Three Thirsty Monks
By Vincent Leung
4 minute read
There was a wonderful play written by Anchuli Felicia King called 'Golden Shield' that told the fascinating story of the struggles of a courtroom battle, suing a company that had helped to build the Great Firewall for China, leading to the arrest and detainment of many activists in China.
In it, there was a lovely, fourth-wall breaking character called 'The Translator', who not only translates Chinese to English at different points in the play for the audience, but also explained the differences in meaning for the different idioms in English and Chinese.
In the opening monologue, he compares two sayings;
“三個和尚沒水喝” (‘Three Thirsty Monks’) with “Too many cooks spoil the broth.”
Want to learn something new? Let's try to understand what that first saying means.
…
三個和尚沒水喝 -
‘The Three Thirsty Monks’
Literal translation:
三個 - Three
和尚 - Monks
沒水喝 - Without water to drink
There was once an abandoned temple at the top of a mountain - it was dirty, dilapidated, and the well was dry. A passing monk happened upon this temple, and stayed to try and help repair it.
On his own, he had to go down the mountain, bring up water to drink in two big buckets from the river, and to help fill the well for his own uses. He spent his days praying, cleaning, and bringing water up the mountain. Absolute serenity.
One day, another monk came up the mountain in a daze, looking for something to eat, and something to drink. The first monk gladly shared what he had. When they ran out of water, they both went down to get it, sharing the load between them.
A few days later, yet another monk came up the mountain looking for water (was there a water shortage? how come so many monks were thirsty??), and when he got to the temple, thirstily drank the rest of the water from the well. He also decided to stay as he recovered from his (assumed) dehydration.
However, from then on, the three monks did not get any more water for the well - nobody wanted to let the other person just get it for free, and the responsibility fell by the wayside. They would instead go and get water for themselves as required, and no-one filled up the well.
Soon afterwards, by some divine narrative providence, the temple caught fire! The monks tried to get the water from the well to help put it out but alas, - there was no water. They had to run down the mountain in the dark many times to bring water up from the river to put the fire out the entire night, slowly putting it out little by little.
Assumedly, through this bonding experience, the monks learned to live in harmony and probably instituted a rotating roster of water-fetching to the chores list.
…
As the Translator notes in his monologue, the closest proverb in English is something like ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’…but it has a bit of a different take.
In English, the saying tries to get across the fact that if there is too much input into something, these inputs will all clash, and 'spoil the broth' with too many different ideas.
In Chinese, the saying states that there are three people responsible, but no-one ’is actually accountable for what needs to be done - essentially, if it’s not clear who needs to do what, no-one will do anything.
There's not really a saying in English that directly maps to the Chinese, and vice versa. So how do we translate the idea?
…
Language is really powerful. It shapes cultures, ideas and memes for a population. For the diasporic Asian identity, we straddle the boundaries between two worlds often, and partake in the buffet of languages on both sides of the fence. We understand better than most the power of translation - the struggle of trying to help your parents understand an alien world, conforming to the stories heard from them, and at the same time adapting yourself to your surroundings.
…It's hard…
This difficulty of translation and language is something that plays out in more than just language across the world. We lack the understanding of other people’s contexts and how their culture has been shaped - the stories don't easily translate. Without any empathy or knowledge about what other cultures are trying to do, or achieve, or what experiences they've collectively gone through, how can we understand them?
This is already a long piece, so let's just end with: read some more about whatever Asian culture you're part of, or interested in. Take the time to ask about those sayings, those stories, those tidbits of culture that bring more context to your understanding of those worlds. Spend time being curious, and uncover more ways of looking at the world.
And look out for thirsty monks.
