# Spring Festival And Nostalgic Champa Temples



## xiaoman (Jan 15, 2016)

This is a translated article:


Spring Festival And Nostalgic Champa Temples

        During the Spring 
Festival, I really miss those Champa Temples back home. 

        Those Champa temples were built on the hills in the outskirts of  Nha Trang, Vietnam.  With today's  advanced  architecture expertise, experts still can't explain the puzzle of the construction techniques of those tall and solemn temples with red clays and bricks built by Champa thousands of years ago.

        My parents came from Tangshan.  After settling down in Nha Trang, they sought a livelihood in a shop named Ying He Hall ran by one of my uncles.  Ying He Hall was a big building with two storeys, three storefronts in total,  which has been the landmark of Nha Trang, even till today.  Later on, my 
father opened a grocery store--Quan He, deciding to put his heart into the profitable business.  In 1960's, if you had never heard about Quan He, then you were not a Nha Tranger.

I grew up helping my father with his business. Our grocery shop was on the opposite side of a supermarket, providing convenience to everyone. We carried a variety of goods: firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea. Everything you could think of for daily life usage, you could find in our shop.  My father always said to his customers:  who said that  all the businessmen are profiteers?  We Quan He made big money honestly.  We were extremely busy at the of the year. Products such as candies, cookies and wine were especially in a great demand during that 
particular period of time.  My siblings and I were around in the store doing this and that, such as wrapping products for customers.    


After spring festival, stores usually  chose a lucky day to open again,  and some even 
postponed the opening day after the fifth day of January on the lunar calendar.  Quan He didn't do as everyone else. We opened on the January 8th on time every year, rain or shine. On the second day of January, my parents took my siblings and me to do obeisance for blessings before goddesses at the Champa temples which are a few kilometers away from where we lived.  Children were always fond of having fun. We ran and played everywhere on the hills,  I then found and was charmed by inscriptions on the two stone tablets behind one of those temples, which I had no idea what they were talking about. Several decades later, after I have turned into an old man,  I am still curious about what 
exactly those inscriptions are referring to.  Finally, I learned that  based on 
the inscriptions of Mr. Phan Thanh Giản, a Vietnamese official, a former ministry of rites, those words engraved on the two stone tablets are called Bonarga.  

Champa temples and the Bonarga will always live on in my memories plus the love from my parents, my brothers and sisters, and the love from Nha Trang.

In the West Bank,  December 14th, 
2013

Translated by Xiaoman
Writer: Xie Zhenyu, a Chinese Vietnamese writer and poet from Vietnam. 

The original version link: 
http://www.shyun-sheng.com/articles.php?t=&a=156&id=11748


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## Harper J. Cole (Jan 28, 2016)

Thank you, I'm always interested to read about other cultures. You did well with the translation; Chinese and English are very different languages, but that was entirely readable and easy to follow. 

There is a sprinkling of small mistakes and awkward uses of language; let me know if you'd like me to go through them.

HC


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## xiaoman (Jan 28, 2016)

Hi HarperCole! Yes, sure I appreciate that, please do. I am looking forward to improve. I will check later to see your advise on mistakes I made. I will try to write/translate  more.  Thank you  HarperCole! ~~


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## Harper J. Cole (Jan 29, 2016)

Here's a few things that I noticed ...




> During the Spring Festival, I really miss *those Champa Temples* back home.
> 
> *Those Champa temples* were built on the hills in the outskirts of Nha Trang, Vietnam.




It's best to avoid repetitions of phrases like this. You could replace the 2nd "Those Champa Temples" with simply "They" instead.




> *We* Quan He made big money honestly.




This word needs to be removed, I think.




> We were extremely busy at *the of* the year.




Missing word here, probably "start".




> After spring festival, stores usually chose a lucky day to open again, and some even postponed the opening day *after* the fifth day of January on the lunar calendar.




This should be "until after", as you're talking about an event being moved backwards in the calendar.




> Quan He *didn't do as everyone else*.




Perhaps a phrase like "didn't follow the herd" would work here.




> On the second day of January, my parents took my siblings and me to do obeisance for blessings before goddesses at the Champa temples which are a few kilometers away from where we lived.




You're moving on to a new topic now, so this should be the start of a new paragraph.




> I then found and was charmed by inscriptions on the two stone tablets behind one of those temples, *which* I had no idea what they were talking about.




Here "despite the fact that" would sound more natural.

HC


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