Veganism (纯素主义) in Chinese: why people say, "It's not (just) a diet".
26 February 2018 [link youtube]
A reply to Reddit on the meaning of "vegan" (纯素) in Chinese, etc.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
this video isn't part of reply to a
couple of people who got into a conversation with me on reddit about learning Chinese and being vegan in China veganism in Chinese culture and Western culture being contrasted and it's partly a video reflecting more broadly on the changing culture of the internet itself if you've talked to vegans or you've looked at vegan stuff in the internet you may or may not have heard this phrase kind of like a slogan that really rubbed some people the wrong way that really has a negative effect on some people including some vegans some vegans like to say veganism is not a diet as the significantly everything from saying veganism is not just the diet but the veganism is not a diet at all now of course veganism is a type of food but one of the reasons why some vegans say this too the sugar and or confusion of other vegans is because of this type of cultural concept this is hun as in puncha so in Chinese culture that's the traditional character that's the simplified character the the bottom half of the character at the bottom 2/3 is the same as the Chinese character for the military I got these guys on reddit writing to me saying that I was dead wrong in my use of the Chinese language I was dead wrong when I was saying about veganism first and foremost because sucia in Chinese should be contrasted to Hunza that the character I just showed you this concept of hood ironically this overlaps with one of the other things people found offensive or problematic in my earlier video in Chinese starting with veganism which is that that video openly reviles traditional Buddhist concepts that may resemble veganism but that are not in fact vegan digestion woman yo Fujio to tomliboo churro dancer Tom and Julia shang-chi the CC Infanta Yosha function to do the jewy so why would any vegan go around saying veganism is not a diet when we all know there is such a thing as a vegan restaurant the researcher thing is a vegan menu or a vegan option vegan vegan is definitely a type of food in this type of label that's on food and it's a way of eating and yet so many vegans go around saying veganism is not a diet um well the people in this reddit group were approaching me as if I don't know what I'm talking about and they know what they're talking about they're the experts because they've never googled this they've never given this five minutes of thought they're not freaking they don't care about the issue but they think from their position of expertise that I'm feeling to appreciate the opposite of vegan is Hunza and therefore I shouldn't refer to people eating animal products and using animal things animal stuff because some of the wording of my video is very vague this way I didn't use the character they were telling me to use the character and cultural concepts on news which is again hon Chun soo Xiang Bo dowdy Shoshanna Chun soo Yong ho Joe Shibuya man hodong hodong C sahib usual noon I didn't roll you shell Matranga cha da da da chuan da dong goo da dong Shi Quan boo no boo Yong su e P yang mal from me Jessie dough boo Yong but this character is not what you think it is it's really quite antithetical to both the theory and practice of veganism all right now point out reply oh yeah you think I should be using this character one leather shoes leather shoes were discussed in my earlier video or leather shoes hun or sue it's totally outside of this cultural paradigm right sucia the idea of eating sue in Buddhist culture Confucian culture traditional Chinese culture this concept doesn't challenge in any way the use of leather what about riding horses with a Zhang Zhang Disha Shanda mega Guo Jia Jie mama Naga goo GAA o ma na Go Go G Ibuki in Tsui Pookie Zhang son rather Jedi Jia Shula woman Busia Chima woman busu Yau her noona hicieron Chan Chan Chan soo ji sugar ghoul to thankfui danxia jjigae gender Joe sure see and I won t to Diane so riding horses came up and this was another thing that offended or confused some people from the reply a point out that if you have a really vegan Society nobody's riding horses nobody's using horses in this way exploitation domesticated animals is also country to veganism but it's not contrary to this concept of fun and then on the flip side of that there are plenty of foods that are vegan that if he ins do eat but that are excluded by this concept of horn honcho okay so of traditional Buddhists would reject as Winship would reject as not acceptable for a Buddha said they will reject garlic they able to reject onions they would reject a list of vegetables that I could tell you the origin of this and Buddhism it's really based on both a mistranslation and a misunderstanding of something in Pali and Sanskrit in ancient Indian Buddhism of course Buddhists in India all ate garlic still to this day Buddhist in India eat garlic but Buddhists in China due to this myths and misunderstanding and mistranslation they think that Buddhism requires you to refuse to eat garlic right now of course from a vegan perspective garlic is entirely vegan whereas leather shoes are not riding horses it's not and on all of these issues I got these really self-righteous sanctimonious people who believe their level of Chinese is better than mine and it probably is better than mine probably the people writing to me they speak Chinese better than I do they've studied Chinese longer than I have I've studied for seven months okay I studied