Dingle Speaks

I’ve taken several sets of Chinese lessons and both times I was stunned by what I was taught. It was all ordering food, telling taxi drivers to drop you off just before the corner and asking strangers if they have any brothers or sisters, now, all of these can be handled perfectly well by pointing and making random noises (with the exception of the last one which is a bit redundant in a country with a one child policy) so this is all just meaningless waffle. Anyway, this is all well and good until you’re actually turned loose on the street and can’t even tell the bag-watch man to “shit off” or the kids handing out travel agency cards to imbibe your excretia.

Here’s a few things I’ve learn’t since I’ve been here, I’ll keep updating this: Apologies for the poor pinyin, i’m sort of making it up as I go along to fit the sounds.

Oh, by the way, people go on about tones being important, I don’t know about all that but I know that when you’re swearing you just need to look a bit angry, shout it and add something like “aaah” at the end for authenticity

Sha Gua - idiot (gang du in shanghainese)

zhu tou san – pig head

Er Bai Wu – “250″ – stupid

Shi San Dien - “13 points” – stupid, normally for a girl

Bun Dan - stupid

Shen Jin Bing - stupid

Shi – shit

Bee Shi - nose shit

Fong Pi - fart

Da Bien – big relief – a “long toilet visit”

Xiao Bien – little relief – a wee

Niu Niu – wee wee

Ta Ma De – errr I forgot

Pao Niu - hunting for girls (wo qu pao niu - i’m going hunting for girls)

Sha Bee - stupid “womans area”

Qu Si Ba - go to your death

Qu Ni Ma De – go to your mother

Da Fae Ji - “shoot the plane” – the good old five knuckle shuffle

Biao Zi - bitch / whore

Ji Nu – whore

Xiao Di Di – “little brother”

Pi Gu - arse

Gang Men - arsehole

Ni Gan Ma? – what are you doing? (rudely)

Ni Zhe Shi Gan Shen Me – what the hell are you doing?

Shao Nin – farmer / peasant (in shanghainese), very derogatory

Tong Zi – ‘comrade’, a gentleman who prefers the company of other gentleman

Nu Tong Zi – the ‘lady’ in the above arrangement

Never defecate in solutide again with this triumph in fecal management by those crazy guys in Korea, family toilets! (I’m assuming, I’ve never seen these anywhere else)

Grandpa, you’re not invited, you’ll have to wheel yourself somewhere else to empty that bag!

Throne Room – Father and son privies

If only we’d had these a couple of years ago when I was a young kid in the UK, what a fantastic bonding experience it must be between a father and son. I can just imagine sitting at the kitchen table having just finished my gruel, excitedly waiting for the moment my father folds the newspaper, stands up and says “grab a comic son, let’s go and make some bum-spuds”

As if the dual outhouses is not enough they also have a selection of toilet papers for every occasion, a smoothish one for every day use and a heavily profiled one for cleaning up after the most viscid of stools.

A selection of personal-tissues for the discerning fecal hobbyist

They pestered me into doing something, the miserable cretins, it will never last, I can barely be bothered to tie my shoe laces.

I’d have done something before but I had this rash….