竹林明月
全部為作者原創作品。
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 (豬肝 ). 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
看了標題嚇一跳。可是我朋友的學生還真是去了的。十多年前，朋友在國內開了個電腦美術設計的私校，招來的學生大多是城郊或其他省份小城來的高中畢業生，絕大部分是男生。我回國去拜訪他的學校。周五的晚上在學校看不到任何學生，我猜問這些外地的學生周末去娛樂了吧。我朋友凝神定氣得跟我說，他們集體到學校附近去嫖娼了，我啞然！晚上回家的路上，朋友指出那些白天的發廊晚上就是妓院了，開業標識是紅色、粉紅色的燈光及窗簾。不說不知道，一看到處都有紅光閃耀。這才明白中國回到了解放前，學生都知道嫖娼了。