• mù yǒu 木有 = don’t have [wood have]

That mù is actually a purposeful mispronunciation of méi (as in méi yǒu 没有).

My students have cited two sources for this slang way of saying “don’t have”:

• A cartoon called “Mcdull” (mài dōu 麦兜 in Chinese)
• A TV advertisement where someone speaks in “non-standard” Mandarin

Apparently, up north somewhere (Shandong?) the pronunciation of 没有 sounds like “mù yǒu” in their dialect. So, to imitate that dialectal, “non-standard” way of pronouncing the characters 没有, Internet users have chosen to use the characters 木有 to remind people to imagine it being said as “mù yǒu” instead of “méi yǒu.”

I’ve seen stuff on the weibo (you need a sina or weibo account to view) to the effect of:

• yǒu mù yǒu shéi zhīdào… 有木有谁知道。。。 = Does anyone know…

It has also, as always, seeped into spoken Chinese. The other day I was asking some of my drumline students if they had seen something or another. One boy replied that he hadn’t seen it. But he said “mù yǒu” instead of “méi yǒu.” Everyone around us laughed approvingly.

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• kēngdiē 坑爹 = dishonest [defraud father]

I’ve heard it used in the following contexts:

• The kēngdiē doctors (坑爹的医生) didn’t know what they were talking about. They just told me to take some medicine and go home!
• That cafeteria is so kēngdiē! I paid 7 yuan and only got a little plate of food.

Supposedly, it came from some Japanese cartoon but I’m not sure about the details.

I also asked my students if it was considered to be profanity (cūkǒu 粗口), and most of them say it’s not.

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• Gěilì 给力 [give strength]

I’ve asked for usage examples and it seems to mean:

1. lìhai 厉害 (awesome)
2. jiāyóu 加油 (in the cheering sense)
3. hǎo 好

For example:

1. nǐ tài gěilì a! 你太给力了! = You’re so awesome!
2. nǐ xiǎng zuò ma? gěilì gěilì! 你想作吗? 给力给力! = You want to do that? Go for it!
3. 140 zì tài bù gěilì le. 140字太不给力了. = (Weibo.com only allowing 140 characters per post is so bad.

It’s also morphed into some bizarre Chinglish words:

• “geilivable” or “gelivable” (the latter gets more than twice as many google results even though the former is “correct” pinyin)
• “ungeilivable” or “ungelivable“

Apparently, “geilivable” means “incredible” or “excellent.” But “ungeilivable” is bad. According to an article at Beijing Today earlier this month, “geilivable” has even made it into the news.

I’ve also heard “gěilì” and “geilivable” spoken by my students which means it’s not only confined to online communication.

See also this Xinhua article about new internet slang. The only other internet slang from that article that I’ve heard or seen is “niubility” (from niúbī 牛屄), but that doesn’t mean anything. I’m ungeilivably out of touch with the internet slang world.

Anyone else heard this or any other new slang we should know about?

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After a while, the discussion turned (I turned it) to whether the students had ever said “I love you” to their parents or heard their parents say “I love you” to them. The overwhelming majority said “no” to both. They said that they knew their parents love them because of all the sacrifices they’ve made, but they’ve never heard them say “I love you.”

I said, “But in songs it’s always ‘wǒ ài nǐ 我爱你 this’ and ‘wǒ ài nǐ 我爱你 that’, right?”

They agreed it’s common in songs, and lovers might say that occasionally to each other, but it’s rarely said between parents and children.

Then one student said, “My parents will say ‘wǒ hěn téng nǐ 我很疼你’, but never ‘wǒ hěn ài nǐ 我很爱你’.”

Ok, just to put closure on my cheap, shock-value title, “téng 疼” really does mean “to love” in addition to being the same character for “hurt” (although, I’m pretty sure it can’t be used transitively for “to hurt” the way I did in the title). What was interesting to me was: when I asked them in English “Do your parents say ‘I love you’”, they (most of them) shook their heads. But later when the student said her parents say ‘wǒ hěn téng nǐ 我很疼你’, they (most of them) agreed with that.

So, questions for the reader(s):

1. What does that ‘wǒ hěn téng nǐ 我很疼你’ REALLY mean? Is it really just another way of saying “I love you”? If not, what’s the difference?
2. (For our Chinese reader): How prevalent is this phenomenon? Is it true that parents prefer to use the word “téng 疼” over “ài 爱”?

If you’ve got answers or theories, please enlighten us.

