I recently came across a blog that laid out 110 words used in Chinese slang (mostly Internet slang) which was really useful because I don't live in China, don't have the opportunity to talk to many Chinese people other than my parents, and they themselves have lived in the U.S. for the last 30 years, so they're not caught up on the most updated Chinese slang words neither, with the possible exception of my dad who goes on websites discussing the Taiwan independence issue. The list can be found at http://carlgene.com/blog/2019/01/top-111-chinese-slang-from-2008-to-2018/.
The list was compiled by a "foreigner" US citizen who moved to China to study Chinese and now presumably speaks better Chinese than me, going to show that studying can trump being born into a country's culture or at least raised in it. Some of the highlights include "eat watermelon" to mean sit back and watching a fight or argument as a bystander, the English equivalent of "eating popcorn." 妻管严 means what it says, which is "managed strictly by one's wife," as in "henpecked" or whipped.......MJ will probably love that phrase. 弹幕 means "bullet captions" which are the comments that appear on the screen during TV shows, something Asian TV shows have in common (apparently viewers have a lot of opinions and thoughts they have to share when watching shows!)
But the best one was "good person card," or a card that one gets when he or she gets rejected by a romantic interest, like "you're a good person, but I think we should see other people." Classic, and I'm surprised that the U.S. doesn't have a word like that. That universal feeling of rejection and being told you're a nice person really hurts, and apparently some people keeping getting the card and have amassed a substantial quantity of them, and are still single. Sigh, it's one thing to want to be single and left alone, but to be seeking a partner but be turned down over and over again and receive "good person cards," that's a pain I hope few have to experience.
Others include 房奴, which is a slave to one's mortgage, something I'm sure I'll have to experience one day. Haven't bought a house yet and already worrying about how to pay for a home, especially in certain areas of the country. I wonder how inflated the housing market will be by the time MJ and I move back to L.A., or will there be another housing crisis where inflated prices pop like a bubble and go down substantially? That'd be a good time to buy, like in 2009. However, just like the stock market, where the inverted yield curve signaled this week that a recession will hit in the next 2 to 17 months, causing the stock market to dip significantly and many thinking about pulling money out of the stock market, you can't really time the market, and it's too much to try to "call a bottom" and buy in, you never really know until it happens. Stocks were doing quite well before this inverted yield/ China news hit recently, and could easily surge up in a straight line with some positive news.
1 week in the books here in Durham, I feel like I'm still on vacation! Everything's new including our apartment, there's thunderstorms every day because it's summer that come and go, I feel like a heavy jacket of humidity is heaped upon me every time I walk outside, SO MANY TREES and SO FEWER PEOPLE than New York City. There's Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Costco, art museums, all those things that MJ can't live without, so so far she hasn't complained about being lonely in a small city yet! (Crosses fingers)
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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