for seven months in Kunming at a very high level of intensity and you know relative to the level when I arrived in the school many of the teachers said it was basically astounding how fast I rose to the level that I'm now at which is a level where I can you know answer normal questions and buy groceries and go to restaurants and read the menu and complain to the waiter is this or is this not vegan because if you are vegan even if you speak Chinese at a really low level of ability the thing you are most practiced in most adept in is exactly explaining to waiters and other other waiters and people in grocery stores that you're vegan asking whether not for example a vegetable dumpling and it contains vegetables that are the vegetables cooked in pork fat asking these kinds of questions about trace ingredients and invisible ingredients and things explaining the concept of veganism in Chinese is the one area of this language I am vastly more practiced at than anyone else in this discussion even though I only studied Chinese for seven months and I lived there for less than two years right in this stint of time where I was studying Chinese okay I did actually live in China during other periods of my life but during those other periods I was studying other languages like lotion Cambodian poly I was not studying Chinese as a language during the earlier prayers my life in which I lived in Taiwan Hong Kong right so this is the kind of fundamental problem I encountered with the internet again and again reproachful self-appointed experts I posted this video my earlier video on veganism in Chinese in reddit in the first place just with the humble statement hey I'm vegan I'm studying Chinese and I'm trying to meet other people who are the same other people with the same interest I'm trying to meet other vegans who are studying Chinese or you could say other students learning Chinese who also have to be vegan I'm just looking people I didn't claim to be an expert I didn't claim to be flew into the language I just said I was a student and when people asked me how long have you been studying and they sometimes asked in an insulting way one guys later deleted his comment he said my elocution was terrible how long have I been studying the language I was like oh well when I made that video and all I've been studying for a couple of months that was me halfway through myself months of education in the language so no I don't have things to be an expert what have you but for those of us who are trying to use the internet in a sincere way to make connections to make something positive happen to cooperate in Clevedon that's what this particular reddit group is created for it's for language exchange in language learning right to deal with this kind of cynical hostility from self exploring it with some foreign experts who never even looked into it I had this one guy of approaching me at length claiming that riding horses is vegan and therefore my video makes no sense and Rebecca say no no this is one of the differences between vegan and being nearly vegetarian vegans don't just oppose eating smeet like killing horse news meat we also oppose domesticating and riding the horse we domestic castrating the horse it's head of etc they're all these other things we oppose any kind of animal use is forbidden by veganism and again that's why a lot of these Chinese terms don't fit and guys the script for that earlier video I did where I'm speaking Chinese I wrote it I wrote the original script but I handed it to two chinese professors who went through it and gave me corrections repeatedly we did several rounds of corrections on this thing and one of those two professors is herself vegan other terminology i got directly out of reading pamphlets written in chinese that provided me with examples of how chinese people themselves explain veganism in a pamphlet when one chinese person is trying to convince another to become vegan so you know the fact that i use terms like animal product instead of contrasting this traditional concept of hood concha please you know please what is the point anyway look for some people the internet is you know a windowless room in which they can just stand alone and shout at an imaginary crowd a lot of people use tumblr that way and my girlfriend was joking the other day she was saying why do people use tumblr the hue Stumbler so that they can post their real feelings about things without anyone else knowing it like in contrast to facebook where they wanted just anonymously vent their their feelings about this is a stereotype of a tumblr tumblr is a website you can use it to express any kind of opinion you want to um but i do encounter this all the time and it is for me both saddening and kind of hilarious people try to behave as if they're experts on Buddhism when they're not people trying to behave like they're experts on veganism when they're not people try to be able if they're experts on the Chinese language when they are not and this kind of veneer of false expertise ultimately getting the way the way of the friendly and productive use of the Internet of someone like me just coming on and saying hey here's a YouTube video I made of me talking about veganism in Chinese me speaking Chinese on camera I'm vegan I'm a student I'm looking for others people with common interests who are also studying Chinese we could talk on skype we could you know practice Chinese together hit me up donnchadh Abu Honduran book nineteen JK a woman the jungle dojo in way running Buju whoo woman gun releasing dodging you Guan Zhong Zhi Jing pushes water and collaborating relevant order tonsure honduran each show yo you do Jada Robo needed ow J go rogue on girl sure here other whoa bony kernel trading Ning guy ablution
