{"id":38632,"date":"2018-06-07T12:44:10","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T17:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=38632"},"modified":"2018-06-07T12:44:10","modified_gmt":"2018-06-07T17:44:10","slug":"a-philadelphian-who-doesnt-like-cheesesteaks-and-hoagies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=38632","title":{"rendered":"A Philadelphian who doesn't like cheesesteaks and hoagies"},"content":{"rendered":"

[*cheesesteak<\/a>; hoagie<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Recently, a new phrase has swept through the internet in China:\u00a0 d\u00ecy\u00f9 tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u5730\u57df\u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6.<\/p>\n

People who introduced me to this expression told me that it refers to somebody who is not good at or who is unfamiliar with things associated with the place where he \/ she is from.\u00a0 Of course, I had no problem with d\u00ecy\u00f9 \u5730\u57df, which means \"region(al)\", but I couldn't quite grasp the nuances of \u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 in this phrase.<\/p>\n

Originally a Wu topolecticism, syllable by syllable it literally means \"drag (along) oil bottle\", but as a whole it signifies \"children from the previous marriage of a woman who is about to remarry\" (Wiktionary<\/a>); \"(derog.) (of a woman) to bring one's children into a second marriage \/ children by a previous marriage\" (MDBG<\/a>).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

MSM\u00a0 tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \/ Cant. to1<\/sup> jau4<\/sup> peng4-2 \/ <\/sup>\/ Wu thu hhieu bin\u00a0 \u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6<\/p>\n

So how do you get from the surface signification of these three characters to the idea that it refers to children from a first marriage brought into a second marriage?\u00a0 And, from that, how do we get to the latest popular phrase, d\u00ecy\u00f9 tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u5730\u57df\u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 (\"somebody who is not good at or who is unfamiliar with things associated with the place where he \/ she is from\")?<\/p>\n

Here are some sources in Chinese that attempt to explain the meaning and usage of this newly popular phrase:\u00a0 here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>.\u00a0 Since the applications of d\u00ecy\u00f9 tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u5730\u57df\u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 (\"somebody who is not good at or who is unfamiliar with things associated with the place where he \/ she is from\") are still fast evolving — it's a very convenient phrase for stereotyping and making fun of people from different parts of China — I'll just quote a few comments from PRC graduate students to help explain the fundamental meaning of tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 and d\u00ecy\u00f9 tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u5730\u57df\u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6.<\/p>\n

Regarding the former:<\/p>\n

It means these children are not born in the family but are brought there. As non-biological children, they do not follow the tradition of the new family.<\/p>\n

This fits with the generally disparaging tone in which tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 is applied to children of a former marriage. It also comports with the clumsy and not very transparent English translation for tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 which is widely circulating on the Chinese web: \"drag\".<\/p>\n

This negative attitude about a remarried woman with children is reinforced by the following explanation of tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 by another informant:<\/p>\n

Typically, a tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 woman is defined that way because people think she is not good enough for her new husband, and yet she brings her children from a previous marriage along with her, making things even worse for her new husband. Thus she is the tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 for her new husband. But if a woman is very, very wealthy or has high status, when she marries a new husband and brings her children, I don't think people would consider her as a tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6.<\/p>\n

For the expanded, and currently very popular, phrase, d\u00ecy\u00f9 tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u5730\u57df\u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 (often translated as \"regional drag\", which doesn't really make any sense in English, certainly not for this context):<\/p>\n

I guess d\u00ecy\u00f9 tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u5730\u57df\u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 here also makes sense since the person (the one who is not adept at doing something that's associated with the place he\/she comes from) in a sense is not good enough to represent his hometown region, therefore he is a tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 (\"trailing \/ dragging oil bottle\") for that place.\u00a0 Tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 in this phrase could also be understood as a tu\u014dh\u00f2utu\u01d0 \u62d6\u540e\u817f (lit., \"trail \/ drag back leg\", i.e., \"impede\"; someone who is not familiar with something, or not good at something such that he \/ she drags the leg of the other people or drags the leg of the rest of the group). I also hear people say \"W\u01d2 g\u011bi ji\u0101xi\u0101ng tu\u014dh\u00f2utu\u01d0 le \u6211\u7ed9\u5bb6\u4e61\u62d6\u540e\u817f\u4e86\" (\"Im hindering \/ holding back my hometown\"). I think both phrases — d\u00ecy\u00f9 tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u5730\u57df\u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 and w\u01d2 g\u011bi ji\u0101xi\u0101ng tu\u014dh\u00f2utu\u01d0 le \u6211\u7ed9\u5bb6\u4e61\u62d6\u540e\u817f\u4e86 —\u00a0 refer to the same scenario.<\/p>\n

To gain a better grasp the meaning of d\u00ecy\u00f9 tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u5730\u57df\u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 (so-called \"regional drag\"), here are some examples of the way it's being applied:<\/p>\n

1. A Beijinger who's never been to the Great Wall and the Palace Museum, and who's never seen a flag-raising.<\/p>\n

2. A person from Xinjiang who can't sing and dance.<\/p>\n

3. A person from Inner Mongolia who can't ride a horse and shoot a bow.<\/p>\n

4. A person from Sichuan who doesn't like hot, spicy food.<\/p>\n

5. A Tianjiner<\/a> who can't perform xi\u00e0ngsheng \u76f8\u58f0<\/a> (\"cross-talk [comic dialog]).<\/p>\n

Most interesting of all to me is this one:<\/p>\n

6. Somebody from Huanggang<\/a> who's not good at math.<\/p>\n

If you don't know the lore of the modern Chinese examination system, you won't have a clue what this means. Here's some background:<\/p>\n

Huanggang is the home of Huanggang Middle School, one of the most prestigious secondary schools<\/a> in China. The school is especially well known for its smart and diligent students. It has consistently excellent records in China's National Higher Education Entrance Examination<\/a> and International Science Olympiad<\/a>. Students from Huanggang Middle School<\/a> have won 25 medals in The International Mathematical Olympiad<\/a>, International Physics Olympiad<\/a> and International Chemistry Olympiad<\/a>. Textbooks and course materials edited by faculty from this school are widely recognized and popular across the country, making Huanggang High School a national brand. Huanggang Normal University<\/a> is a full-time institution of higher education located in the city of Huanggang.<\/p>\n

I have met students who graduated from Huanggang Middle School.\u00a0 From the way they describe the regimen there, it is like years of boot camp, but instead of physical challenges and military training, it is studying from early in the morning till late at night.\u00a0 At Dartmouth back in the early 60s, we called it \"booking\", but most of my classmates didn't do much of it because there were too many other interesting things going on, like skiing.\u00a0 Few of them could be accused of being a d\u00ecy\u00f9 tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u5730\u57df\u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6 (\"regional drag\") when it came to skiing.<\/p>\n

[h.t. Tong Wang; thanks to Jing Wang and Jinyi Cai]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[*cheesesteak; hoagie] Recently, a new phrase has swept through the internet in China:\u00a0 d\u00ecy\u00f9 tu\u014dy\u00f3up\u00edng \u5730\u57df\u62d6\u6cb9\u74f6. People who introduced me to this expression told me that it refers to somebody who is not good at or who is unfamiliar with things associated with the place where he \/ she is from.\u00a0 Of course, I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,82,290,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-idioms","category-insults","category-language-and-culture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38632"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38660,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38632\/revisions\/38660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}