Category Archives: Chinese Language

Posing as the Enemy: Wang Ting-yu and the 反串ing DPP Hubby

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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).

DIY Variants: Excellent!

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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.

MRT Poetry: ‘Amid a Cloud of Dust’ by Hsu Hui-chih

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微塵眾中

在無窮的時空裡
每一個人
都只是微塵
微塵而已

我是一粒塵埃
輕如孢子
隨著命運
隨著風
沾上你的衣

(節錄)

Amid a Cloud of Dust

In endless time and space
Each person
Is just a speck of dust
But a speck of dust

I’m a piece of lint
Light as a spore
Swept by fate
Swept by the wind
On to your clothes

(An extract)

Shaky hands, sorry!

Hsu Hui-chih (許悔之) is a poet and calligrapher born in 1966 in Taoyuan in Taiwan. He graduated from National Taipei Institute of Technology (now National Taipei University of Technology) in chemical engineering and has worked as the editor of the supplements of the Liberty Times and China Evening News and the chief editor of literary monthly magazine Unitas.

As you might be able to tell, I was feeling kind of sheepish when I took the photo, hence the blurriness, so had to Google parts of the poem to make it out. That’s when I discovered that the poem has a final verse that wasn’t included in the MRT version as below:

微塵眾啊
微塵眾
如此眾中
遇到你

In a cloud of dust
Amid the dust
In this swirling mass
I came upon you

I liked how the poet was able to convey that sense of wonder at finding a kindred spirit at a certain point in the infinity of time and space. There’s also a recognition of the relative insignificance of humanity in terms of the universe, similar to Carl Sagan’s reflections on planet earth being portrayed as a pale blue dot in the Voyager 1’s pictures of the solar system:

‘What the f*ck?’ in Taiwanese from 是在哈囉 to 洗嘞哈囉

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I’ve been hearing the phrase 「是在哈囉」 for a while now. The most recent case of which was a while back when a Taiwanese friend responded to a former member of the diplomatic service who wrote tell-all posts on his Facebook lodging his complaints about his former colleagues.

According to this handy slang guide from Business Next, the phrase takes its origin from when Americans say “Hello~~~?” (wavy intonation) to mean “What the f*ck is going on with you?”. Originally I’d thought the phrase meant attracting attention just for the sake of courting controversy, but according to the Business Next interpretation, it’s basically “up to f*ckery” or “behaving or acting bizarrely”.

中天 (whoops) posted this video suggesting that lots of people don’t really know what it means but get the general gist:

As with much slang, different people use it in different ways and it evolves over time (see the varying interpretations of 「三八」 to start your journey down the rabbit hole), so I thought I’d pick a few random examples of its use from across the internet so that you can troll strangers without nagging doubts about the appropriateness of your cutting remark on their new Instagram pics.

This example is an ad trying to encourage people to return to their hometowns to vote:

Even Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu has apparently employed the phrase when questioning the actions of the WHO:

Do these people live in a parallel universe? What the hell is going on?

A Taiwanese soap star Brent Hsu also made the Taiwanese version of the phrase popular in the Taiwanese drama Proud of You (《天之驕女》):

In the phrase 「洗嘞哈囉」, the character 「洗」 is used to represent the pronounciation of the character 「是」 sī in Taiwanese, and the character 「嘞」”lei” in Mandarin and “leh” in Taiwanese represents the Taiwanese character for 「在」 (to be doing s.t.). Then the 「哈囉」 is just a representation of the borrowing of the word Hello from English.

As you can see many of these posts are from last year or the year before, so expect saturation with this phrase at some point and a few rolled eyes if you use it at this point.

Another way to say “What the f*ck!?” in Taiwan is to use the phrase 「花若發」 (huā ruò fā) which is an approximation of the sound of the English phrase (What the f*ck) using Chinese characters (and Mandarin pronounciation).