couple of people who got into a conversation with me on reddit about learning Chinese and being vegan in China veganism in Chinese culture and Western culture being contrasted and it's partly a video reflecting more broadly on the changing culture of the internet itself if you've talked to vegans or you've looked at vegan stuff in the internet you may or may not have heard this phrase kind of like a slogan that really rubbed some people the wrong way that really has a negative effect on some people including some vegans some vegans like to say veganism is not a diet as the significantly everything from saying veganism is not just the diet but the veganism is not a diet at all now of course veganism is a type of food but one of the reasons why some vegans say this too the sugar and or confusion of other vegans is because of this type of cultural concept this is hun as in puncha so in Chinese culture that's the traditional character that's the simplified character the the bottom half of the character at the bottom 2/3 is the same as the Chinese character for the military I got these guys on reddit writing to me saying that I was dead wrong in my use of the Chinese language I was dead wrong when I was saying about veganism first and foremost because sucia in Chinese should be contrasted to Hunza that the character I just showed you this concept of hood ironically this overlaps with one of the other things people found offensive or problematic in my earlier video in Chinese starting with veganism which is that that video openly reviles traditional Buddhist concepts that may resemble veganism but that are not in fact vegan digestion woman yo Fujio to tomliboo churro dancer Tom and Julia shang-chi the CC Infanta Yosha function to do the jewy so why would any vegan go around saying veganism is not a diet when we all know there is such a thing as a vegan restaurant the researcher thing is a vegan menu or a vegan option vegan vegan is definitely a type of food in this type of label that's on food and it's a way of eating and yet so many vegans go around saying veganism is not a diet um well the people in this reddit group were approaching me as if I don't know what I'm talking about and they know what they're talking about they're the experts because they've never googled this they've never given this five minutes of thought they're not freaking they don't care about the issue but they think from their position of expertise that I'm feeling to appreciate the opposite of vegan is Hunza and therefore I shouldn't refer to people eating animal products and using animal things animal stuff because some of the wording of my video is very vague this way I didn't use the character they were telling me to use the character and cultural concepts on news which is again hon Chun soo Xiang Bo dowdy Shoshanna Chun soo Yong ho Joe Shibuya man hodong hodong C sahib usual noon I didn't roll you shell Matranga cha da da da chuan da dong goo da dong Shi Quan boo no boo Yong su e P yang mal from me Jessie dough boo Yong but this character is not what you think it is it's really quite antithetical to both the theory and practice of veganism all right now point out reply oh yeah you think I should be using this character one leather shoes leather shoes were discussed in my earlier video or leather shoes hun or sue it's totally outside of this cultural paradigm right sucia the idea of eating sue in Buddhist culture Confucian culture traditional Chinese culture this concept doesn't challenge in any way the use of leather what about riding horses with a Zhang Zhang Disha Shanda mega Guo Jia Jie mama Naga goo GAA o ma na Go Go G Ibuki in Tsui Pookie Zhang son rather Jedi Jia Shula woman Busia Chima woman busu Yau her noona hicieron Chan Chan Chan soo ji sugar ghoul to thankfui danxia jjigae gender Joe sure see and I won t to Diane so riding horses came up and this was another thing that offended or confused some people from the reply a point out that if you have a really vegan Society nobody's riding horses nobody's using horses in this way exploitation domesticated animals is also country to veganism but it's not contrary to this concept of fun and then on the flip side of that there are plenty of foods that are vegan that if he ins do eat but that are excluded by this concept of horn honcho okay so of traditional Buddhists would reject as Winship would reject as not acceptable for a Buddha said they will reject garlic they able to reject onions they would reject a list of vegetables that I could tell you the origin of this and Buddhism it's really based on both a mistranslation and a misunderstanding of something in Pali and Sanskrit in ancient Indian Buddhism of course Buddhists in India all ate garlic still to this day Buddhist in India eat garlic but Buddhists in China due to this myths and misunderstanding and mistranslation they think that Buddhism requires you to refuse to eat garlic right now of course from a vegan perspective garlic is entirely vegan whereas leather shoes are not riding horses it's not and on all of these issues I got these really self-righteous sanctimonious people who believe their level of Chinese is better than mine and it probably is better than mine probably the people writing to me they speak Chinese better than I do they've studied Chinese longer than I have I've studied for seven months okay I studied for seven months in Kunming at a very high level of intensity and you know relative to the level when I arrived in the school many