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Eveline Chao on Chinese slang and swearing

Eveline Chao is the author of Niubi — The real Chinese you were never taught in school. In this video, she teaches Danwei's Jeremy Goldkorn the origin of 'niubi', how to say 'fisting' and other useful phrases in Chinese. Also on Youtube.

You can buy the book on Amazon.com.

There are currently 14 Comments for Eveline Chao on Chinese slang and swearing.

Comments on Eveline Chao on Chinese slang and swearing

what about translating "bi" as "twat" rather than "cunt"?

拳查. Love it. How have I gone this long without knowing that word?

Guys, Vimeo.com is banned also :) 1 month, already :)

Love it! Going to get that book asap!

@Kaiser

I'm pretty sure she meant 拳插, but then again, I'm not expert. Jeremy?

Ms. Chao seems uninterested and bored with her own subject in this interview.

Surely that should be 拳插?

With all this recent spate of all-out harmonization, I dunno if you're going to a laogai camp just for buying this book and shipping it into the PRC...

Jeremy, any chance you guys will be reviewing this? It seems like the kind of thing my students might enjoy. Of course, as a teacher I can't "recommend" this kind of book, but I could probably leave its name lying around somewhere and leave curiosity to take care of the rest...

Specifically, I wonder if it has tone marks. There are way too many "Chinese slang" books with pinyin sans tone marks. Useless!

Hi Charles

We do not usually do book reviews on Danwei (only excerpts), but I can tell you the book has tone marks. I think The Bookworm in Beijing has the book in stock if you want to check it out.

2:40 - "gay slong is really interesting"? great!

I think 拳交 is way more common. Google "刘昱杉" and check to see what word is most commonly employed to describe her... activities.

C. Custer sounds like a "great" teacher......

I can't think of a situation when I would even need to say "fisting" in English, other than to interview the author of "Niubi".

Actually I just saw this book at a "Barnes & Noble" in northeast Florida. I was looking for a simple Mandarin phrase book for a friend and stumbled upon this raunchy reference guide.

One term that Miss Eveline Chao possibly missed is 磨豆腐, which I came across while doing a Baidu image search for Hu Jintao last year.

I would like to ask her about this specific omission, but probably could not keep a straight face like Jeremy did through most of the interview. Mr. Goldkorn is a true professional who can seriously interview Eveline and Muzi Mei without cracking up.

I've always wanted a naughty phrase book that featured regional slang terms in Cantonese as well as the dialects of Shanghai, Sichuan, Zhejiang, Fujian, etc. I would actually buy that one, not just stand in the bookshop reading it.

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