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The standard over-the-counter anti-inflammatory and painkiller out here is Fēnbìdé 芬必得 (picture here). The English on the back of the box says “Ibuprofen Sustained Release Capsules” and according to Wikipedia, Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory.

Ok, so I’ve got Ibuprofen. But I want something stronger for a little case of tendinitis. So I go to the pharmacy and ask for what most dictionaries agree is the Chinese for anti-inflammatory drug:

xiāoyán yào 消炎药 [disappear inflammation medicine]

The guy nods knowingly and gives me a box of Cefradine, an antibiotic!

Pharmacists out here aren’t always the most knowledgeable. Maybe the guy just made a mistake. So I go to the local (village) hospital and talk to a doctor.

Here’s the English translation of our conversation (with some select Chinese words to show what was said):

Me: I’m looking for a stronger anti-inflammatory (xiāoyán yào 消炎药).

Doc: (picks up my box of Cefradine) You’ve got it. All we can give you is this.

Me: But that fights bacteria (xìjūn 细菌), right?

Doc: Right.

Me: I don’t need that. I’m looking for something to fight inflammation (yánzhèng 炎症).

Doc: We don’t distinguish between those kinds of medicine.

Me: What?! For example, this box of Fēnbìdé 芬必得 that I’ve brought. What kind of medicine is this?

Doc: That’s just a painkiller (zhǐtòng 止痛).

Me: Ok, you know if I play tennis for a long time, the tendons in my elbow will get inflammed?

Doc: It’s called tennis elbow (wǎngqiú zhǒu 网球肘).

Me: Yes exactly! What kind of medicine would you give me for that?

Doc: (picks up box of Cefradine again) This.

Now, I’m no doctor. But I’m pretty sure antibiotics aren’t going to help with tennis elbow.

I went to another pharmacy and faked a back injury to see what medicine they would give me. I kept asking for the strongest stuff they’ve got (stronger than Fēnbìdé 芬必得, please) and finally ended up with Meloxicam. Now, that actually is an anti-inflammatory.

So why this blog post? I’ve noticed that, perhaps just as we don’t have a concept of shànghuǒ 上火 (which amazes the Chinese), the Chinese don’t really have a concept of what antibiotic and anti-inflammatory drugs really are. The recent news about cracking down of overuse of antibiotics in China usually cites corruption as the main contributing factor. Only one article I found (in my 2-second Google search) talked about the need for better education to correct the problem, and that was public education. But remember it was the doctor himself who said “We (doctors? Chinese?) don’t distinguish between those kinds of medicine.”

From time to time, I’ve asked students or friends what kind of medicine they took for various things (ear infection, etc.). While I’ve heard names of antibiotics like amoxicillin (ā mò xī lín 阿莫西林) thrown around, they’re always called “xiāoyán yào” 消炎药 by the Chinese. I’ve never heard anyone say “kàng shēng sù” 抗生素 or “kàng jūn sù” 抗菌素 or any of the dictionary entries for “antibiotic”. MDBG is the only dictionary I’ve seen that lists “antibiotic” as the definition of “xiāoyán yào” 消炎药 (which, remember, literally breaks down to “disappear inflammation medicine”).

So, please leave a comment if you have any theories as to:

1. What words I really should use when referring to “antibiotic” or “anti-inflammatory”?
2. Why doctors and Chinese don’t differentiate between the two (in my opinion) very different kinds of medicine?

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After a few minutes, another friend sat down and he asked her what it meant. She answered immediately that it meant “fūfù” 夫妇 (which he also didn’t understand on first hearing, probably for acoustic reasons though). According to her, it’s a very formal, written way of saying “husband and wife.” If you look at the characters individually, you find that 伉 means “husband and wife” and 俪 also means “husband and wife” (although I suspect 伉 really means “husband” more than “wife”).

I just always think it’s interesting when I come across whole characters that are still in use that are mysterious to Chinese people. I wonder whether my friend’s wife would have known if she’d attended.

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My father, of course, figured this out too. So then, much to my brother’s surprise, instead of hearing “Hit, and you’ve sunk my battle ship” after each shot, he was hearing my father say, “Miss!”

I stayed (uncharacteristically) quiet just to watch the action unfold naturally. At one point I actually heard my brother mutter to himself, “Hmm…I can’t remember where that one is.”

My father heard it too and replied, “That’s because I just moved all my ships.”

My brother, incensed, shouted, “Hey, that’s cheating!”

What’s That Got to Do with Chinese?

I would like to submit that one possible Chinese translation for my brother’s final shout could be:

Zuòbì, hǎo bù hǎo! 作弊, 好不好!
Hey, that’s cheating!

