Expert: Terry Thatcher Waltz - 8/25/2004

Question
Dear Doc, I am teaching myself Chinese and know several hundred characters... Would you be so kind as to translate the Chineses characters that are written around the outside of a rice bowl that I have...they read WAN JIANG WU SHOU ( I am no shure which word comes first)! Mant thanks

Answer
Hi Tom,
Thanks for your question. I'm sure you will have a great time learning Chinese! It is such a neat language to know.

Now, though, I can't tell you what your bowl says without seeing the characters. As you probably already know, there are many characters that have the same pronunciation in Chinese, plus in this case you're not sure which word is first, and that makes a lot of combinations! (A native speaker MIGHT be able to guess it better, but in this case I rather doubt it.)

Can you possibly attach a photo of your bowl? If I can see it, I'll be happy to try to tell you what it has to say. :-)

Best regards
Terry