Unusual Chinese Character - 傩

Well I have not been reading chinese materials much these days - it is unfortunate that despite having learning the language for 13 years and at some stage was pretty proficient - read+write+speak. Apart from Hong Kong/China/Taiwan/Singapore TV shows/movies in Chinese, there is really very superficial contact with this language - which is an amazing language. There is little opportunity to really use it since everyday life is mostly carried out in English. I find that I can hardly write any chacracters these days - after almost 13 years since I write any decent length material in Chinese!! Real Pity!

Recent years I still read a little news and articles on the web, like on tom.com, sina.com - mainly for sports related stuff.

I have some "fanciful" chinese book - some are novels and some compilations of short novels which I bought over the years, read a few pages and put aside. I like books but not neccessary going to read them.

Anyway I picked up one of them and started reading a little lately. Compilations of short essays and travel related on places in China - 余秋雨 (yu-qiu-yu) -简要读本。It was an interesting book and introduced me to places I have not really come across. e.g. 月牙泉 - a spring surrounded by sand dunes!! How did it ever not get buried????? (from article 沙原隐泉)





In another article （贵池傩）there was a character which seems so easy but then I never come across 傩. I cannot even pronounce it. Looks like 难 (nan) or is it closer to 滩 (tan) . I cannot find it in the "limited" dictionary I have. Took some effort to google phrases and finally I found it！！

傩 (nuo2)

I found the term 傩戏 (nuo2 xi4 or Nuo Opera) - and jog my memory to the movie 夜宴 where Daniel Wu was putting a mask and in some form of perfomance. A very old form of folk opera it seemed - wiki says "nuo ceremony was first recorded on bones and tortoise shells during the Shang Dynasty (16th-17th century BC), and flourished in the Zhou Dynasty (11th century-256BC)."

An interesting character and I am going to read the rest of the article. I got stuck at the title of the article .. 贵池傩 (the 3rd character) ....

You can find similarities with the Japanese Noh art form - the type of masks, theme of the performance etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noh

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