A question about Roman spelling of a Chinese name and the PCness of a term

Factual Questions
1

I have a question about the proper way to spell a Chinese name in Roman letters.

I don’t even know if it’s a real name, but it’s for a song I’m writing. The name is pronounced My Way.

I’m assuming it’s spelled Mai Wei but I would like to verify that or have a Chinese speaking doper inform me of the ‘correct’ transliteration.

Thanks!

The song in question is a country song about a West Texas man who falls in love with a Chinese woman. He gets in trouble with the law and has to choose between running away with her or doing the right thing and turning himself in, to be sentenced to hard labor working on the highway.

The chorus goes like this:

It was Mai Wei or the highway
I knew the time had come for me to choose
My luscious Asian plum or working out on some
desolate stretch of asphalt on the Texas plain
It was Mai Wei or the highway
Any way you’d look at it I’d lose.

So the other question: Would luscious Asian plum be considered offensive? Admittedly, it’s being sung by the protagonist, and it’s set in the early 1900’s, but I don’t want to risk being too un-PC. No sense in antagonizing listeners.

2

I’d be more worried about describing a road in Texas as a “desolate stretch of asphalt”. Those Texans can be pretty touchy.

3

You are on the right track with the orthography – In Pinyin, it would be Mai Wei. That being said, translating that to a meaning in Chinese necessitates information of the tone. Chinese has four tones. For instance “Mai” can mean either “buy” or “sell” depending on the tone.

4

Hyperelastic - :smiley: I figure those Texans can suck it up. There are quite a few desolate stretches of asphalt throughout Texas.

xiao_wenti - thanks for the confirmation on the orthography. Any thoughts on the PCness of the term?

5

I don’t feel that it’s un-PC. I’m not a big fan of “luscious,” though. I don’t know what it is, but I always see it used as a sarcastic term. Rarely do I see someone seriously described using it.

6

Oh, I agree Speaker - I’m trying to portray the mindset of the chracter a little bit there - a hard drinkin’, uncultured rough and tumble kind of guy who has never loved anyone, let alone someone from such an alien culture and world.

The problem with songwriting is that in addition to finding the right, descriptive word, it also needs to fit the meter and have some degree of prosody as well, that is, fit the rhythmic and melodic feel when sung.

I was also considering darlin’ (for the cowboy-esqueness), perfect for the alliteration or some other, as yet unfound word.
Hey, Mods, considering that the GQ has been answered here, and we’ve moved onto talking about songwriting a bit, feel free to move this to CS, or close it.

7

I like the sound of “darlin’,” so long as you think it doesn’t sound too cliched. “Perfect” doesn’t do it so much for me, but I think it’s better than luscious.