“The never-ending summer rains" — Phrase of the Week
Torrential rains in southern China seem to never stop
Our phrase of the week is: "the never ending summer rains" (梅完梅了 méi wán méi liǎo)
Context
Heavy rainfall has pounded parts of central and southern China in the last two weeks.
In Guangdong, the prefecture level city of Meizhou (梅州 Méizhōu) in the east of the province is the most severely affected area. On June 16, the city of nearly 4 million residents experienced a 24-hour precipitation of 369.3 millimetres.
In Guilin (桂林 Guìlín), a city set in the picturesque landscape of limestone karst hills in Guangxi province, the level of the Li River (漓江 líjiāng) rose to nearly 3 meters above its warning level, surpassing the level of the catastrophic floods of 1998.
The seemingly endless rains have residents in these heaviest hit regions asking:
The endless rains are so hard to cope with. When will they stop?
“梅”完“梅”了太难熬，梅雨时节何时了？[3]
Méi wán méi liǎo tài nán'áo, méiyǔ shíjié hé shí liǎo?
And with that we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.
What it means
The phrase "endless rains" is a pun and a play on words of a common idiom in Chinese.
The clue is in the speech marks, highlighting the character for “plum” (梅 méi).
This is a reference to 梅雨 méiyǔ, or literally "plum rains".
“Plum rains” is a colloquial term for the rainy season in East Asia. The rainy season itself can also be referred to as the “plum rain season” (梅雨季节 méiyǔ jìjié)
That’s because the rainy season in East Asia typically coincides with the ripening of plums. The plum rain season is characterised by persistent, steady rainfall and high humidity, usually occurring in late spring and early summer.
The character for "plum" (梅 méi) has the same pronunciation as the character for "no" or "not have" (没 méi), as in the common phrase, "don't have" (没有 méiyǒu).
This character, “no” (没 méi), appears in the common four-character idiom, "never endless" (没完没了 méi wán méi liǎo), which directly translates as "no end, not finished", using the repetition of the negative for emphasis.
Replacing the two characters for "no" (没 méi) in the idiom with "plum" (梅 méi), sounds exactly the same, but creates a vivid new pun.
That’s why we translate this Phrase of the Week as "the never-ending summer rains".
Andrew Methven is the author of RealTime Mandarin, a resource to help you learn contemporary Chinese in context, and stay on top of the latest language trends in China.
Read more about how this story is being discussed in the Chinese media in this week’s RealTime Mandarin.