Posts by Sam Duncan

观海听涛 (guān hǎi tīng tāo) means “Watch the sea and listen to the waves”. A scroll like the one above was given as a gift to President Obama a few years ago by a Chinese general. The interesting part is that because the last character 涛 is the same as the tāo in [former leader] Hu Jintao, Chinese netizens have interpreted the gift to mean that Obama should listen to Hu, and watch China from across the sea, suggesting that the US is a vassal state of China. As a result, some have taken to calling Obama 观海 (guān hǎi) – “Sea Watcher”.

My teacher broke this down for us in class once but I forgot what it meant until I asked a waiter about it after seeing it on a fat golden pig. It’s a combination of the chengyu 招财进宝 (zhāo cái jìn bǎo, 招財進寶 in traditional characters), used to wish people wealth and prosperity.

Editor’s note: We’re introducing a new feature on the Anthill, in collaboration with Sam Duncan’s blog “Things I Notice While Studying Chinese” (汉语小发现). Every week, Sam will post a language titbit, from an unusual idiom (chengyu) to a netizen-invented character, as one-off quick fixes in between our longer posts. Here’s his latest discovery to kick things off:

In English we say “green with envy” which comes from Shakespeare’s green-eyed monster I guess, but in Chinese people say 眼红 (yǎn hóng), red eyes, to express envy or jealousy ...