别说四百块大洋
“Let alone 400 silver dollars,”
THE DIALOGUE REEL
“Do you know how many lives he owes me?”
别说 四百块大洋
“Let alone 400 silver dollars,”
“Keep your money; I only want revenge for the lives he took.”
Silver dollars were the standard currency in early 20th-century China, while gold bars were called 'little yellow croakers'. In traditional Chinese morality, a debt of human life cannot be bought off with wealth.
LEARNING CHUNKS & PARTICLES
let alone; not to mention
Used at the beginning of a clause to dismiss a baseline condition before introducing a much more extreme one in the next clause.
silver dollar
Historical colloquial term for silver coins used in early 20th-century China; frequently heard in period dramas.
VOCABULARY & EXPRESSIONS
Parallel Spoken Cinema Scenes (语义近邻切片)
“I had less than four hundred yuan to my name.”
“having said that, four hundred silver dollars is still money. How about we...”
“For 400 silver dollars, you almost let him go?”
“It's not just a matter of thousands or hundreds.”
“Forty million RMB! This is huge!”
“tens of thousands of yuan. Why do you need that money?”