chinese tuesdays

I really like these creative symbols made up of characters and pictures, at Dalian Library. The one on the left is 烟 yān, which means smoke, and they’ve used a cigarette to draw part of the fire radical. In the picture on the right they've combined the character 静 jìng (part of the word 安静 ānjìng – quiet) with a picture of a phone. Below it is 嘘 xū, which represents the “Shh!" sound, with a hushed mouth to replace the mouth radical. Very clever.

When giving cars Chinese names, many brands opt for 马 (mǎ), the character for horse, such as the well-known 宝马 (bǎomǎ – BMW or "treasure horse"), Mazda (马自达 – mǎzìdá), whose use of 马 seems to be phonetic, and Aston Martin 阿斯顿·马丁 (āsīdùn·mǎdīng). 马 also appears as a meaning radical in the second character of the name for Mercedes Benz, 奔驰 (bēnchí) – which is, appropriately, a word meaning “to run quickly, speed, or gallop”.

Ladybird/bug/beetle in Chinese is 瓢虫 (piáo ​chóng)​, and 瓢 (piáo) means ladle made from a gourd – the type used to scoop up water or small amounts of grain. I’m sure that the use of 瓢 in 瓢虫 is down to the similarity in shape between the tool and the shell of the ladybird, but it’s funny that the English translation, ladle, sounds like a mispronunciation of lady.

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".