Category Archives: Notes

Passive Aggressive Notes: Being insincere through font size in Chinese!

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Found this beautifully-crafted note in one of the toilets at the Red House (紅樓), part of its power is that it’s actually stuck on the door in a way that seals the door shut:

本廁間又再 再 再 再 再次 因馬桶被丟入異物造成堵塞，請至本廁間使用的有緣人多加留意，勿將 衛生紙、濕紙巾、保險套、內褲、絲襪、垃圾袋、牙線、棉花棒、口紅、筆及所有不是尿及屎的個人隨身物品不小心丟入馬桶喔！

感謝體恤打掃婆婆的辛勞

本廁間修繕待料中 預計6/22修繕

This cubicle has been blocked again, again, again, again and again, due to inappropriate things being thrown into the toilet bowl. Can those special people that are drawn to use this toilet be more careful and not accidentally dispose of any personal item that’s not piss or shit into the toilet bowl, including toilet paper, wet wipes, condoms, underwear, stockings, trash bags, dental floss, cotton buds, lip stick and pens!

Thanks for understanding how hard our cleaning ladies are working.

This cubicle is under renovation until June 22

The font size seems to underline the sarcastic tone of the note and the combination of a polite register along with vulgar language. To be fair, that toilet seems to attract a lot of strange people.

The Eternal Question: To Mask or not to Mask!

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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?


Passive Aggressive Notes: Neighbourly Nagging to Assert Dominance

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As I’ve mentioned before, one of my neighbours is a prolific note writer who comes up with all sorts of imagined scenarios, from axe-wielding maniacs sneaking into the building to accusing people of chucking tapioca onto their awning and calling the fire brigade when anyone in a 400m radius lights a candle. A new neighbour has moved into the building, so the note writer has decided to show them who is boss, with these beautiful scrawls:

Despite their previous anger at people closing the door too loudly, the neighbour in question is continuing their tirade on the risks of the door ever being open at all. The new neighbour doesn’t have a buzzer, so has to come down the stairs every time they order food or (heaven forbid) have friends coming round.

請隨手關門，不要影响（響）別的住戶安全，如果發生意外，請負全責，後果自負。

Please close the door after you, so as not to affect the safety of other residents. If an incident happens, please take full responsibility. You’ll have to face the consequences.

One thing to notice is the abbreviation of the character 「 響」 to 「响」, the simplified character, which goes to show how often the more complex characters are abbreviated in Taiwan. One note is never enough though:

新搬來的住戶請注意我們公寓沒有聘請任何清潔人員。此處只能丟棄回收廣告紙，由好心住戶順便幫忙丟掉，不可以丟紙箱、塑膠袋、請自重。

The new tenant should be aware that our apartment block hasn’t hired any cleaning staff. Here you can only throw away recycled advertising leaflets, which one kind-hearted resident [clearly a self-reference] helps to throw away. It is not permitted to throw away cardboard boxes or plastic bags here. Please behave with more decorum.

The Green Crown Prince Cheng Wen-tsan of Taoyuan

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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).

When ranting on Facebook just doesn’t do it for you anymore…

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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.

如果美國認為台灣是善的力量.是亜洲自由民主燈塔.就該給予對等公平待遇而不是派衛生部長來.我們就吞下高端。全民抵制高端抗議美國強力干預我國疫苗政策疫情下不暫停台美貿易談判.抵制高端.抗議美國醫藥霸凌台灣抗議不公平貿易.抗議以生命權交換其它利益認清偽善美國

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.

Guerrilla Veganism in Taiwan

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I was quite surprised to get this leaflet through the mail earlier today. At first thought it was an advert for a vegetarian restaurants, but looks like it’s just aimed at promoting vegetarianism/veganism in Taiwan:

「動物死後，肉中含有屍菌，是造成人體腫瘤及癌症主要因素，所以吃素食、運動，體內毒素排出，實乃當務之急。」

“After animals die, their flesh contains germs which are the leading cause of tumors and cancer in the human body. So eating a vegetarian diet and exercising to expel these toxins is really of the utmost importance.”

Interesting to find out who is behind this propaganda effort, as there are no clues on the leaflet itself.

This post is not an endorsement of the message of the leaflet or the pseudo-scientific claims therein, purely posted for curiosity (which killed the cat and subsequently led to toxins infecting said cat’s flesh…).

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.

Passive Aggressive Food Fights in the Workplace: Don’t f*ck with my biandang! + heart emoji

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note in Chinese requesting that people do not turn off the machine

If you work in an Asian office, a biandang/lunchbox/bento warmer is a standard bit of kit. Lots of people have metallic lunchboxes which you can put inside to keep them warm until lunchtime.

There has been an escalating passive-aggressive argument lately in my office, as someone has been turning off the warmer as soon as they take their own lunch, leaving the remaining coworkers with lukewarm lunches, which is the eighth of the seven deadly sins (James 2:15-17).

I’m a microwave kind of guy, so haven’t been involved in the tussle, but the note was posted back in January without the highlighted text or scrawl down the side:

敬請最後一位使用者關掉即可，感謝！（想吃熱便當 heart emoji)
以上 2021.01.21
Please only turn off the machine if you are the final person to use it! (I want a hot lunch)
Yours Jan 21, 2021

Since then, while innocently waiting for the microwave to finish, I’ve noticed the door ajar and the machine off a few times with quickly cooling biandangs still inside.

This led to the escalation down the side and the addition of dots and highlighted text:

*不要再關啦！2021.2.8
Stop turning it off! Feb. 8, 2021

I’m sure the culprit is someone with good intentions but over-wrought anxiety about the biandang warmer never being turned off and consuming the whole building in flames, however, it does seem like a bit of a dick move to continue to turn it off.

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.