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From an anonymous colleague:

Most Language Log readers will recognize the white object on the left as an Asian squat toilet.  What does that have to do with "pull!"  Lots!

First of all, this is an advertisement for Bǎidù nuòmǐ 百度糯米 (“Baidu sticky rice”), a group-buying app for ordering meals, run by the magnate Baidu company. It says: Bǎidù nuòmǐ yāoqǐng nín lā kāi měishí zhī mén 百度糯米邀请您拉开美食之门 (lit. “Baidu Sticky Rice invites you to pull open the door of delicious food”) — and a gigantic LĀ 拉 “PULL” underneath, because this advertisement is meant to be stuck on pull-open doors. However… umm, as the advertisement is attached to perhaps the wrongest door possible — a toilet door — and since the verb lā 拉 ("pull") has a very ambiguous meaning in Chinese (especially here!!), one wonders how most people will interpret the lā 拉 ("pull") in this case!

From the time I began learning Mandarin, I recall hearing my Shandong in-laws using these expressions:

lā niào 拉尿 (lit., "pull urine", i.e., "urinate")
lā shǐ 拉屎 (lit., "pull shit", i.e., "defecate")
lā dàbiàn 拉大便 (lit., "pull great convenience", i.e., "defecate")

Even to my untrained ear, from the very beginning I felt that these expressions were crude and vulgar, and seldom heard my Shandong relatives use them outside the house, but they most certainly used them freely inside the house. Indeed, those were the only terms I heard them use at home. Consequently, for years I didn't know any other words for those biological needs, so I sometimes let them slip out even in polite company, which caused people to look askance at me, whereupon I would blanch or blush depending upon the circumstances.

I often speculated on the semantic aptness of lā 拉 ("pull") for urinating and defecating, and I came up with some bizarre scenarios for doing so. But it wasn't until my son ate some sand on the beach when he was a baby and watched in horror as my mother-in-law inspected his stools for the next few days that I gained yet another vivid meaning of lā 拉 ("pull") in relation to shǐ 拉屎 / dàbiàn 大便. She was literally "pulling poop / shit").

Incidentally, since the stand-alone verb in Chinese (well, in many languages across the world) also has the idiomatic connotation of an imperative, the big lā 拉 ("pull") in the white circle may be best read as “please, lā 拉 ("pull")!“ So, pull open the door, then go in and do your pulling business inside.

Selected reading

• "Mandarin tongue twister" (10/20/20)
• "Location Man" (12/31/14)
• "With precision and elegance" (4/7/20)
• "Between pee and bad" (8/15/19)
• "Emoji in Chinese music video lyric" (6/19/19)
• "A quantum leap in the Chinese toilet revolution" (5/6/19)
• "Linguistic advice in the lavatory: speaking Mandarin is a great convenience for everyone" (9/11/07)
• "Just the Queen invites irrigation" (4/8/08)
• "Chinese lesson for today" (8/29/10)
• "Next day's Chinese lesson" (8/31/10)
• "It is forbidden to urinate here. The penalty is bang." (9/2/10)
• "Urination is inhuman " (2/6/11)
• "Pwimming poot" (8/29/11)
• "Don't pee on this teapot " (3/28/13)
• "Urine meat balls" (11/23/13)
• "Greater and lesser conveniences" (6/25/14)
• "Please pee in the pool" (8/4/14)
• "Please micturate in the urinal" (4/19/15)
• "Kein Durchgang" (5/16/15)
• "Qishan smell of urine yellow croaker" (5/22/15)
• "Six God toilet water itching" (11/25/15)
• "'Please enter your cock after urinating'" (4/9/16)
• "Sino-Sanskritic 'devil'" (12/11/18)
• "Singlish: alive and well"  (5/14/16)
• "Toilet Revolution!!" (11/26/17) — see particularly the last comment for numerous articles on this subject in the Chinese press
• "Toilet: A Love Story" (9/1/18)
• "Toilet revolution!, part 2" (11/22/18)
• "Toilet revolution, an unfinished business: beware!" (5/25/19) — see the last comment (still continuing) for a huge list of newsworthy items from Chinese media
• "Civilized urinating" (10/31/17)
• "Let's go to the toilet for dinner tonight" (8/8/08)
• "Quadrilingual Washlet Instructions" (8/22/09)
• "I'm lovin' it — next to the toilet" (12/12/09)
• "Japanese hi-tech toilet instructions" (1/19/17)
• "Chinese lesson for today" (8/29/10)
• "Next day's Chinese lesson" (8/31/10)
• "Signs from Kashgar to Delhi" (10/11/13)
• "Mind your manners at the urinal, won't you?" (11/16/15)
• "Bovine / friggin' toilet" (9/6/18)
• "Opening and closing necrophilia" (7/22/18)
• "World's worst superhero" (120/17/20)
• "You aim too please" (6/20/16)
• "Advanced mission" (6/19/21)
• "Reindeer talk" (12/24/13) — about the distance a reindeer can go before it has to stop to pee
• "One small step for…"
• "Remembering Neil Armstrong and his 'one small step'"
• "One small step backwards"
• "Armstrong's abbreviated article: notes from the expert"

November 11, 2021 @ 9:33 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Signs, Style and register, Translation

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