301 Now

Josh Edbrooke from Transition and ShaoLan talk about the Chinese word for “now” and how it almost contains a sense of geographical location as well as being a description of time. Once again, these characters can be combined into some extremely useful phrases and questions including describing your location in the present, telling the time and even describing other situations relating to the word “now,” such as “live concert.” According to Josh’s experience, the lifestyle in Taiwan is so fast paced that everything seems to be happening “here and now,” which has some unexpected benefits when applying for official documents because there’s no need to wait for half as long as he’s used to in the UK!

The Chinese word for “now” is 現在/现在. The first character means “present” or “current” and the second character means “to be situated” or “at,” giving a sense of the characters together meaning “here and now” 現在/现在.