Post-Pause Expression: Please Join us.

By You-Sheng Li

Read the Article, and Think out the Best English Post-Pause

Expression. Here is my example: Salmon jumps into the oven……It smells fishy.

( website: http://taoism21cen.com )

From 1966 to 1976, China isolated herself from the world in order to concentrate

all her energy on the so-called Great Cultural Revolution, a radical political

campaign alien to the rest of the world. In 1970, the famous American writer and

journalist, Edgar Snow (1905-1972) visited China again. His last visit was in 1964

before the Cultural Revolution.

When he was with Mao Zedong, the founder of Communist China, on the balcony

of Tian An Men on the Chinese national day, they both watched millions of Mao's

worshipers marching in front of Mao, shouting, “Ten thousand years to Chairman

Mao!” Mao was worshiped as a living God during the Cultural Revolution.

Snow asked Mao, “Isn't that a personality cult? Isn't that a superstition?”

Mao was silent for a long time, and then said, “If there is no God, people will

create one. If you call it a personality cult, a superstition, it is everywhere in world

including the West.” Mao apparently lacked knowledge of the West and thought

the Western people are the same as Chinese people.

In his book, Mao, A Biography, Ross Terrill gives vivid descriptions of this

Chinese living God, Mao's bitter life in his later years, lonely, being worshiped but

deserted. Terrill concludes, the time of the hero is over, and people live their life

without a hero. Unfortunately, Terrill isn't right yet. In a recent trip to China, I

noticed a little Mao's statue dangling on a colourful pendant in front of the taxi

driver seat. The driver, a young man, said, Mao's statue has the magic power to

protect people from any tragic events such as traffic accidents. The driver is

apparently one of those Chinese who are unhappy, because their present

national leaders are not Godlike enough. There is apparently a cultural gap

between the Chinese and the West. Mao called Edgar Snow the old friend of

Chinese people, since he visited Mao’s China many times since the 1930s and

was the first Western writer who introduced Mao to the West. Edgar Snow’s

special experience with China was apparently not enough to bridge the cultural

gap. The following is one of their misunderstandings, which will be fun for us to

learn.

Once the Chinese Communist leader, Mao told Snow: I am a monk holding an

umbrella. The next day all newspapers of the Western world carried Mao's

remarks but not a single reader understood what Mao really meant by those

words. Most people thought Mao was an elderly lonely man holding an umbrella
in a gloomy rain. In the Western mind, absolute power brings the incurable

disorder: loneliness, and Mao got them both. But a Chinese school boy would

understand that Mao's message through those words was to tell the world: I am

the guy who respects neither law nor God 无法(髮)无天.

Here Mao used a Chinese expression named post-pause expression 歇后语.

Such expression is popular in walks of low class such as peasants, urban

labourers, and even gangsters. Foreigners who study Chinese may never come

cross such expression except for they read certain modern novels rich of local

dialects. In a conversation, the speaker wants to use a well known idiomatic

phrase to illustrate his point. In stead of saying this phrase directly, the speaker

gives a clue like a riddle with the phrase as the answer. After a pause to see the

listener's reaction, he may and may not speak out the answer. Generally

speaking, the speaker will not give out the answer phrase if he thinks the listener

knows it already from his clue. The speaker can also improvise new ones during

conversation when in such case the speaker has certainly to provide the answer

after the pause. It is still a popular game among certain youngsters who speak

such expression as a contest. Two to four players standing in a circle facing each

other, in turn each speaks a post-pause expression for an ongoing conversation

with the latter as a reply to the former one. In such a game the players often have

to improvise, making new post-pause expressions. When they do they have to

give the answer not like Chairman Mao who left his Western audience puzzled

for decades.
Mao only told Snow the riddle part and thought he was clever enough to know

the answer from his clue. I am certain that the translator understood the

expression but did not dare to further interpret except literally translated this living

God’s words. In China a monk means a Buddhist like Dalai Lama who shaved

this head of its hair. In Chinese hair (髮) and law (法) share the same

pronunciation, and therefore they are the same in colloquial language only

different in written forms, which were foreign to those low class labourers in

Mao's time. Like many ancient culture the Chinese worship the Sky (天) as the

major God. When a monk holds an umbrella there is neither hair nor sky, which

coincides with the Chinese idiomatic expression: neither law nor Sky (God) 无法

(髮)无天.

Post-pause expression is a way to stress part of the speech by a riddle and

answer form. Therefore, it can apply to any language though it may sound funny

when you first come cross such an expression. It will certain enrich our

conversation and make a dialogue more energetically interesting. It will also

enrich English as a language. The following is my effort to introduce such

expression into English. Can you think some more to add? Please leave it in the

Guest Book, and I will transfer it here later. On behalf of this website and its

visitors, I appreciate your help, and good luck.

***
1. What time has my shoelace gone into your hands? ...... You are pulling

my leg.

2. I am afraid your buttocks catch fire. ...... You are on the back burner.

3. Salmon jumps into the oven...... It smells fishy.

Please leave your own English post-pause expressions, and we will add them to this page
for you

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