Competition: What Did Justrecently Mean?
Posted by MyLaowai on Wednesday, October 15, 2008
What has seven letters, and is considered rude to your host?
(Hint: It’s an old swearword, invented by some uneducated carpenters somewhere in ZhongYuan, 5000 years ago).
Please send your answers to:
MyLaowai Seven Asterisks Competition
c/- MyLaowai AT Gmail DOT com
The first place winner will receive a week in China. Second place will win two weeks in China.
Wo Shi Laowai - Wo Pa Shui 
justrecently said
I’m not eligible.
MyLaowai said
Your wife would probably agree.
justrecently said
That depends on her mood.
Sinosceptic said
Hmm, must begin with a vowel or vowel sound since he called you ‘an *******’.
Can we play ‘almost-like-hang-the-man’ style. I guess –
***h***
You thought I’d take the easy shot and go with a******
MyLaowai said
I reckon it’d be better to see what possible words we could come up with.
Incidentally, did Chinese carpenters actually use the letters ‘a’ or ‘h’ back in ZhongYuan 5,000 years ago? I thought they used slightly more complicated versions of the same pictographs they still use today, thus demonstrating their linguistic superiority over all other races, who seemed to have to evolve and improve their languages over time.
justrecently said
You have stayed in China for so long and still don’t know that everything that others ever invented was invented in and around Zhongyuan long before? What a stubborn and uneducated hegemonic ******* you are.
(I’m not confirming that ******* contains an “h” or “a” at all.)
Of course, the 0.01 percent of those who could write did use slightly more complicated versions of the same pictographs they still use today at the same time.
Sinosceptic said
Here is a pictogragh of justrecently, albeit a simplified version of the original and traditional.
)*(
In modern usage it translates roughly as ‘tea towel holder’.
justrecently said
And this is a much more colorful and not-so-simplified pictograph representing you, sinosceptic.
Sinosceptic said
I’m afraid that it’s true and you’ve found me out – I am your wife’s identical twin brother.
justrecently said
She’ll share her dirty family secrets with me at a time of her own choosing.
justrecently said
But please go ahead.
FOARP said
Is it too late to put a bet on “Harmonious”?
justrecently said
S’pose its never too late because there’s no deadline. Is it in 5000 years? But Harmonious has only five asterisks. You feel it’s time to get back to the motherland, at least for a week?
MyLaowai said
I’ve seen Chinglish that would make spelling “Harmonious” in seven letters look inspired. Like this, from a tyre manufacturer here, talking about the history of the tyre:
WTF???
FOARP said
@Mylaowai – Get 200 people to draft equally rubbishy documents describing hopelessly un-inventive inventions, turn them into patent applications and get about 40% of them granted and you will have gone some way to wreaking the kind of destruction on the world of intellectual property that I did in my last job.