Have you seen my baopi?

What's in my bag?
Originally uploaded by loupix

The first week I was in Taiwan, my then-boyfriend and I went out for dinner with a group of expats and their Taiwanese friends. Late in the evening, and many bottles of Taiwan beer later, another foreigner came in and started speaking with great intensity to the group. Half of our group was composed of native English speakers, so I don't see why he spoke to us in earnest Mandarin, (which seemed, to our virgin ears, at least, to sound pretty good) but he did, and we sat their mystified as the people at our table all turned red and looked at their feet. The explosion of hilarity that followed on the heels of his departure was explained by our new friend Don as follows:

Apparently, the man had left his "baopi" right here on this table and had we seen it? His "baopi" was very important to him and he needed it back, and would we please call him if we saw his "baopi", etc. etc.

I'm unsure as to why no one corrected him - perhaps no one wanted to let him lose face (in the process losing face themselves) or, more likely and less charitably, perhaps they just liked hearing a man talk about how much his foreskin meant to him - not a topic you hear every day!

Anyone studying Chinese has mixed up the syllables of compound words, but few combinations are as memorable when you mix them up as this one, so remember:

pi2bao1皮包 = wallet
bao1pi2包皮 = foreskin

More funny tattoos (A.K.A. Everyone Loves their Little Sister!)

One of my students shared this one with me and it just made my day...very funny! I wish I had seen it myself, but who knows, maybe I'll run into her one day.

My student saw a girl with the character 妹妹 (mei4 mei) tattooed on the back of her neck. 妹妹 means, "little sister"....it's too bad that in Taiwan it's also slang for "vagina".

Whoops.

I know I shouldn't, but I hope this girl actually has an interest in Chinese. Perhaps she'll travel to Taiwan or China, where she can have earnest conversations galore in broken Chinese with locals desperately trying to maintain a poker face in the midst of such gems as "I love my little sister"..."My little sister is very important to me"...I guess "I love to play with my little sister" might be too much to hope for, but then again, maybe not...I could go on, but you can think of more on your own!

Moral of the story: Chinese characters are great. Many tattoos are great. Chinese tattoos CAN BE great - just do your homework!

I told my co-worker this story. She has The Tao tattooed on her back, and told me that she brought three versions of it to the Chinese Studies department of her university, to find out which one was the most accurate/most beautiful, and to make sure there were no mistakes/typos.

Seems like a good way to go.