I’ve been trying to figure out how to translate a special use of hǎo bù hǎo 好不好. I propose that it could be translated as:

…hǎo bù hǎo! …好不好!
Hey that’s…!

It’s strange because hǎo bù hǎo 好不好 is usually a question meaning “ok?” or “Would that be ok?” But I recently heard it used in two situations that lead me believe it’s more of a “Hey!” sort of exclamation.

Situation 1

My students were all preparing for an oral English exam in another class in which they would have to answer the question: “Are women and men equal?” or something like that. Most of the students had already taken the test, but one student was ill or something and was going to take it right after my class. She asked me if I could tell her my opinion. When another student heard her ask me, she obviously thought it wasn’t fair for the foreign teacher to help only one student when all the others had taken it on their own. She shouted:

Zuòbì, hǎo bù hǎo! 作弊, 好不好!

Now, I’m sure she didn’t mean:

How about you cheat, ok?

Even though that’s what it sounded like at first.

Situation 2

During a little “Chinese corner” practice group, an American colleague of mine asked the Chinese native speaker in the group how to say something in Chinese (I can’t remember what). She told him but he kept proposing an alternative word, insisting that it was right. She’d never heard it. Finally, he said, “Well, when I was in Sichuan they always said that.”

She slapped a hand on the table and said:

Nà shì Sìchuan huà, hǎo bù hǎo! 那是四川话, 好不好!

We then discussed this little hǎo bù hǎo 好不好 for quite a while and I think it really meant:

Hey, that’s Sichuanese!

The underlying message being: “(So why are you asking me about that? You know full well that I’m not from Sichuan!)”

Anyone else heard this anywhere? Any alternative translations that I should consider?

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“Nán zuǒ nǚ yòu” 男左女右 [boy left girl right]

This seems to be a common/traditional way of arranging a boy and a girl for a picture or on stage hosting an event, etc. Also, while it’s not 100% consistent, I started looking at xǐ shǒu jiān 洗手间 arrangement and noticed that most follow the same pattern.

I asked my students what the origin of this little phrase is. One student said that in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the doctor would take the pulse (bǎ mài 把脉, for you Word Hogs) of men using the patient’s left wrist and use the right wrist of a woman patient.

Also, apparently a married man puts his wedding ring (if he has one) on his left hand’s ring finger and a woman on her right hand’s ring finger.

Has anyone else:

1) Heard this phrase?

2) Noticed it’s usage beyond photos, toilets, and wedding rings?

3) Learned the origin of where this came from?

If so, please enlighten us (or at least me).

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“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

as well as:

“It is good to strike the serpent’s head with your enemy’s hand.”

But there are no references for either. I’d like to learn the Chinese for one or both of those.

So can anyone confirm that those are actually Chinese idioms by giving us the hanzi for either?

On a more general note, this little wèntí 问题 clearly shows one the of the gaps in the Chinese-learning resources market: a complete and easily searchable proverb and idiom dictionary for Chinese and English. Does anyone have a favorite they’d like to recommend?

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Bù le 不了 = No thanks (I don’t want to do something)

It’s not really “no thanks,” because there’s no xiè 谢 in there, but it does mean “no” and I get the feeling it’s used in situations where we would say “no thanks.”

Apparently, it’s best used between friends or someone you can speak informally with rather than shop owners or your boss. Here are the two situations in which I’ve heard it used:

1. A friend on her balcony waving to a friend walking past:

A: Nǐ yào bú yào shàng lái hē chá? 你要不要上来喝茶?
Do you want to come up and have some tea?

B: Bù le. Wǒ huí qù le. 不了. 我回去了.
No thanks. I’m going home.

As I understand it, in this situation “bù le” 不了 is short for “bú yòng le” 不用了 meaning “that’s not necessary.” But that explanation doesn’t really help me because if I were inviting you for tea, I wouldn’t assume it was necessary. Again, that’s why I translate it as “no thanks.”

2. Two friends (A and B) chatting at a sidewalk cafe. A third friend (C) walks past.

A: Nǐ hǎo! Gēn wǒmen yìqǐ chīfàn ba. 你好！跟我们一起吃饭吧.
Hi! Eat with us.

C: Bù le. Wǒ yǐjīng chī le. 不了. 我已经吃了.
No thanks. I already ate.

Notice in both situations they are friends. Also notice that “bù le” 不了 is immediately followed by a jièkǒu 借口 of some sort.

Does anyone else have some insight into this little nugget? Please enlighten us.

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