I still have a couple of unfilled entries, and I hope I’ll be able to finish all the entries before April 30. I hope I can write that fast, really. But this week, I’ll have to write another article — quite shorter, around 1,500 words — yet I have not done the interviews for that.
When some Chinese friends with whom I chat recently know what I am doing, they tell me xìnkǔ 幸苦 (work hard) — and so that is my X-day entry, and the first Chinese word for my Pandemic Journal. I remember in my Blogging from #AtoZChallenge in 2017, I wrote about a number of Chinese words. I wanted to do the same this time, but it’s just that I couldn’t find the best word/character to fit any entries until now.
I originally thought about xenophobia for today’s entry but felt it might sound so forced and disillusioned. I mean, there’s a lot of chatter about racism on Twitter and prejudice on Facebook and it’s better to leave these topics to the people who want to talk about them at length. If I may throw some shade, perhaps those cynics, trolls, and everyone in between are very xìnkǔ in the sense that they are unrelenting!
Xìnkǔ is an HSK level 4 word that has a couple of meanings. (The HSK is the standard Chinese language proficiency exam. I wrote something about it before, right here)
As an adjective, it means “arduous” or “tough” or “hard.” As a verb, it means “to work hard.” I noticed that some of my Chinese contacts on WeChat use this word whenever I say, “I’m about to finish work,” or “I’m working on it” especially in the context of working from home or online. I haven’t done much digging into this word, though, but I’m sure it is not sarcastic. Or can it be? I have to figure it out.
Photo: Burst via Pexels
I like this word. And in the long run, hard work is far more rewarding than xenophobia.