Tag Archives: Chinese slang

Humblebragging with the Palace of Versailles 「凡爾賽」文體

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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.

我覺得很多那種……推給我的文章，我看看，我覺得是生病了。因為像是，可能家長當時自己書沒有念好吧。還有什麼，家長有念好，但是沒有念到頂，所以他就有點希望投射在自己的小朋友身上，就是我做不到的事情小朋友要幫我達成。就很有病這樣。然後還有一些甚至是那種很凡爾賽的文章。「凡爾賽」是中國用語，所以支語警察不要來抓我。我只是覺得這種用詞還蠻精準的。這是講說有些人不經意地去炫富–不經意地，但是這個不經意地決對是故意的–不經意地去講自己的優勢、自己家人的優勢。這個東西叫做一個凡爾賽的文體。那舉例來說「喔！我是叫我老公不要買東西給我。很煩喔！他又買一台maserati給我。」

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.

‘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).