Fable: 牧师和信徒 – The priest and the disciple

The source of this story is here.

Some language stuff

Although this is short, there are a couple of tricky phrases in here.

时值冬日 – This one is pretty easy to figure out in the context of the sentence – it means “It was winter time.” The rest of the sentence, of course, talks about how cold it is outside. But 时值冬日 is a more literary way to say “it was winter time” than the much simpler “当时是冬天” or something like that. Let’s look at it word by word:

时 – shí – A shorthand for 时节, or “season”
值 – zhí – This character has many meanings, in this case it means “arrive, happen”
冬 – dōng – Winter
日 – rì – Day(s)

So you could translate this as something like: The days of winter had arrived.

Even more tricky is the phrase 他认为并不一定非要如此, so let’s break this one down as well:

他 – tā – He
认为 – rèn wéi – Believed / thought
并 – bīng – [strengthening word like “most certainly,” “definitely,” “really” – just makes the next word stronger] 不一定 – bù yī dìng- Not necessarily
非要 – fēi yào – Must be
如此 – rú cǐ – This/that way

All together: He believed it really didn’t necessarily have to be that way.

As always, leave a comment if you need something explained.