There are a few numbers in China that have additional meanings.

In the northern parts of China 250 (二百五) is used to refer to someone as not so smart. This probably stems from the fact that in order to say 250 in Chinese, you don’t say er bai wu, you say liang bai wu, but Wikipedia says different, and who am I to argue.
[Apparently I’m wrong again 🙂 after chatting to some of my friends, they say wiki is right, and to call someone 500 (五百) is even worse – you’re twice as 二百五！ There was talk about that when 伍佰 (the Taiwanese Singer) was big here.]

For example 56 (五六) sounds like 无聊 (bored) in standard mandarin, and I lost a conversation about the origins of the video site 56.com name to someone on Twitter.
55 also has a meaning which roughly corresponds to an affirmative exclamation of excitement eg yeah! woohoo!

38 (三八) is used as a derogatory term for women, and typically means bitch.
This stems from March 8th (3月8日) being womens day (三八节).

三八线 on the other hand is the 38th Parallel, which is the dividing line between North and South Korea for those that didn’t know that.

In school however, the 三八线 was the dividing line on the desk (although this did have its origins in the North / South Korean divider line.

There is a an amazingly well done video cartoon below which recalls the 三八线 to illustrate primary school life. Unfortunately no subtitles, but its eminently watchable without.

More video’s here over at Kuanger http://www.kuanger.com/, or do a Tudou search for 哐哐哐

Lastly, but not least is 88 – this sounds like bye bye, so is often used in online chat when you sign out.

I hope you enjoyed the lesson, and 88!

Fridge Lingo - Talking to your Ayi

Sadly, most expats here, excluding myself of course, cough cough, have something from marginal through to no Chinese language skills whatsoever.

What to do?

Buy a Fridge Magnet set from http://iWantOne.cn, and communicate (or alternately make pretty word patterns, that part’s up to you).

The Fridge Lingo sets have common phrases for various situations. The first set, available now online, and at select venues around Shanghai is “Talking to your Ayi”.

Each set has over 200 words and phrases with English, Chinese and Pinyin (per word/phrase) which you can use to make sentences with.

Smart Shanghai were lucky enough to get a set, and as they pointed out in their review, we neglected to include a “you’re fired” phrase, but the rest of the phrases in the set are pretty useful, including such gems as “empty the cat litter”, and “please”, both of which go well together, at least in my apt.

The View from the Fridge

Our second set (coming out soon), is aimed at a different segment of the marketplace. We’d probably recommend that people don’t try to mix the 2 sets on the Fridge, unless you really like your ayi, but we’d be giving too much info away.

You can buy them online here – http://liurl.cn/eu, with Cash on Delivery available to anywhere that our Kuaidi company will send someone to, which apparently includes most of Shanghai. Yes, even that bit across the river called Pudong, not that anyone actually lives there, right?

Remember… Fridge Lingo is hand made by Laowai’s for Laowai’s. Only the best slave labour will do*

*Unfortunately I’m the slave labour.

Fridge Lingo is available at select venues around town, or online at http://www.iwantone.cn

Go buy a set!

GIF Animation the Staff made

As I pretty much have no life away from the computer, I do spend an arbitrarily long amount of time online.
The benefit of that though, is that I can trawl through Taobao, and find glorious crap that were I not slightly less sensible, I would quite probably buy on a whim.

Into that category, I can squarely fit this piece of awesomeness.

Its almost creeping into the “its so wrong that its right” category, but I’ll forgive its rambunctiousness.
Woah, I’m starting to sound like Woot! here.

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