Question about shirts


I watched this on Netflix tonight and used subtitles. There was nothing on the screen when Mr. Wong was writing inside the shirts. He was later shown sewing labels on some shirts as well. I'm assuming he was putting Dafu's name in them, but it seemed longer than just a name. Can someone explain what he was writing inside the shirts, please?



"Get busy living, or get busy dying." Andy (The Shawshank Redemption)

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Just tonight I recommended this film to some friends of mine who have a young autistic child. The scenes involving the clothing labels wasn't subtitled, and I realised that my friends would probably be a little confused what was going on. By pure happenstance I looked at IMDB and saw your question and figured I could kill two birds with one stone. :-)

The first scene is where Xingchang (Dafu's father) is sewing cloth labels/tags into Dafu's clothes. The text on them reads, in Pinyin:

wang2 da4fu2 / xue4xing2 B
gu1du2zheng4 huan4zhe4
jian1hu4 ren2:
dian4hua4:

In English:

Dafu WANG / Blood type B
Suffers from autism
Guardian:
Phone:

In this scene Xingchang experiences concern and anxiety that both the guardian and telephone number spots are blank; he's unsure what to write there because he hasn't found someone to take care of Dafu after he's gone.

Later in the film -- and I think this is the scene you're referring to -- Xingchang is filling in the blanks. I can't read what he's writing (it's too far away to read), but based on context it's safe to say he's writing the name and phone number of the facility he and Principal Liu got Dafu into (the one Xingchang himself relocates to because his son is having such difficulty adapting to the change / not being with his father).

Hope this helps!

Translation source: myself (I'm Caucasian American but studied Mandarin Chinese for nearly 5 years).

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Thank you SO much for taking the time to explain and translate this. I think it was a wonderful movie and although I was never a Jet Li fan (not because of him but little interest in martial arts) I have been more interested in his works. The young man that played his autistic son did a remarkable job as well. I rarely rewatch movies but this one has made my list to see again.

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge about the language and culture.



"Get busy living, or get busy dying." Andy (The Shawshank Redemption)

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