Naxi script resource centre

First of all, many apologies for my extended leave of absence from Naxi blogging. Has it really been four months?

I’ve always wanted to translate some more examples of secular Dongba text as there are plenty of people who still believe the script to be not much more than a ritual tool. The following text (essentially a record of a prescription payment) was collected and published by Naxi scholar Yu Suisheng 喻遂生 in his Naxi Dongbawen Yanjiu Conggao 纳西东巴文研究丛稿 (pp 264-66). It is an extract from the notebook of an old Dongba priest, who would jot down notes to help him remember important pieces of information. The text is not dated, but is a good example of everyday use of the script.

(more…)

I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time, but work, and an increasingly busy schedule, have been constantly getting in the way.

I noticed on a recent trip to Lijiang that the shop signs along some of the city’s major shopping streets have all been redone – now with added Dongba script – sometime over the past half year. Previously a majority of shops in the old town proper had shop names translated into the Dongba script on their signs, but now most of the shops on Minzhu Road 民主路 (a busy new-town thoroughfare that loops round the western edge of the old town) boast Dongba script on their signage as well. I assume this is the result of local government policy.

This is interesting because many major brands have been forced to come up with Dongba names, but it’s also slightly irrelevant because the vast majority of people will have no idea what the script says.

(more…)

It’s not often that I manage to see any Dongba script whilst out and about (especially when I’m not in Lijiang), but it is sometimes used by designers in China for its unique aesthetic qualities.

I was fairly surprised to see what looked like Dongba characters on an advert whilst riding the bus (on one of those horrid bus televisions) over the Qiantang River in Hangzhou, advertising the new Hangzhou Taobao/Koubei discount card. So as soon as I got home I did a quick check on the internet, and lo and behold, the card design has five Dongba characters representing the Chinese 吃喝玩乐行, or, eat, drink, play, have fun, travel.

Everyone in China will already know all about Taobao (an online marketplace) and Koubei (an online review site). The card allows you to get discounts in various stores across Hangzhou, and you can accumulate points that can then be exchanged for goodies, or so I gather.

There are a few differences in these characters to the ones in my IME (based on those collected in Fang Guoyu’s dictionary), for example the character they use for ‘drink’ depicts someone sitting down and the beverage is distinctly tea, but they are all completely recognisable.

We have (from top, clockwise):

dzər33, sing

dʑə21, travel

ts’o33, dance

dzɪ33, eat

t’ɯ33, drink

I can’t find any high res images of the card, and I’m probably not going to be getting one myself, but here’s a low res version:

(Note the ‘VIP’ in gold letters; the acronym has been so devalued of late in China that it’s basically meaningless now).