New words in Chinese
This publication launches a series of this name. Its articles will introduce readers to new formations in modern written and spoken Chinese. As always, please take part in the attached poll: along with the contact form, forum messages and frequently asked questions, news polls are among the few ways we have to learn our readers’ opinions.
Ang Lee’s film "Brokeback Mountain" did not go unnoticed in China, as shown by the introduction of the expression 断背婚姻 (дуаньбэй хуньинь). Now synonymous with same-sex marriage, this word, like many other neologisms, describes changes in modern Chinese urban society. The complete list of neologisms introduced over the past two years contains 171 words or phrases. Let us look at some of them.
房奴/车奴 (фанну/чэну) — literally: apartment slave/car slave. This construction describes people burdened with loan obligations after buying an apartment or car on credit.
半糖夫妻 (баньтан фуци) — literally: a semi-sweet married couple. A fashionable term for a new urban Chinese phenomenon: spouses living separately to preserve romance.
三手病 (саньшоубин) — literally: three-handed disease. Not a medical diagnosis, but an everyday term for hand fatigue caused by gaming devices, computer use and mobile text messaging.
灰色技能 (хуэйсэ цзинэн) — literally: gray skills. Contrary to what specialists in Chinese involved in foreign trade might expect, this term has nothing to do with semi-legal customs-clearance schemes. It describes the increasingly standard set of urban professionals’ skills: drinking large amounts of alcohol, singing karaoke, playing cards or mahjong.
二奶专家 (эрнай чжуаньцзя) — literally: mistress specialists. A collective name for wealthy entrepreneurs and officials who have adopted the fashion of keeping mistresses alongside their legal wives.
丁宠家庭 (динчун цзятин) — literally: a DINK family with a pet. DINK (English abbreviation: double income, no kids) is a family category that spread in the West in the 1980s, when pursuing career fulfillment at the expense of family values became fashionable among spouses. A pet has found its way into the Chinese version—in Beijing in recent years, a dog.
海选 (хайсюань) — literally: selecting from a sea, having a sea of options. The word entered Chinese after the television show "Super Girl", which had an enormous pool of contestants. 碰瓷团伙 (пэнцы туаньхо): the expression is hard to translate literally without breaking it into parts. The first means "bump into porcelain". In the past, Chinese porcelain traders placed worthless wares in busy streets so a careless passerby would bump into and break something, then be asked to compensate them for a supposedly antique item. The second part means "gang". The new word refers to gangs of motorists who engineer road accidents and extort large sums from those blamed to compensate for damage. Need we explain that those blamed are unsuspecting victims of fraudsters, and the supposedly damaged car parts were probably already broken before the collision? 轰趴 (хунпа): from English "home party"— a party at home.