Danzi’s Map

“Ping examined the silk square for the first time in many months. On one side it was marked with faded, scratchy lines and squiggles drawn in what Ping believed was blood. It was a rough map of the Empire sent to her by Kai’s father, Danzi...”

— Dragon Moon

Ping discovers Danzi’s map at the conclusion to Garden of the Purple Dragon. In Dragon Moon, Ping tries to follow the path that Danzi has set for her, but finds that his message can be read in many ways...

The Chinese language

Most languages in the world use an alphabet; Chinese is one of the few that doesn’t. Instead it uses thousands and thousands of individual characters.

The Chinese language doesn’t use as many sounds or syllables in making up words as English does. In fact there are only about 400 sounds in Mandarin Chinese. Each can be spoken with four different tones. That makes a total of only 1600 possible sounds. In English there are 80,000 different sounds that can be used to make up words.

In Chinese, these word-sounds are recycled over and over again. One spoken word can have different meanings. In Chinese a single spoken word might have 100 meanings. However, if those 100 words were written down, they would each have a different character.

More than one meaning

The recycling of word-sounds leads to a rich tradition of puns where a word or even a short sentence can mean more than one thing. You can write down something which when spoken aloud could mean something completely different.

This has led to some odd superstitions. The Chinese word for ‘bat’ (the flying mammal type) is ‘fu’, which can also mean ‘happiness’. Therefore bats have become good luck symbols. The word for ‘celery’ (‘qin’) is the same as the word for ‘hardworking’. So a mother might give her child celery for lunch if she wants him to work hard at school.

Puns can also be used as political statements. When a man called Deng Xiao Ping was political leader of China, people who wanted to protest about him smashed small bottles. That's because ‘xiao ping’ can also mean ‘little bottle’.

Puns such as these play a crucial role in Dragon Moon.