What about sarcasm?
Only in your dreamy dreams.
Another shot in the long Chinese government’s war to stop humans from behaving like humans.
–or meta humans:
[China Bans Reincarnation Without Government Permission][1]
As sad as it is comical.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Religious_Affairs_Bureau_Order_No._5
THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!
Puns don’t annoy people; people annoy people!
“That’s the most ridiculous part of this: [wordplay] is so much part and parcel of Chinese heritage,”
Even if this wasn’t bat shit insane to begin with, it will be nigh impossible to enforce. Are they going to employ an army of spy cockroaches to make sure no one casually tells a joke? Also, wordplay is fundamental for the evolution of language. Words like eyeball didn’t exist until Shakespeare made them up. It’s like the book 1984, in which it’s explained that the government was going to phase out certain words so even concepts that were a threat to their power could not be expressed, one citizen to another.
Here’s a site dedicated to Chinese puns that have been used to either get around censors or just to poke fun. I’m especially taken by referring to the National Bureau of Statistics as the Bureau of Dicking Around.
This is an outrage! It simply will not stand. Bao must be steamed, not stewed…how dare they talk about panning buns!!
Christ, what a bunch of assholes. Those guys need to let their pipe cool down between hits.
First they came for the double entendres…
and you gave them one?
First they came for the double entendres.......but I couldn't stand up because it was too hard. Then they came for the pun-makers, and I said nothing, even though a good pun is its own reword. Then they came for the non-sequitur humorists, and I didn't speak up, because a duck. Then they came for me, and I was all out of material.
I do appreciate the hard work that China and Russia put in, making us Americans feel better about our horrible government.
That’s one step away from hijinks and monkeyshines.
Newspeak. 1984 was the first thing that came to my mind as well.
The cockroach spy army gave me a good laugh though. I imagine that’s the dream. One day, say the censors. One day.
Don’t just give them one. You can’t take chances with these things.
When they come, you gotta unload on them with both entendres at once: Double the penetration!
My brief year spent studying Chinese in Beijing gave me the impression that the language was specifically engineered to make tonal errors maximally embarrassing to non-native speakers.
You can take my pun out of my cold, dead hands.
One of the more famous examples of this is Deng Xiaoping (邓小平). Xiao ping (小瓶) means little bottle, so people would use little bottles to show support for him or later to protest against him. The Tiananmen Square massacre started at the death of Hu Yaobang, who was a high-ranking official in the PRC and had been ousted from the party leadership by Deng partly for his toleration of political dissent by students. The students of the University of Political Science and Law made a big wreath for him with a bottle of Mautai liquor hanging from it - which was traditional and/or subversive, depending on how you viewed it. The bottle disappeared during the ceremony and may have been smashed, which may have been a form of protest against Deng’s leadership…
Two steps from shenanigans and tomfoolery.
Oh, well. Or, Well.
