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

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.

Passive Aggressive Notes: Neighbourly Nagging to Assert Dominance

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.

Neighbourly Notes: Don’t Drive the Light

My note-writing neighbour (you can see their doctoral thesis here) has been at it again, although, to be fair, this doesn’t rank up there with their more passive-aggressive notes (although I would have appreciated a 「請」 thrown in there somewhere). I almost identified with them on this note, as it represents a phenomenon I often encounter when learning other languages, the tendency to assume that a specific usage of a multipurpose verb in your language can apply to all the usages of the verb in your target language, illustrated brilliantly below:

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壞了,一直在閃、很危險、不要開。 Don’t drive.

Broken, it keeps flashing, it’s dangerous, don’t turn it on.

「開」 in Chinese means “to start” or “to turn on”, in conjunction with 「車」 it can also mean “to drive”. So I’m guessing they googled “不要開” and got “Don’t drive.” I guess the solution is to always search for the terms you Google translate to see if it matches the idea you were going for and is used commonly in the target language. The only example I can think of going the other way is the tendency of foreigners to use 「是」 for adjectival phrases in Chinese, 「我是熱」, for example, as an overly literal translation of “I am hot.” Can you think of any examples that fit the brief more accurately?

My neighbour clearly hasn’t been taking notes since I corrected their previous note which was either on door closures or dog euthanasia:

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Responding Passive Aggressively to Passive Aggressive Note Posting: A Guide

Classic example here of tearing up a note, but leaving it up to show the person what you think of their message (there was a trash can just beside the elevator).

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We’ve used the latest digital methods to enhance and reconstruct the original note as below:

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The note reads:

「請不要將廚餘、垃圾放在地上」 (Please don’t put kitchen waste or rubbish on the ground)

Note: I did not take any part in the writing or tearing of this note

Passive Aggressive Notes – Raincoat Thief 雨衣小偷

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A note posted by a busy intersection in Dingxi

你拿走義交  You took away the volunteer transport guard’s
雨衣 raincoat
請還回來吧 Please return it, OK?

I saw this note a while ago, and it remained there for a good few days during the early summer rains. It conjured up an image in my mind of the poor transport guard’s face when he discovered it missing just as the rain was coming on but you have to admire his trust in his fellow citizens that it would be returned if he stuck this note up.

Why write a note when you can write a treatise…還有…

It’s now well-documented how voracious my neighbours are in their appetite for note-writing, but they’ve outdone themselves once again with this in-depth study on the consequences of not closing the door and the art of door-closing itself:

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Residents beware,

Recently con artists have been running rampant. They pretend to be express delivery men and come to your door with fake cigarettes and fake alcohol. As soon as you sign in receipt for the goods, later [sic.] people will come to collect money, asking for several tens of thousand of NT. If you don’t agree to give it to them, debt collectors or the mafia will come to your door and stick an axe in your face. Please be sure to close the door.

Don’t worry, this literary masterpiece is not complete yet, the author, having exhausted their veiled threats of mafia men and axe-chucking debt collectors, is fetching a new page to instruct us mere mortals on the true art of door closing:

Also,

Please close the door more lightly. Don’t do it so forcefully. Given that you don’t have anything against the door personally, you don’t need to bring the entire building down.

What I don’t understand is why would having the door closed fend off these roving hordes of axe-wielding con-artist delivery men. In case you are wondering… I do close the door, and try to close it lightly (even though it’s a natural slammer).  I wonder when the English version will come out.

Is your building being peppered with notes? Have you been attacked by axe-wielding con-men and lived to tell the tale? Comment below or contact me!

Passive Aggressive Notes: The Politics of Trash 消極抵抗的紙條:垃圾政治

Following on from my past post on the passive aggression that results from the limited parking spaces in Taipei, I thought I’d follow up with a similar post about rubbish, after seeing this sign, on a street in the Daan district of Taipei:

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If you live in Taipei you’ve probably seen a whole heap of signs similar to this, but the hysterical tone and the interesting use of punctuation of this particular one made it stand out for me. It reads:

Can’t you have the least shred of decency? Don’t pile rubbish up here!!?? Dogs come here to eat it every day and there is shit everywhere.

If you don’t live in Taiwan you may be unfamiliar with the system. Basically, you have to buy special bags at convenience stores to put rubbish in, then at a certain time  every day the rubbish trucks will come to the end of your street. Unlike in the UK, you

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