On: To Many Chinese, America Was Like ‘Heaven.’ Now They’re Not So Sure

[sanxiyn]

This is great. America never was a heaven. Before, people had false belief. Now, they have true belief. That is to be celebrated.

[chii → sanxiyn]

The Chinese word for America is "Měiguó", or literally "the beautiful country".

To the common immigrant, it was sold as a country of opportunity and wealth.

[namelosw → chii]

But I think this translation is similar to the first few translated country names, which just grab the pronunciation into a single good character:

US: 美国 MeiGuo -- 'Country of beauty' UK/England: 英国 YingGuo -- 'Country of heroic/brave' Germany: 德国 DeGuo -- 'Country of virtue/moral' France: 法国 FaGuo -- 'Country of law'

But there are so many countries so it's so hard to have one for each, so countries like Austria, Italy and Spain don't have meaning for their translations.

[luckylion → chii]

Is that beautiful as in "the landscape is beautiful" or as in "your life there will be beautiful"?

[yorwba → luckylion]

It's just a phonetic loan (A-mei-rica) represented by a character with positive associations (they could also have chosen e.g. 没国 "without country", but that would've been impolite). Best not to read too much into it.

England is called the country of heroes, France the country of law, Germany the country of virtue... people rarely pay attention to the literal meaning.

[genghizkhan → yorwba]

Curiously, what is India called?

[yorwba → genghizkhan]

The word for India has been around for much longer, Wiktionary has an extensive section on the etymology: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8D%B0%E5%BA%A6#Chinese

[AFascistWorld → luckylion]

Historically, going abroad means wealth and status, marrying whites ("ocean people") too, those who return with immense wealth and fanfare reinforce this notion, and it just so happens that the transliteration of "me" was the Chinese word "mei".

[robjan → chii]

It's just a shortened version of the transliteration 亚美利加 (Yàměilìjiā) to 美國 （Měiguó）