Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Turtle, turtle egg and green hat -- learning some Chinese slang

If you call someone a turtle or a turtle egg in Chinese it's a nasty, hurtful insult! Have no illusion about that :-) The Chinese characters for 'turtle' are 王八 (wang2ba1),and for 'turtle eggs', are 王八蛋 (wang2ba1dan4).

Almost the most humiliating word you can use to describe a man in Chinese culture is that he is turtle, 王八. That means he is a cuckold. Another way to say this is to say that he is "wearing a green hat (戴绿帽子)(dai4lv4mao4zi)." A woman who cuckolds her husband is said to dress him in a green hat. And the man is most pathetic in people's eyes.

The offspring produced by such a woman is thus a 'turtle egg'. Its variation form is 'turtle kid', 王八羔子 (wang2ba1gao1zi).

Yet, turtle is also a symbol of longevity. Even in contexts with such a connotation, it's still not a compliment.

However, people are in awe of turtles under some circumstances. Sometimes when people fish, if they catch turtles, they inscribe some words on them and set them free back to the sea. Whoever catches them the next time is supposed to put them back, because if they don't, it will bring bad luck, according to supersition.

2 comments:

Laurie said...

can a woman be a turtle if her husband cheats?

Longroad said...

Usually a woman in such a case is not called a turtle.