竹林明月
全部为作者原创作品。
When I was a teenager living through Mao’s so called “Cultural Revolution”, life was not only depressing but also boring. Very boring. The adults were busy with themselves, everyone was trying to figure out how to survive each passing day…
I found jokes in the trashed books for self-entertaining. They were not just entertaining, they were inspiring. I think jokes are made by strong survivors to remind people that when things are bad, there are always something light and easy.
Here is one that I remember from back then.
A grandpa asks his grandson to go buy bamboo sticks (竹竿) at the local market. The grandson misunderstands and comes back with pig’s liver (猪肝 ). The annoyed grandpa asks the kid, “where are your ears?” The grandson picks up a pair of pig’s ears and shows them proudly to his grandpa, “look, I bought them with the change. They are buy one get one free!”
Carelessness also produces jokes. Sometimes in a bad or embarrassing way. Years ago I had a student who wrote a story in Chinese but did not proofread carefully before turning it in. It went like this.
“…I have been waiting for her for about an hour. I keep looking at my watch…” Watch in Chinese should be 表 or 手表. Instead, he wrote 婊子！I asked the student whether he knew what it actually meant. He said when he was typing, it gave him multiple options of characters under Pinyin. He just picked one randomly without thinking. I asked him why he added 子? He said since table is 桌子，house is房子, chair is椅子…, he thought adding 子 wouldn’t hurt.
I said “you are really a smart son of a bitch!”
2018-12-1
看了标题吓一跳。可是我朋友的学生还真是去了的。十多年前，朋友在国内开了个电脑美术设计的私校，招来的学生大多是城郊或其他省份小城来的高中毕业生，绝大部分是男生。我回国去拜访他的学校。周五的晚上在学校看不到任何学生，我猜问这些外地的学生周末去娱乐了吧。我朋友凝神定气得跟我说，他们集体到学校附近去嫖娼了，我哑然！晚上回家的路上，朋友指出那些白天的发廊晚上就是妓院了，开业标识是红色、粉红色的灯光及窗帘。不说不知道，一看到处都有红光闪耀。这才明白中国回到了解放前，学生都知道嫖娼了。