of the teachers said it was basically astounding how fast I rose to the level that I'm now at which is a level where I can you know answer normal questions and buy groceries and go to restaurants and read the menu and complain to the waiter is this or is this not vegan because if you are vegan even if you speak Chinese at a really low level of ability the thing you are most practiced in most adept in is exactly explaining to waiters and other other waiters and people in grocery stores that you're vegan asking whether not for example a vegetable dumpling and it contains vegetables that are the vegetables cooked in pork fat asking these kinds of questions about trace ingredients and invisible ingredients and things explaining the concept of veganism in Chinese is the one area of this language I am vastly more practiced at than anyone else in this discussion even though I only studied Chinese for seven months and I lived there for less than two years right in this stint of time where I was studying Chinese okay I did actually live in China during other periods of my life but during those other periods I was studying other languages like lotion Cambodian poly I was not studying Chinese as a language during the earlier prayers my life in which I lived in Taiwan Hong Kong right so this is the kind of fundamental problem I encountered with the internet again and again reproachful self-appointed experts I posted this video my earlier video on veganism in Chinese in reddit in the first place just with the humble statement hey I'm vegan I'm studying Chinese and I'm trying to meet other people who are the same other people with the same interest I'm trying to meet other vegans who are studying Chinese or you could say other students learning Chinese who also have to be vegan I'm just looking people I didn't claim to be an expert I didn't claim to be flew into the language I just said I was a student and when people asked me how long have you been studying and they sometimes asked in an insulting way one guys later deleted his comment he said my elocution was terrible how long have I been studying the language I was like oh well when I made that video and all I've been studying for a couple of months that was me halfway through myself months of education in the language so no I don't have things to be an expert what have you but for those of us who are trying to use the internet in a sincere way to make connections to make something positive happen to cooperate in Clevedon that's what this particular reddit group is created for it's for language exchange in language learning right to deal with this kind of cynical hostility from self exploring it with some foreign experts who never even looked into it I had this one guy of approaching me at length claiming that riding horses is vegan and therefore my video makes no sense and Rebecca say no no this is one of the differences between vegan and being nearly vegetarian vegans don't just oppose eating smeet like killing horse news meat we also oppose domesticating and riding the horse we domestic castrating the horse it's head of etc they're all these other things we oppose any kind of animal use is forbidden by veganism and again that's why a lot of these Chinese terms don't fit and guys the script for that earlier video I did where I'm speaking Chinese I wrote it I wrote the original script but I handed it to two chinese professors who went through it and gave me corrections repeatedly we did several rounds of corrections on this thing and one of those two professors is herself vegan other terminology i got directly out of reading pamphlets written in chinese that provided me with examples of how chinese people themselves explain veganism in a pamphlet when one chinese person is trying to convince another to become vegan so you know the fact that i use terms like animal product instead of contrasting this traditional concept of hood concha please you know please what is the point anyway look for some people the internet is you know a windowless room in which they can just stand alone and shout at an imaginary crowd a lot of people use tumblr that way and my girlfriend was joking the other day she was saying why do people use tumblr the hue Stumbler so that they can post their real feelings about things without anyone else knowing it like in contrast to facebook where they wanted just anonymously vent their their feelings about this is a stereotype of a tumblr tumblr is a website you can use it to express any kind of opinion you want to um but i do encounter this all the time and it is for me both saddening and kind of hilarious people try to behave as if they're experts on Buddhism when they're not people trying to behave like they're experts on veganism when they're not people try to be able if they're experts on the Chinese language when they are not and this kind of veneer of false expertise ultimately getting the way the way of the friendly and productive use of the Internet of someone like me just coming on and saying hey here's a YouTube video I made of me talking about veganism in Chinese me speaking Chinese on camera I'm vegan I'm a student I'm looking for others people with common interests who are also studying Chinese we could talk on skype we could you know practice Chinese together hit me up donnchadh Abu Honduran book nineteen JK a woman the jungle dojo in way running Buju whoo woman gun releasing dodging you Guan Zhong Zhi Jing pushes water and collaborating relevant order tonsure honduran each show yo you do Jada Robo needed ow J go rogue on girl sure here other whoa bony kernel trading Ning guy ablution