Just as in English advertising you’ll see some letters substituted with images, the same happens in Chinese, and you’ll often see parts of characters replaced. I’ve captured a few examples below, but let me know if you spot any yourself!
In what we’ll call questionable taste. A kid with an open mouth takes the place of the 「口」 component of 「吃」 in this sign (and yes, 吃 has most if not all of the connotations of the word “eat” in English). It reads 「吃我 早午餐」 (Eat Me – Brunch).
This congee shop has creatively substituted the central 「米」 component of 「粥」 for a stack of steaming bowls of congee.
Although I dabbled in my youth, I’m pretty much a post-Queen’s Gambit chess player. I’ve really gotten into it over the past few years, although I’m still at around 1000 ELO (Daily), so just thought I’d provide a bit of info on the scene in Taiwan and some useful vocab in Mandarin.
Most of my interactions have been online, but there are some meet-ups in Taipei, also happy to play over-the-board with anyone in and around Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall over lunch times.
If you want to play for Taiwan, you can join Team Taiwan on Chess.com (you can only play for one country at a time, but they’re flexible about the flag displayed in your profile). Also, feel free to add me and play me.
Although Xiangqi (象棋) is more popular here, there is a growing community of chess players too, including stand-up comic, presenter and podcaster Brian Tseng. He’s yet to disclose his Chess.com username, but he’s mentioned chess a good few times in his podcast, particularly in the King’s Gambit (王翼棄兵) episode, where he talks about applying the lessons of chess to everyday life.
You can find some cool stickers on Instagram, by searching for “rvdtor.”
In a previous post, I mentioned the phrase 「是在哈囉」 to mean *sassy voice*”Hello~~!” or “What the f*ck is going on?” Well, recently, I spotted a variant of this phrase on a friend’s Facebook post, playing on the similarity in sound: 「是在哈佛」, which is used to mean the same thing, but with a twist:
“I can’t get through to any of the numbers for confirmed positive cases. I can’t get through to the remote-treatment number I can’t get through to my district office It’s the fifth day and I still haven’t received the welfare package and I’m yet to receive my quarantine notice.”
“None of the options on the “Health Companion” app work, why did they even launch it? Of the mass of various apps launched by hospitals, I wasn’t able to use even one (I need a remote consultation). I called the number for the health department of the District Office (Wanhua District) 23x33x92 It told me to call 23x33x92 instead. What the f*ck is with giving out the same number??“
“When I dialed it again it said the line was busy, and if I wanted to continue waiting I could press *. After I pressed *, it said this option was invalid and the line cut off. I wasn’t able to get through to any of the numbers, so it seems Betelnut Ko Wen-je (Taipei Mayor) just wants people to die at home.”
The “hello” in the original phrase is switched up for the Chinese word for Harvard. This phrase originates from the suggestion that Christine Fan (范瑋琪) stated that she was a Harvard alumnus on her CV, when, in fact, she transferred to the Harvard Division of Continuing Education in the second year of a degree and never graduated. The implication in highly-competitive Taiwan is that the Harvard Division of Continuing Education does not count as Harvard proper and that she was trying to plump up her CV, although the portrayal of her as a Harvard grad seems largely to have been led by the media.
The phrase still retains the meaning of the original, basically “What the f*ck is that all about?” but with an extra pop culture reference added.
The reference to Betelnut Ko Wen-je to refer to the Taipei Mayor originates in a series of pranks played by high-schoolers on politicians, where they ask to take a photo together and then ask them awkward questions or find other creative forms of embarrassing them. In this instance, the high-schooler dressed up (rather subtly) as a betelnut to take a photo with Ko:
Tones play an even more important role in Chinese than accurate pronunciation a lot of the time, but you know you’re swimming in the deep end when even native speakers have to clarify the difference.
One of my friends was talking about a colleague of theirs and said:
「XX很雷，跟他共事很累。」 “XX is a real liability, working with him is exhausting.”
When the person he was talking to appeared confused, another friend clarified 「地雷的雷」.