Out and About with Variants in Taiwan

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I’m always interested to see how variants of standard Chinese characters are still used in everyday life, whether it’s handwriting, signs or an author making a stylistic choice.

I spotted this beauty at a petrol station in Taitung. You can understand the reason for the simplification of the top of the character given the chunky font required by this kind of paint:

This character is 「嚴」(yán/strictly), but the top has been simplified along the same lines as the simplified version of the character 「严」. It retains the 「敢」 of the traditional character though:

You can look up these kinds of variants in the variant dictionary here.

Funnily enough there is a standard 「嚴」 on the sign to the left of the one circled.

Have you ever caught a p̶o̶k̶e̶m̶o̶n̶ Chinese character variant in the wild? Submissions welcome!

Year of the Ox: Door Dressing Guting

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Walking around Guting, even though most buildings are apartment blocks, most were displaying couplets by their door. I’ve featured some of the more interesting ones below.

This doorway was funny because I imagined dueling households displaying couplets from President Tsai Ing-wen and Lai Ching-te vs. Ma Ying-jeou and his wife Chow Mei-ching respectively. President Tsai has gone with the classic idiom 「扭轉乾坤」(niǔzhuǎnqiánkūn) “to turn luck around” (literally, to upend heaven and earth). As 「扭」(niǔ to turn) and 「牛」(niú ox/cow) are near homonyms, the 「牛」 for the year of the ox stands in for it.

Former president Ma Ying-jeou and his wife, meanwhile, have called for equanimity and optimism in what was largely been interpreted as a dig at President Tsai‘s popularity with the words of the Hongwu Emperor 「心天之心平常心、樂天之樂金牛樂」. Ma’s explanation is that the son of heaven (read president) must respect the wishes of the people to rule properly, and that people need to be optimistic despite the pandemic and the ractopamine pork imports (video here).

I was (perhaps naively) surprised to see a Baptist church joining in on the fun:

「合體字」 compound characters featured heavily in a lot of the door dressings. The one on the right below is the same as the Presidential one above: 「牛轉乾坤」 with a stylized 「牛」.

There were even some compound characters from phrases in Taiwanese, like the one below: 「好孔來阮家」 hó-khang lâi góan ka (good things come to our family). Right beside it is 「黃金萬兩」 (10,000 taels of gold).

The banner below shows five different compound characters:
Looks like 「大利大吉」 (profit and fortune)
「日進斗金」 (a dou of gold enters every day)
「日日見財」 (every day meet with fortune)
「黃金萬兩」(10,000 taels of gold) (repeat of above)
「招財進寶」 (attract fortune and enter treasures)

The door below doesn’t seem to have been updated despite the fresh-looking colours, but the compound version of 「吉祥如意」 was cute enough:

There are a whole load more below!

The one above features ｢犇」 bēn, made up of three 「牛」s.

It’s a sign! Softening Construction Work Announcements with English and Taiwanese (and a duck)

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Sorry啦！ Another post about signs.

I liked the code mixing between English, Mandarin and Taiwanese in this sign announcing construction work by the Hydraulic Engineering Office in the riverside park:

The Taiwanese reads: 「咱ㄟ卡緊呢」 lán ē kā kín ne which means “We will speed up” or character for character:

咱 (我們) we
ㄟ (會) will
卡 (加以) more
緊 (快) quickly/hurriedly
呢 (呀) exclamatory particle

The code mixing (as well as the PowerPoint style 3D characters at the bottom) are clearly aimed at softening the message of the sign which is an inconvenience to park users. The Taiwanese sounds much more down to earth and colloquial than the more formal 「造成您的不便，敬請見諒」 at the bottom.

