Cooking up trouble
Most popular jargon is a creation of common usage, and only those alive at the right time and in the right place will thus fully grasp it.
One example is the ever-present cry of "dongsuan" (literally "frozen garlic") during elections of all kinds in Taiwan. Dongsuan is a corruption of the term "dangxuan"-an exhortation that one's candidate is a "sure thing" in an election-that originates from the pronunciation of those same characters in the Taiwanese Minnan dialect. Now it has achieved such ubiquity that even contenders for awards at company parties are hyped as dongsuan.
"Chaofan" (literally "fried rice") has become a well-established colloquial term in Taiwan for the sexual act, but despite its currency many people have no idea of its origins.
There is a joke which may be a possible origin: A man was about to fly out to spend a year abroad, and before he left his wife said to him, "You'll be away so long, so if your 'biological needs' get too much, I'm alright with you finding someone to help you handle them." The man thanked his wife for her kindness and told her that the same went for her. He also proposed that every time either of them followed through on this, they put a grain of rice in a glass bottle.
A year passed, and as soon as the man got home, he pulled out his bottle and happily showed his wife the three grains of rice inside. After he asked his wife to show him her bottle, she hesitantly pulled out an empty bottle. Before the man had a chance to celebrate, their maid stepped into the room with a bowl of fried rice, saying, "Excuse me madam, we were out of rice so I had to take the rice out of your bottle."
Due to concerns about being fined for inappropriate speech, a television talk show discussing sexual behavior chose to use chaofan as a "code word." They had no idea it would become so commonplace, nor that it would ultimately add a new definition to this entirely ordinary term.
Buying soy sauce
Despite being so closely linked, the various components of Greater China each have their own cultures, and this leads to variations in popular jargon from place to place. For example, bagua ("the eight trigrams," used to mean "gossip") and xiaoqiang (used to refer to cockroaches, from the name given to a "pet" cockroach in the Stephen Chow movie Flirting Scholar) are products of Hong Kong that have since been imported into Taiwan. But regional or linguistic differences mean that other terms have been much more resistant to importation, such as gangnu ("Hong Kong girl," describing the stereotyped gold-digging, narcissistic, self-important Hong Kong woman), fuwochen ("push-up," from a rape case in Guizhou where the suspect maintained he was just doing push-ups nearby, thus leading to the expanded meaning that something has nothing to do with you), and mai feifo (literally "to sell flying Buddhas"-from maai feifat in Cantonese, which in turn comes from the Hong Kong English pronunciation of "my favorite").
And where Taiwan has sha hen da, in mainland China they have da jiangyou.
The origins of this particular phrase can be found in a response by one man during an interview on a Guangzhou television program. People on the street were being interviewed about a celebrity nude photograph scandal, and one man responded with, "Ain't any of my business, I'm just trying to buy some soy sauce [da jiangyou]!" As this spread across the Internet, people expressed admiration for the man's nonchalance, and his response has become a go-to response for many faced with stupid questions or questions that don't concern them.
Along with the popularity of da jiangyou, in 2008 a ballot was held to find China's top 10 pieces of online slang, and the top three are no strangers to Taiwanese.
The number one term was "shanzhai," which began as a descriptor for pirated, knock-off cellphones and has become ubiquitous since then. This sense of shanzhai originated as a Cantonese slang term for fakes and counterfeits, and has since been turned around as a positive term for something with an anti-establishment, anti-elite, grassroots sentiment.
Lei came in at number two. This term began as the Chinese noun for "thunder" and has recently been repurposed as a verb and adjective indicating shock or alarm-for example, something can be described as hen lei, meaning it is "very shocking/startling," and a person may say they have bei leidao, literally "been thundered," meaning they have been shocked or startled.
Number three is the character (r), read as jiong and originally meaning "light." A very uncommon character, its resemblance to a worried-looking face has led to its use online as an emoticon indicating mopiness, sorrow, helplessness, or speechlessness. It has already been called "the trendiest character of the 21st century."
Spreading by media old and new
Television is not only a means of transmitting such popular jargon, it is also fertile ground for creating it.
The media has played its part in creating language that the youth of Taiwan want to imitate, such as through its dissemination of singer-songwriter Jay Chou's catchphrases "hen diao" (literally "very dick," meaning "awesome," and "hen xia" (literally "very pointless," akin to the English hip-hop slang term "wack," meaning "inferior quality," "inauthentic," or "uncool.")
Dingding is another such term, originating from Taiwan's dubbed version of British children's show Teletubbies, in which Tinky Winky is known as Dingding. With Tinky Winky's movements and speech being both slow and leisurely, the phrase "Ni hen dingding!"-"You're so Tinky Winky"-has come to be used to make fun of people as being "a bit slow," and "Dingding shi ge rencai!"-"Tinky Winky's a genius!"-is a common piece of mockery.
