyway, he has a friend there who makes signature chops. In effect, these are little blocks of green marble about 3" long by 1" square. His friend carves your name on the 1" square side in Chinese characters. Apparently there was some difficulty in working out how to render Bryan Lea phonetically into Chinese (Well, Bryan anyway. Lea sounds exactly like Li which is common enough in China). After a little discussion, Murph agreed a Chinese pronunciation of my name which was rather difficult since it is a whole set of sounds which are not often used by the Chinese. It seems that should I ever wash up in Peking Beijing, or other Mandarin-speaking area, I shall have to make do with being called Be-Lai-Ang Li. The three-character monstrosity that approximates my first name is luckily balanced by a very monosylabic and Chinese sounding surname, so it all actually fits on the chop.

And it all looks very nice indeed rendered in Chinese characters.

The chop comes on its own (cheapish) decorative box, and is accompanied by a little porcelain tub of thick red ink (also in its own presentation box) so I can print my name.

The chop is handmade and cost about £25 including postage from China. It's really quite an attractive little package.

Let me know if you're interested and I'll let Murph know.

Comments

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I've got one of those kicking around from when we went to Hong Kong some years back... must see if I can find it...

[jfs.livejournal.com]

If you think they had problems with Byran Lea, they'll have real issues with my name.

Not a big fan of the consonant, as I recall.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Oooh, synchronicity. My friend muckefuck the linguo-geek was just talking about this, and posted a link for figuring out your own. Apparently my first name means "Evening meat sacrifice," if I so desire. (I'm not saying I understand how it works or anything).

[thalinoviel.livejournal.com]

Or you could translate your name... after working on mine for a bit I got my first two names to translate as Talented Pearl, which I rather like. I'd like a chop with this on it in Chinese.