welcome to the house of chen

{the post title brings me back to SCA days when we sang "Upstairs at the house of Wang". oh, nostalgia sets in...}

WHEN Nu Wa fused the rocks in order to repair the heavens, she took thirty-six thousand, five hundred and one stones of enormous size from the Wu Ji Peak among the Da Huang Hills. Thirty-six thousand, five hundred of these she used, and the one solitary stone which was rejected as useless, was thrown at the foot of the Qing Geng Peak. The fusion of this stone had, however, endowed it with spiritual perception, with power of motion and of self contraction and expansion. Perceiving that all its companion stones were used for repairing the heavens, and that it only was rejected as useless and shut out from the selected ones, the stone was vexed and grieved, and passed its days and nights in pining and lamentation. One day, while the stone was thus sighing and sorrowing, a Buddhist and a Taoist priest came unexpectedly within view. Arrived at the foot of the hill, they sat down to rest and talk. Seeing the stone lying there, fresh, glossy, bright and smooth, contracted to about the size of a fan handle, they were immensely pleased with it.

Taking it in his hand, the Buddhist priest said smiling, "One may see from the appearance of this stone that it is endowed with life and spiritual perception, but it is without any practical value; we must engrave a few characters on it, so that men may know that it is an extraordinary stone."

"Then we will take you, Oh stone! to a brilliant and flourishing country, to a cultivated and courteous family employed in the service of the state, to a place of luxury and delight, where there are blossoming flowers and waving willows, where beauty and prosperity are supreme, we will take you there."

Great was the delight of the stone on hearing this, and it said, "But I do not yet know what words you will write upon me, or to what place you will carry me. Tell me, I pray."

The priest replied, "There is no need for you to ask, you will know all in good time," and he put the stone in his sleeve, and, together with the Taoist priest, disappeared.

Whither they went, it is impossible to say, nor is it known how many ages had passed, when a priest, seeking the truth of Metempsychosis, passed by this hill side and saw a stone with the traces of writing clearly visible on its face.

On the back of the stone was the following: --

陈 Yong Xin

You must be wondering why the stone has a mixture of a Chinese character and Latin alphabets making up hanyu pinyin of the second part of an Oriental name. Aren't we in China?

Well, because it's the quirky me at work again. Right, enough of my lousy translation skills. I'm introducing my Chinese name to all.

The 2 characters in the red squares below replaces the hanyu pinyin above.

They are derived from the full phrase of 'YONG ZAN XIN ZI', which is a line from an age-old poem.

Individually, the characters' meaning are:
YONG: sing / recite
ZAN: approve of / favour / agree with / endorse
XIN: flourishing on a happy occasion
ZI: dancer's posture and movement

That is loosely equivalent to a multi-talented singing n dancing superstar in modern terms.

And do you know that the particular 'YONG' is no longer available in modern simplified Chinese dictionaries? I had to tweak my Chinese input software to get this damned traditional character out.

So, that makes me a rare breed of superstar.