Posts by Sam Duncan

吃喝嫖赌抽坑蒙拐骗偷 (chīhēpiáodǔchōukēngmēngguǎipiàntōu) – Eat, drink, whore, gamble, smoke, defraud, deceive, kidnap, cheat, steal. This phrase is used to talk about someone who has bad habits or who is rebellious. Or someone actually guilty of all of the above. It is often shortened to 吃喝嫖赌 (chīhēpiáodǔ), simply to mean "to live a life of dissipation".

This character, pronounced chāng, means “The ghost of somebody devoured by a tiger who helps the tiger devour others”. It is also present in the chengyu 为虎作伥 (wèihǔzuòchāng), which means to help a villain do evil.

Some interesting words I’ve learned lately:

忐忑 (tǎntè): Comprised of 心 (xīn, heart) with 上 (shàng, up) or 下 (xià, down), it’s easy to remember that this means perturbed, mentally disturbed, fidgety.

旮旯(儿) (gālá(r)): This means nook, corner or out-of-the-way place, but I have no idea why. Both characters, neither of which are ever used alone apparently, are made up of 九 (jiǔ, nine) and 日 (rì, sun), which doesn’t help much.

如鱼得水 (rúyúdéshuǐ), “Like a fish back in water”, is so close to the English expression “A fish out of water” but means the opposite, to be happy to be back in one’s natural surroundings.

To me, looking at how different languages coming from vastly different cultures still depend on the same basic imagery to describe feelings and situations, it shows how similar we all are.

When I first learnt the word for compass, 指南针 (zhǐnánzhēn – "south pointing needle"), I thought: That’s weird, why isn’t it 指北针 (zhǐběizhēn – "north pointing needle")? I read somewhere that the reason the needle points south is because the ocean is generally to the south in ancient China. Does anyone know if this is true?