Honor Among Thieves? DPP Legislator Wu Bing-rui on the New Power Party 「連江湖道義都無」

WuBingRui.pngI thought this clip from Democratic Progressve Party legislator Wu Bing-rui (吳秉叡) talking about New Power Party legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌)was quite amusing. Huang backed out of signing an agreement on the 7 day holiday bill and insisted on changing the language from “completed examination (of the bill)” to “examination”, supposedly due to pressure from labor groups, much to the chagrin of the majority leader of the Legislative Yuan Ke Chien-ming (柯建銘). Ke then called Huang a 「媽寶」 or “mummy’s boy”. The change in the language doesn’t really do much to the content of the bill, as it has the same effect with or without the word “completed”. Wu has taken a lot of flak for his defiant response to protests by labor groups.

In the video Wu uses Taiwanese to state:

江湖道義都無 kang-ôtō   to   (Mandarin: 連湖湖道義都沒有)

Without even the Jianghu honor code/Without even the honor code of the mafia

This is the same as in Mandarin. Jianghu can refer to the community of martial artists in martial arts fiction novels or alternatively to the mafia. So essentially Wu is saying that the New Power Party don’t even have the honor code of the mafia. I thought this was a bit of a gaffe, given that it unintentionally implies that the DPP functions with an honor code like that of the mafia, hardly a comparison they really want to be making at this point.