{"id":40766,"date":"2018-11-25T09:04:56","date_gmt":"2018-11-25T14:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=40766"},"modified":"2018-11-25T09:04:56","modified_gmt":"2018-11-25T14:04:56","slug":"spring-mud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=40766","title":{"rendered":"Spring mud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sign in a restroom at the Taipei Public Library:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">bi\u00e0n h\u00f2u su\u00edsh\u01d2u ch\u014dng<br \/>\nch\u016bnn\u00ed li\u01ceo w\u00fa h\u00e9n<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\u4fbf\u5f8c\u96a8\u624b\u6c96<\/div>\n<div style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\u6625\u6ce5\u4e86\u7121\u75d5<\/div>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">After relieving yourself, don't forget to flush,<br \/>\nSo there will be nary a trace of \"spring mud\".<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In the Confucius Temple in Tainan, these two lines are translated thus:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">After then conveniently flushes,<br \/>\nspring mire has not had the mark.<\/p>\n<p>As described in <a href=\"https:\/\/news.tvbs.com.tw\/other\/72734\">this article<\/a>, 300,000 people, of whom about half are from overseas, visit the temple every year.\u00a0 It seems that the foreigners don't grasp the euphemistic metaphor.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, today's post is out of season (haiku poets would not be happy), but we did write about spring mud twice before in season:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Schlump season\" href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=18298\" rel=\"bookmark\">Schlump season<\/a>\" (3\/21\/15)<\/li>\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Mud season in Russia: Putin, Rasputin\" href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=37462\" rel=\"bookmark\">Mud season in Russia: Putin, Rasputin<\/a>\" (3\/31\/18)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Reading<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Toilet revolution!, part 2\" href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=40732\" rel=\"bookmark\">Toilet revolution!, part 2<\/a>\" (11\/22\/18) (with many references to earlier posts on restroom etiquette [or lack thereof])<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>[h.t. Timothy Clifford; thanks to Grace Wu and Melvin Lee]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sign in a restroom at the Taipei Public Library: bi\u00e0n h\u00f2u su\u00edsh\u01d2u ch\u014dng ch\u016bnn\u00ed li\u01ceo w\u00fa h\u00e9n \u4fbf\u5f8c\u96a8\u624b\u6c96 \u6625\u6ce5\u4e86\u7121\u75d5 After relieving yourself, don't forget to flush, So there will be nary a trace of \"spring mud\".<\/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":[6,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lost-in-translation","category-metaphors"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40766","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=40766"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40775,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40766\/revisions\/40775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}