Reading tea leaves
Here are a few more examples of interesting word plays using Chinese characters.
The first one is the sign on a shop selling tea. The characters read as dìngshān cháyè. Hearing this read aloud it would be interpreted as Dingshan Tea Leaves (or perhaps just Dingshan Tea). However, the final character is not the character for leaves (葉 yè). Instead it is a homophone which means industry or trade (業 yè). Hence, someone reading the characters would understand them to mean Dingshan Tea Traders.
Dingshan Tea
The next one is not an exact homophone, but it is similar. The sign reads xìngyòng hézuòshè (性用合作社). It is intended to sound like xìnyòng hézuòshè (信用合作社) which means credit cooperative. However, the first character 信用合作社 (xìn) has been substituted with 性 (xìng) which means sex. The meaning is something like "Sex use cooperative".
Sex co-op
On reading Chinese
A new Chinese book
End of semester at Shi-Da
Reading Chinese newspapers
One week at Shi-Da
Posted: May 4th, 2006 under Languages in Taiwan.
Tags: Chinese characters
Comments
Comment from Hai Tien
Time 8 May 2006 at 11:11 am
There seem to be a ton of sex toy shops in Taiwan nowadays, sometimes I wonder how they all manage to stay in business. But then again, I suppose if you could have two 7-Elevens doing well across the street from one another…
Comment from Mark S.
Time 4 May 2006 at 6:51 pm
The giant neon condom (mostly out of frame in the photo) really makes that second sign noticable. But the poor thing got about ten feet shorter a year or so ago. I don’t know why.