Jokes Around the Office: KTV Bragging 「有紅花也要有綠葉」

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I heard the phrase 「有紅花也要有綠葉」 in a conversation between two colleagues in the tea room about a prospective KTV session. The guy was singing as he made his coffee, and the other colleague asked why he was so happy. He replied that it’s not that he’s super happy but that given the arrival of a new colleague, he’s looking forward to a KTV sesh. The colleague replied modestly that she is silent as the grave in KTV sessions. The guy then said in jest 「有紅花也要有綠葉」 (lit. You can be the green leaves that set off the red flower). This is used as a metaphor for how a great musician/great actor needs supporting musicians/actors for their performance to be carried off, which made me think of the microaggression that is Bette Middler’s song “The Wind Beneath My Wings”. Of course, he followed it up with a 「沒有啦」 to ensure his modesty was in tact, before blasting another view verses of the song he’d been rehearsing.

Revisiting 「佛系」 with the GooAye and Commute for Me Podcast

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It’s always fun to hear a piece of vocab you’ve learned previously in the wild.

When listening to the 「股癌」 (GooAye) podcast I heard the phrase 「佛系」 (Buddhist/noninterference approach) which is a variant of the 「佛系……法」 (Buddhist/noninterference approach to…) phrase I featured in a previous post here.

At the 8:56 (-33:19) point roughly, he says:

「你不要幫上漲跟下跌找理由，但是我發現有些人會去把我講的話有點極端化，就變成說完全不找理由。好像完全是佛系自由。」

“Don’t try and explain rises and falls, but I’ve found that some people have taken what I said to the extreme, and they don’t try and look for reasons at all. It’s like they’re dedicated to noninterference and freedom.”

Here he is cautioning people not to try and try and explain short term rises and falls in stock prices, but then qualifying this by saying that they can look for longer term reasons for price rises and falls.

From listening over the last few months, I found out that the guy behind the podcast was hopeful that Trump would win the election, although his reasons are largely to do with financial policy. The podcast is definitely worth listening to for insights on Taiwanese society and the business world as well as analysis of trends in stocks and shares.

In the same week, the phrase also came up in the 台通 (Commute For Me) podcast in an interview with the spokesperson of the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (台灣基進) Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟), who led the recall petition movement against Han Kuo-yu (from 12:33 or -41:31):

Host: 那你有得到正面的回饋啊。
陳柏惟：對啊。所以那個不是自我說服唉，我覺得那個是有時間的過程。那個不是坐在家裡瞑想佛系態度。
Host: So you got positive feedback.
Chen Po-wei: Yes. So I don’t think it was me convincing myself, I think it happened over time. It wasn’t like I was sitting at home meditating hoping that things would just fall in my lap.

This is also a reference to the 佛系 memes, which play on the Buddhist concept of noninterference that I featured in the previous post.

Chen also used the Taiwanese word 「𨑨迌／企投 」 chhit-thô featured in a previous post as well at the 21:57 (-32:07) point. Although I only mentioned these two, there are lots of gems in this interview and it’s definitely worth a listen.

Using Characters to Detect Chinese Phishing Threats in Taiwan

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Image by ShiiftyShift

OK, I swear I didn’t click anything… but had to sit through a cyber security lecture on phishing at work. The most interesting part of the largely common-sense lecture though was how you can spot social engineering emails through the accidental use of irregular hybrids of simplified and traditional characters and terms more commonly used in China and not in common use in Taiwan.

In the video they say some of these hybrids are “simplified characters” but many of them attempt to disguise themselves as traditional characters unsuccessfully.

I thought I’d point out some of the examples used below:

「大家可以登入健康信息統計系統提交……」

So in Taiwan you rarely here the term 「信息」 at all, and even less in the context of personal health data, whereas 「健康資料」or 「健康資訊」 are much more common. The term「健康訊息」 is also common but refers more to information about health, rather than one’ s own health data. One way to check this is to Google the terms in quote marks and check out the sources of the web pages and the context in which the terms are used.

“健康信息” returns mostly articles from Chinese media, like Xinhua and the People’s Daily in a context very similar to that used in the Phishing email:

Whereas with “健康資料” the first results you’ll see are from Taiwanese government’s health app and Taiwanese universities. The first one is also a 系統 like we saw in the Phishing email:

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