After I Got My New Years’ money

Chinese Title: 拿到压岁钱以后
For those of you new to Chinese culture, one thing a Chinese child most looks forward to all year is the time during Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) when they get to go ask their neighbors and other adults for red envelopes containing some money – it’s a bit like trick-or-treating for cash. This essay is about what happened to one kid’s Spring Festival haul. We’ll cover a lot of beginner grammar here.

How to Read Chinese: Simplified Mandarin Chinese Essays for ChildrenI should probably talk about a couple of points before we dive in. One is the use of the word 玩. Describing what he (or she, perhaps) does on Chinese New Year, the author says he can 玩得快活 – “play happily”. The Chinese don’t use “play” the way we do. While they do use it to mean “to play with toys” as a child does, they also use it to mean going out (like adults going out on Saturday night), or friends going out to a mall to go shopping – it’s really more of a blanket term better translated as “having fun”. So the kid is not saying they necessarily only play with toys happily on Chinese New Year, but also maybe that they go hang out at parents’ friends houses, or whatever. It’s not specified.

Another interesting point comes in here: 心里特别高兴，但是也很扫兴 – “In my heart I was extremely happy, but also very disappointed”. Note the use of the words 特别 and 很 – meaning “extremely” / “very” respectively. Thing is, in Chinese you can’t use a word like “happy” or “disappointed” without balancing it with a word measuring how happy or disappointed you were. There’s no way in general casual conversation to say “I was happy” – just regular ol’ happy. You can’t, for example, say just “我高兴“. Instead, say “I was VERY happy” 我很高兴, or “extremely happy” 我非常高兴 or “exceedingly happy” 高兴极了 or “fairly happy” 比较高兴 or whatever. So when we translate Chinese, we could actually dro the “very”s and “extremely”s and all that, because they have much less meaning in Mandarin then they do to us. This used to bug me a lot when speaking. I didn’t want to say I was “very happy” – I wasn’t. I was just normally happy. But it was finally explained to me how little that “very” actually mattered. So bear that in mind.

And another point: …收到了700余元… This means “received over 700 yuan”. Notice that the word 余, which means “over” / “more than” is written after the amount of money andbefore the actual word “yuan”. In English, this would be like saying “received 700-plus dollars”. You could also say 收到了700多元, which means the same thing.

And finally: Beware the definition I give for the word 由 here. It’s one of those grammar words that means a ton of different things in different contexts – kind of like how the English word “to” is hard to define and used often. In my definition list, I only ever show the definition relevant to this text, so you’re going to see the word 由 in many contexts in many essays and it doesn’t always mean what it means here.

过 – guò – To celebrate
不但…而且 – bù dàn…ér qiě – Not only [sthg], but also [sthg else]
压岁钱 – yā suì qián – Money Chinese children get as presents during Chinese New Years
以往 – yǐ wǎng – Before, previously
上缴 – shàng jiǎo – To give money up to higher authorities
由 – yòu – To leave something to someone (to manage / handle)
爽快 – shuǎng kuai – Straightforward
肯德基 – kěn dé jī – Kentucky Fried Chicken
苦思冥想 – kǔ sī míng xiǎng – Rack one’s brains
订 – dīng – To subscribe to (a newspaper / magazine)
献 – xiàn – To donate
勤俭节约 – qín jiǎn jié juē – Diligent and thrifty
逐渐 – zhú jiàn – Gradually
我非常喜欢过新年，因为过年不但能穿新衣服，玩得快活，而且还能收到很多的压岁钱。今年我一下子就收到了700余元压岁钱，我拿着压岁钱，心里特别高兴，但是也很扫兴，怕妈妈给收走了，以往的压岁钱都要上缴的，我就给妈妈商量：今年我刚满十岁，我已经长大了，希望这些压岁钱由我来保管，没想到妈妈很爽快的答应了，我心里乐的开了花。我拿到这些压岁钱，我应该怎样来花这些钱呢？买我喜欢的玩具、还有我最喜欢吃的肯德基？我苦思冥想了好几天，我打算用这些钱来买我喜欢的书籍、买一些学习用品或者订报纸、献爱心捐款……除了这些,我是决不乱花的。

我觉得这样做，不但可以从小学会勤俭节约、不乱花钱的习惯，而且还可以使我学会管理、学会生活，这样才会使我逐渐成长起来。
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I really love New Year, because [during] New Year I can not only wear new clothes, and play happily, but also I can get a lot of New Year’s money. This year in a short while I got more than 700 yuan, and holding that New Years’ money, in my heart I was extremely happy, but also my spirits were dampened, I was afraid mama would take it away from me, [because] in the past [I had to] give over my New Year’s money to the higher authorities [author means his mother here, not God], so I discussed it with mom [thus]: this year I’m fully 10 years old, I’m already a grown up, and I hope this New Year’s money can be left under my care, but I never though she’d agree so easily [lit: so frankly], and happiness bloomed in my heart like a flower. I held the New Year’s money, but what should I spend this money on? Buy a toy I like, or my favorite thing to eat, Kentucky Fried Chicken? I racked my brains for several days, and decided to use the money to buy some books I liked, buy a few school supplies or to subscribe to a newspaper, and to make a charitable donation… apart from these things, I figured I’d better not spend it recklessly [author likely means they won't spend the rest at all].

I though that doing it this way, I not only could learn to be diligent and thrifty starting in primary school, and develop careful spending habits, but also this could let me study money management, study life [skills], and this would finally let me gradually mature.