If you’ve been outside of Taiwan anytime in the past year, you’ll notice a substantial difference in masking practices. In the US and the UK, I rarely saw anyone in a mask, but in Taiwan, the mask industry is still going strong. As I was walking back home one day, however, I spotted this random sticker on a lamppost, suggesting someone is not happy with the lasting fetish with face masking in Taiwan:
It reads:
「口罩臉 不好看 打扮病夫 很詭異」
“A masked face is not attractive Dressing up like a sick old lady is very weird”
To be fair, for the past couple of months, it feels like the entire city of Taipei has had a cough or a cold and do you really care whether other people wear masks or not?
What do you think? Time to expose our chins to the gods?
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.
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 use of Taiwanese in this Ministry of Foreign Affairs post struck me as interesting. As the term 「換帖」 exists in Mandarin too, they used romanized script to ensure that it is read in Taiwanese. I guess this makes it harder for people in a certain country to work out what it’s supposed to mean, but I also wonder how many Taiwanese people would catch on:
「可以說是台灣的uānn-thiap–ê 的柯寧參議員」
You could say Senator Cornyn is bosom buddies with Taiwan.
“uānn-thiap–ê” describes a close friendship formed by a blood-brothers style pact, wherein two friends exchange cards with information on each other (name, age, place of origin, family history), to forge a kinship. Now it’s used to describe good friends.
Another, more common term to describe a close friend is 「麻吉」. The term is pretty common and was even used for the title of the film Ted in Taiwan 《熊麻吉》:
There are several folk morphologies for this term, from the stickiness of mochi cakes (pronounced similarly in Taiwanese/ muâ-tsî) to a corruption of the word 「默契」 (though no clear reason for the corruption is given). The most convincing theory is that it’s a corruption of the English word “match” in Taiwanese. Whatever its origin, it’s a pretty handy word to use and will let everyone know that you’re in touch with the popular culture references of 10 years ago.
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 came across these spray-painted messages on the road on the way to my local 7-11 last night. Messages sprayed on to the street are common in Taiwan, and they can be written by car/motorbike tow trucks telling people what number to call to get their vehicle back or construction companies or the city government telling people not to park in the street as construction is about to take place.
I could see that it said 「路面xx勿停車」 (“road surface XX, don’t park), but I was a little puzzled by the third and fourth characters, as they both looked like they had 「金」 as radicals. I assumed that as they were repaving the road, it’s likely that the second one was 「鋪」 (to pave), but I’d never seen the character 「銑」 before. So I wandered down the street a bit further to see another of the messages:
The 「鋪」 was a bit clearer in this pic, so I tried to look up the characters 「銑鋪」 (xiǎnpū), and came across this old video from the China Times, suggesting that I wasn’t the only one to be puzzled:
According to this video, the original meaning of 「銑」, milling, has been extended here, to mean “to roll flat/steamroll.” It seems to be a more technical way of referring to resurfacing roads, but a more common and colloquial way to say this is 「路面翻修」 (lùmiàn fānxiū).
Saw this new piece of graffiti on the border of the Zhongzheng and Wanlong Districts of Taipei. It reads 「民不聊生」 (“The people have no way of making a living”) and across the top in a slightly different shade (possibly added by another person?) is 「發現金」 (“Issue Cash”), suggesting the government give out cash for stimulus.
Taiwan is back in heightened Level 2 restrictions, meaning that while restaurants and other venues are gradually opening up, bars and clubs and many entertainment venues are still closed. Not going to jinx it, but cases have been down for several days now, so hopefully life can return to normal soon and business owners will be able to start making some money again.
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.
