In this post, I will give my readers another challenge to listen to a Mandarin Chinese audio file. If you wan to take a reading challenge, read my post: Mandarin Chinese Reading Challenge: Holidays in America.
Do you love riddles? I love riddles. When I was little, I like reading riddles all the time. Most of time, I was right.
I guess I am a smart person? Well, I might be”王婆卖瓜，自卖自夸 ( wáng pó mài guā ，zì mài zì kuā )”.
So what does “王婆卖瓜，自卖自夸” mean? There is a story about this saying.
It was said, there was a man whose name was “王坡 ( wáng pō )”. He was very talkative. People gave him a nickname: 王婆 ( wáng pó ). It means he talked a lot just like a woman.
I guess, since 王坡 sounds very like 王婆, maybe this is another reason why people gave him this nickname?
王坡’s hometown was in current 新疆 ( xīn jiāng ) area but he moved to 河南 ( hé nán ) because of the war.
王坡 was a farmer. He sold hami mellow (哈密瓜) ( hā mì guā ) on the street.
However, people in 河南 area knew little of this kind of mellow. In order to sell his sweet hami mellows, unlike his fellow vendors who just sat quietly at the stand waiting for customers to stop by, 王坡 kept showing off and talking about how good his mellows were to the people coming by.
You can imagine, 王坡 had a good business. However, for some unknown reasons, the saying “王婆卖瓜，自卖自夸 ” later became a negative comment for someone who likes to show off.
Remember? In Chinese culture, being modest is a merit. If someone likes to boast how good he is, people will laugh at him rather than agree with him.
However, in western culture, it is different. If you read my post My Tips for Learning a Foreign Language, you might learned about my PHD program application story.
So when to use this saying “王婆卖瓜，自卖自夸”?
- When you joke about yourself like I did at the beginning of this post.
- Laugh at someone who likes to show off.
- Sarcastic comment for someone or something that is overrated.
Now take the challenge to see if you understand the audio file. It is read by my son Big Wen.
By the way, since I recorded on the cell phone, the quality might not be that good.
You can tell, Big Wen’s tones are good. If you wish to improve your tones pronunciation as well, pleas read my post: How to Pronounce Mandarin-Chinese Tones.
不是我“王婆卖瓜，自卖自夸”，我觉得这篇关于声调发音的文章很有用，希望对你有所帮助。(I hope I don’t show off like wang po, I feel this article about tones pronunciation is very useful, hope it is helpful to you.)
This audio is about a riddle. If you are a riddle fan, please read my post to learn another famous Chinese riddle: Chinese Ancient Poem: Painting.
Now listen to the audio carefully. To help you, I put the audio text and answer at the bottom of this post.
Audio text: 一个宝宝，圆头圆脑，拍一拍，跳一跳，拍得越重，跳得越高。
The answer is: ball (球) (qiú ).