From Japan comes the term lolicon-loaned as luolikong in Mandarin-where loli is short for "Lolita," used in Japan as a blanket term for young girls, and con is short for conpurekusu, the Japanese pronunciation of the English psychological term "complex." In short, lolicon, or "Lolita complex," refers to a particular attraction to underage girls. In Taipei, for example, this has been expanded to address a fetish for girls from a given high school, e.g. zhongshankong is a liking for girls from Zhongshan Senior High School, jingmeikong Jingmei Girls High School girls, and so forth.
"Haoren ka," literally "good person card," is a product of collectible card games and cartoons based on them. In such games, these cards are powerful weapons that target "good"-aligned characters, and no matter the trials and tribulations you might go through, one tiny little haoren ka can be enough to completely destroy you. In the real world, it has taken on another meaning-when a young man's advances are turned down by a girl with the traditional line, "You're such a good person, but I just don't think it would work out between us. You'll find someone better," that has become known as being given your haoren ka as a symbol of your romantic failure.
Ka, a Mandarin adoption of the beginning of the English word "cast," has recently entered the popular jargon vocabulary, and is largely used similarly to the English "list" when referring to a cast of players-A-ka being "A-list" and thus the main attraction, B-ka "B-list" or second fiddle, and C-ka the others.
The influence of dialect
To a speaker of Chinese, the phrase "gangwen la!" will undoubtedly seem shocking at first sight, given its literal meaning: "my anus is warm." But don't be mistaken-in this case, it is a representation of the Taiwanese Minnan pronunciation of "gan'en la!" meaning "I'm grateful [to you]." Realizing that will undoubtedly cause a smile.
Many other terms from Taiwanese Minnan have become similarly used online, with pronunciations slightly altered and characters from Mandarin used to represent them. Amongst the most common are fen (meaning "powder," representing the Taiwanese pronunciation of hen, "very."), ou ("doll," representing wo, the first-person pronoun), su ("element," representing shi, "to be"), qi ("to desire," representing qu, "to go"), cu ("coarse," representing chi, "to eat), and tongxie ("child's shoes," representing tongxue, "classmate").
While some online slang may be easy to figure out, some of it can be virtually impenetrable to anyone but a hardcore web-surfer. "Kandiao chonglian," literally "cut down and retrain," is similar in meaning to the English online term "roll a new toon," meaning to abandon a player character who isn't going so well and start a whole new one. "Xiangmin," or "townsfolk," refers to rubberneckers and troublemakers that follow the mob, and comes from the Stephen Chow movie Hail the Judge.
Posting and responding in online discussions is called "guanshui"-"irrigating," while those who just read without getting involved, referred to in English as "lurkers," are qianshui-"being submerged" in Chinese. Mainland users refer to the first poster in a discussion as having "the sofa," the second "the chair," and the third "the bench"; everyone else is left sitting on "the floor."
Taiwanese web-surfers will also be familiar with many other similar terms that have been imported from Hong Kong, such as qianshui ("being submerged," extended to mean dodging responsibility), dihan ("dripping sweat" meaning feeling helpless, speechless, nervous, or at a loss), and shenji ("god level," often used in online games to indicate a level which few will reach).
Popular jargon is part of a subculture developed by the youth, and statistics show that it is most used by male high-school students.
In surveying students from Kaohsiung's Yingming Junior High School, the popularity of author Ke Jingteng (pen-name Giddens) amongst young men was found to be in part thanks to his use of youth slang like rexie ("hot-blooded") and diao ("awesome").
While Ke himself doesn't consider his use of youth subculture and language to be the reason for his books' popularity, he does acknowledge that his use of everyday speech is definitely a distinguishing factor.
"The killer, with unmatched freedom, forces back tears with the fiercest hot-bloodedness...." The common youth term Giddens' uses here, "hot-blooded" (rexie), is neither new nor sensational, but is actually similar to the English term, describing being impassioned. Rexie is not only a term that describes Giddens' writing style, but his personality as well.
The cycle of slang
Famous author Chang Ta-chuen explains that younger generations use original or different language as a means of differentiating themselves from their parents' generation, and shouldn't be subject to the fuss made over it and offense taken at it.
In his essay "Why Save Moonspeak?" Chang reveals that while in junior high school he and his friends created their own words. One example was their use of the Mandarin for the element francium, which is highly radioactive, as a code word for being overly active.
Chang believes that popular slang is nothing to be feared, and will simply be washed from the language by the next generation, just as gai was replaced by hulan to describe talking nonsense and jibai became euphemized as jiche as a word for being picky and annoying.
Cultural commentator Nanfang Shuo calls language and vocabulary products of history. Political theorist Ernesto Laclau has said that when a term no longer elicits a reaction, people should realize that that term represents something of the times that is not going anywhere.
Modern speech may be a bit shanzhai and may be a bit lei, but it's always rexie!
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