Bidet for mother and child — not
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Jeff DeMarco sent in this Hong Kong sign:
Jeff comments: "I don't think that's what they mean!"
He's right. The Chinese says:
shèyǒu zǐmǔ cèbǎn 設有子母側板
("equipped with child-mother sideboard", i.e., "[baby] changing station / table) [see update below]
"Bidet" is translated into Chinese in various ways, among them:
jìng shēn 净身 ("clean body" — can also mean "cut off testis") or jìng shēn chí 净身池 ("clean body pool")
zuò yùpén 坐浴盆 ("sit down bath basin")
xiàshēn pén 下身盆 ("lower body basin")
During the 50s, the Soviet Union provided a tremendous amount of assistance to China in countless ways. They helped set up factories, build bridges and railways, establish universities and schools, advise with publishing ventures (where now Chinese journals often have English titles, tables of contents, and abstracts, during the heyday of Sino-Soviet friendship, these were all in Russian), run businesses, and so on. Even today, older generations still refer to "Sūlián lǎo dàgē 苏联老大哥" ("Soviet big brother").
When I started to travel to China in 1981, I often stayed in hotels that were built during that golden decade of amity with the Soviet Union (most of them were called Yǒuyì bīnguǎn 友谊宾馆 Friendship Hotel / (гостиница) Дружба). They usually had a bidet in them. When I asked Chinese whether they used the bidets and if so how, they nearly all told be that they washed their feet in them.
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Update (4/4/18 2:00 a.m.)
When I looked at the sign more closely again, I realized that they had actually written the perfectly homophonous "shèyǒu zǐmǔ cèbǎn 設有子母廁板" ("equipped with child-mother toilet board"), where "cèbǎn 廁板" means "toilet seat". It turns out that there really is a kind of toilet seat suitable for use by mother and child, and the ones in this restroom must be equipped with bidet functions. Pictures of them may be seen here.
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Update (4/4/18 7:30 a.m.)
More on East Asian toilet business:
"Let's go to the toilet for dinner tonight" (8/8/08)
"Quadrilingual Washlet Instructions" (8/22/09)
"Japanese hi-tech toilet instructions" (1/19/17) — here the Japanese toilet industry attempts to answer Mark Liberman's multiple dilemmas expressed in the first comment to the previous post
"Toilet Revolution!!" (11/26/17)
"Six God toilet water itching" (11/25/15)
John Rohsenow said,
April 4, 2018 @ 12:11 am
This reminds me of the stories exiled mainlanders in Taiwan used to tell about PLA troops occupying Shanghai, and using the toilets to wash their
rice rations in, with predictable results.
howawhya said,
April 4, 2018 @ 8:42 am
Even more amazingly, "Doc, note I dissent…" was actually the result of a palindrome competition held by the codebreakers at Bletchley Park (who, as the movie shows, were quite good at UK-style cryptic crosswords, too).
thanks zimmer, you are amazing, i like your idea
Continue!!
Robert said,
April 5, 2018 @ 8:15 am
howawhya's comment seems to be a repost of a comment on:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=17884
From several years ago. It seems to be link spam for the website given in the user name. (Undoubtedly futile, as these links have rel='nofollow').
Martha said,
April 5, 2018 @ 9:22 pm
FWIW, those double toilet seats, with the regular sized seat and the little ones for kids, are available in the U.S. I've never seen them on a public toilet, but I've seen them in homes with little kids.
Jichang Lulu said,
April 7, 2018 @ 8:43 am
净身池 > ‘cut-off-testes pool’—a Chinglishism waiting to happen.