Literally “thunder,” or “landmine” in the context of 「地雷」, 「雷」lei2 is an adjective used to describe someone as clumsy or always mucking things up. My friend made a real effort to emphasize that it was second tone, to distinguish it from 「累」 lei4 (tiring/tired).
The humble brag needs little explanation, but it was interesting to hear the host of the GooAye podcast use a Chinese term that means something similar the other day when talking about him and a bunch of other renowned Taiwanese podcasters becoming fathers recently. Basically, he said that people have been recommending him thought pieces on how to be a parent, and some of them are a little fucked up.
Among the pieces people have recommended, I looked at a lot of them and they were pretty messed up. Like maybe the parent hadn’t studied properly when they were young, or, in some cases, the parent had done well in their studies, but never really pursued them to any conclusion. So it’s like they want to project themselves onto their children so that their children can help them accomplish what they never could. It’s fucked up like that. Then some of them are even “humblebrag” pieces. This word for “humblebrag” is used mainly in China, so don’t come after me word police. I just think it’s a pretty accurate expression. It refers to people who accidentally–and of course this “accidentally” is totally on purpose–let slip their own strengths and the strengths of their family members. This is called the “Versailles” genre of writing. So, for example: “Ugh! I told my husband not to buy me anything else. He’s so annoying! He only went and bought me a new maserati!”
After a bit of a search on Chinese social media, I realized that it can mean humblebragging, or satire of humblebraggers. As well as the obvious reference to the subtlety of the Palace of Versailles, the phrase (like a lot of popular Chinese slang) originated in Japanese manga. The Rose of Versailles / ベルサイユのばら / 凡爾賽玫瑰(玉女英豪 in Taiwan) was originally serialized in 1972-1973, but was revamped from 2013-2018. There have also been an anime series and a film.
I liked the Wu Ming-yi-style magical realism conjured up by the title of this poem, however, the non-sequiturs kind of threw me off and I didn’t really vibe with the discussion between the disembodied voices. It’s possible I’m missing something in the interpretation of the poem and welcome any alternates in the comments section. I have to say that I’m not really a fan of Under Milk Wood-style stream-of-consciousness poetry that relies on dreams.
Ye Yu-ting has published two volumes of poetry, the self-published A Père David’s deer in peppermint-colored sleep (一隻麋鹿在薄荷色的睡眠裡) and The Invisibility in the Details (鉅細靡遺的透明)which was illustrated by Shiho So(a Taiwanese illustrator living in Tokyo). Ye graduated from the Chinese masters program of National Central University in Taiwan, where she headed up a poetry society. She has been the recipient of the Ye-Hung Female Poetry Prize and the Council for Cultural Affairs(now Ministry of Culture) poetry prize. For more information, you can see a profile of her here.
The fun thing about Taipei is that political opinions are often very in your face, whether it is a taxi driver going on about how the ruling party is driving the economy into the ground or a random bit of graffiti scrawled on a traffic box about the Taoyuan Mayor that piques your curiosity as to the context:
太子鄭文燦 Crown prince Cheng Wen-tsan
The frame of reference for this fantastic piece of “artwork” dates back to the words of Taipei City Councilor Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) back in May. He suggested that there were double standards going on, in that the 1st Mayor of Taoyuan Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) had received special treatment when it came to the Novotel outbreak of coronavirus because of his favorable position in the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, as Lo put it he is a 「綠朝太子」 “the crown prince of the Green dynasty” – here green is a reference to the colors of the DPP vs the blue of the opposition KMT (Lo’s party). The accusation is that Cheng was able to push all of the responsibility on to the central government because of this special treatment, while other mayors got lambasted for doing the same. Lo then went on to taunt Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), asking him if he was jealous of this special treatment (an attack based on Ko’s tumultuous past relationship with the DPP).
Ko–who always seems to have a quip at the ready–.replied that if he’d pushed all the the responsibility to the central government, the situation would have been f*cked long ago and he doesn’t have it as easy as some (pointing no elbows at Cheng I’m sure).
Saw this anti-American rant on my way to the shops today. Clearly someone’s out for attention. As the punctuation is a bit of a mess, I’ve tried to interpret the most likely meaning, but welcome any corrections.
