itinerant space

Three of Them & Me
Rowena Liangru Lu

We all have our names, in many ways, names mark the existence of something and somebody. Before any name existed, the world was in an organic chaos, you and me and the stars and grasses were one cloud of matter, a (~~~). The moment we were named, the cloud was neatly separated into chunks, we were thus able to distinguish you and me and the stars and grasses. Name is the threshold between 0&1, between the world of chaos and order, anonymous and identified.

Both of my parents were from rural China. In rural China, every child gets a name at birth, this name shall not be serious, as in old times, because of war, hunger, disease, many children cannot make it too far. Only when the family is confident that this child is going to grow up, they start to name the child seriously. The very first name in Chinese is called Nai-Name (milk name), similar to a childhood pet name. It is usually either very spontaneous, reflecting the parents’ very present moment like ‘Winter Cold’, ‘Wind Blow’, ‘Cherry Blossom’, ‘Dog Woof’… or directly appropriated from one common system, like NiuNiu’s name:

NiuNiu

NiuNiu was born in 1997, the year of OX (written as ‘牛’ and pronounced as ‘niu’ in mandarin) , that’s where her name came from. Many children born in the OX year are named as NiuNiu. The pronunciation stays the same, while the writing differs according to the child’s gender. If it’s a boy, his name will be written as ‘牛’, exactly the same as OX in written Chinese. If it’s a girl, the name will be ‘妞’, the character consists of two parts ‘女’ (girl) and ‘丑’ (ugly) – ugly girl. Once NiuNiu learnt to write her name and figured out its meaning, she was disappointed.

“Why do you name me as ugly girl?” She asked her mom.
“When a girl is too pretty, it’s like a tree outgrows the forest, it’ll attract storms, and storm will be its undoing. Ugly girl is like a little bush, it grows slowly and silently, down to the ground, thus its life is stable, unthreatened. Ugly girls are lucky girls.” Her mom told her.

She was not so convinced by this piece of Chinese wisdom; she still doesn’t want to be an ugly girl.

LiangRu

NiuNiu was a healthy and bright kid, there’s no sign that she would die young. So soon comes the point when her parents need to create a serious formal name for her identity registration. At the very beginning, on her identity card, NiuNiu’s formal name was BoYang (waves lifting). The name captures an image of waves rising and swelling, maybe her parents got inspiration from their walk on the beach. It was a very common Chinese name, even a little boring, especially for a coastal town like NiuNiu’s hometown. It is very possibly because the image of ‘waves rising and swelling’ is part of local residents’ daily lives, thus a very natural source of inspiration. Her parents soon abandoned the name before NiuNiu went to elementary school. They’ve never told her why they changed it, but NiuNiu assumes that it was advised by a fortune teller that the name ‘BoYang’ wouldn’t do her any good.

The involvement of fortune tellers in the naming process is a common practice in China. In many ways, Chinese names are not given, but composed, a product of rigorous calculation.
Inherited from ancestors and evolving throughout time, Chinese fortune tellers have developed a methodology of naming rooted in a system called WuXing. Resembling alchemy in Western culture, WuXing organises the world into five dynamic elements: metal, wood, water, fire and earth. Everything is believed to carry their own elemental configuration, including language and people. A fortune teller can calculate the kid’s elemental configuration based on the kid’s exact time and location of birth. According to this calculation, they may identify which element is lacking or excessive in the child’s profile, and then select characters for the name that help restore balance.
Besides elemental configuration, other factors are also taken into consideration in the naming process, like the number of strokes in each character, the kids’ lucky number, even the location of the ancestor’s graveyard…

So, after a complicated calculation, NiuNiu’s parents got a long list of characters that could potentially be used for each character in her name. From them, they eventually picked ‘俍’ and ‘汝’, pronounced as LiangRu.

NiuNiu’s parents have never explained the meaning of LiangRu to her. NiuNiu only realised how beautiful the name is when she tried to explain it to a friend she met in Canada. LiangRu means ‘bless you’ in ancient Chinese. The idea is that whenever people call her by her name, NiuNiu receives blessings. NiuNiu cannot remember which year was LiangRu born, but it seems not as important. To NiuNiu, Liangru was born only because the government needs an official name on her identity card.

As the name ‘俍汝 (LiangRu)’ is written in ancient Chinese, not many people have seen the characters before. It’s not easy to write, nor is it easy to pronounce. So just for ease, many people would intentionally avoid calling NiuNiu as LiangRu, because acknowledging the fact that they don’t recognise the character could be embarrassing.

PangHu

As NiuNiu’s mom wished for, she actually grew into an ugly girl in her teenage years. Her body was craving for food, delicious food. She became a regular visitor of snake stores, always lingering around among the shelves of cookies, spicy sticks, ice cream, soft drinks… She soon puffed up, like a balloon.

In 2011, NiuNiu entered the second year of middle school in a local public school in her hometown. In the classroom, forty wooden desks were tightly arranged in pairs, every two desks formed a duo, five duos formed a row, then four rows together formed a class. The teacher was in charge of assigning seats at the beginning of each semester; it was a very standardised communist system.

NiuNiu didn’t like the desk-mate assigned to her that year, he was naughty and mean. Having arguments with the desk-mate became a daily activity for NiuNiu.

One day, during their argument, NiuNiu’s desk-mate said mockingly: “Look at you, you are so Pang (fat), and you are so Hu (tiger-ry), you should be called PangHu.” At that very moment, PangHu (fat-tiger) was born, she was born in the unbridled laughter of her classmates. In her name, ‘Pang’ means fat, and ‘Hu’ means tiger-ry, an adjective in local dialect to describe a person that is hot-headed, bold but naive. PangHu was born with anger, she cut her desk-mate’s uniform with a pair of scissors as revenge.

The next day, she was sick and asked for one day off. When she went back the following day, everybody started to call her PangHu, including the teachers. She soon figured out that during the day she was absent, the math teacher pointed at her empty desk and asked whose that was. Her desk-mate said aloud: “PangHu!” The class burst into laughter once more, this time including the teacher, who officially acknowledged PangHu’s identity. Thanks to Confucius, teachers reign undoubtable supremacy in a Chinese public school, they do something, pupils would follow. Everybody starts to call her PangHu, it’s also so much easier to pronounce than her official name ‘LiangRu’, who doesn’t love a bit of ease in their life.

PangHu hated her name until the year of 2014, when she successfully lost 50 kg of weight, one third of herself. It was a painful process, but absolutely worth it. She felt like a new-born, people in high school still called her PangHu, but she enjoyed it when people showed their confusion about her name: “Why are you called PangHu, you are not fat at all.” Then she would tell people about the story of her name and her history of being a fat ugly girl, the name ‘PangHu’ thus became a monument, marking her re-making of self.

Till today, NiuNiu’s friends would still call her ‘PangHu’, and she welcomes it, as ‘Pang’ is the trophy of success; ‘Hu’, for her, is a beautiful blessing – she wishes to be bold and naive.

Rowena

And Me? My name is Rowena, I was born in 2016, when NiuNiu decided to move to Vancouver, Canada.