If the US thinks Taiwan is a force for good, and a beacon of freedom and democracy in Asia, they should treat us as equals. We shouldn’t accept the Medigen vaccine, just because they sent the health secretary. Everyone should resist Medigen and resist the US strong-arming its way into interfering in domestic vaccine policy and not halting Taiwan-US trade negotiations during the pandemic. Boycott Medigen, resist US medicine’s bullying of Taiwan, resist unequal trade, resist the right to life being exchanged for other interests; See the fake kindness of the US for what it is.
To be honest, this kind of rant is not uncommon on social media platforms in Taiwan, I just thought it was interesting to see it posted over a traffic box.
I also thought it was slightly ironic that the poster used the Japanese variant of 「亞」(亜), given that people with this kind of anti-American stance, are usually very anti-Japan too.
The views expressed above are just an observation, and do not represent my own views.
The internet has brought us all sorts of newly coined terms, like 「五毛」 (Wumao/Five centers/internet users paid to promote PRC talking points), 「小粉紅」 (young jingoistic Chinese netizens) and others. But one that keeps coming up recently is 「反串」fǎnchuàn which is actually a repurposed opera term, originally meaning to play a character deviating from your normal repertoire.
But in the hostility-laden world of cross-strait social media interactions, it’s used to indicate deliberately posing as the enemy or opponent online, either to discredit their arguments, destroy their image or go so extreme that even the people on their side get put off. This is the social media equivalent of a bad guy impersonating Superman and kicking a little boy in the shin on camera. An alternative use is satire, mocking of the way the other side argues their case.
The latter seems to be what Lin Wei-feng, the husband of the deputy director of the DPP’s social media operations center, is claiming he was doing when he took to Taiwan’s popular bulletin board system PTT (which has been closed to new registrations for a while now due to suspected infiltration by Chinese trolls) to tell people to block or delete the Centers of Disease Control’s Line account on their phones and spreading a range of other disinformation. In what some (the KMT mostly) presume was a stage-managed gesture, DPP Legislator drew attention to the posts stating that PRC collaborators had infiltrated the platform and added that fake versions of the CDC Line app were being used to spread disinformation online. Lin’s apology refutes the idea that this was a DPP plot in a “so cringy it has the ring of truth” apology he posted to Facebook, which includes lines like “In fact, my partner has often expressed annoyance at my use of social media, and has advised me not to get caught up in wars of words on the internet.”:
This whole story was summarized recently by one of my favorite Taiwanese internet celebrities Potter King, in which he rightly states, that just because in this case it was a Taiwanese person behind the “disinformation,” doesn’t mean that China isn’t engaged in disinformation campaigns against Taiwan. Lin’s actions have made it all the more difficult for the DPP to make this case without the political baggage that he’s added to it being brought up over and over again.
The moral of the story is, even if you think you’re being extremely witty on the internet, don’t spread anything that could be interpreted as disinformation (especially when your wife works for the party currently in power).
I spotted this intriguing-looking character on a signboard on a road I have walked down a million times before. It looks like a cross between 「優」(yōu/excellent) and 「收」(shōu/to receive):
Google tells me the name of the company–which sells office supplies and prints name cards–is 「猷美」(yóuměi), so the other two characters on the sign seem decorative. If anyone has solved this mystery before or has any suggestions, let me know.
I tried the variant dictionary already and there does seem to be a wide variety of different forms of 「優」, none I saw though replaced the 「心」and 「夂」 with a 「收」though:
Update: Thanks to jdmartinsen for resolving the mystery, stating that the 「丩」 is likely a stylized 「忄」:
劉炳森寫的優
The 「優」 in the sign seems to resemble the style of calligrapher Liu Bingsen, as shown in this calligraphic database.
You can see that the 「有」 also employs a variant form, with 「𠂇」 written 「㐅」, similar but not identical to one of the variants listed below:
Another sign in a shop two streets away had this (rather more common) variant of 「價」(jià/price):
This simplified version of 「價」 is also the Japanese kanji version of the character, 「価」(か/ka). Cool to see the use of variants in action and perhaps Japanese usage influencing choice of shorthand in Chinese.
