An interesting
story happened on my foreign friend John, who is learning Chinese online. John and I were walking down
a street, when he was shocked by how two Chinese people greet each other in the
street. One of them said, “Lao Gao, zuì jìn nǐ pàng le!" (最近你胖了, Lao Gao, you've put on so some weight!).
Then Lao Gao said, “Nǐ cái zhēn de shì fā fú le!" (你才真的是发福了. Well, you are the one who is really
growing stout!) . John was very surprised at this and asked me “How could they
not be angry when others say they are fat?
Everyone wants to
be slim and hate it when someone else says they are fat. Some may become angry
when they hear this, especially girls. But in China, if someone says to you “You
are getting fat recently!”, don’t rush to lose your temper, because they are
actually not laughing at the fact that you are really fat. So, what indeed do
they mean?
You may have
learned how
to greet people in Chinese such as ni hao, ni hao ma, but that’s actually
not quite native. There are more authentic way of greeting in Chinese such as
the one we are talking about today “你最近胖了” which
means “You are getting fat recently” or “You have gained some weight recently.”
In the
conversation, there are two sentences. The first one is “zuì jìn nǐ pàng le” (最近你胖了) which means “You are getting fat recently”.
The second is "Nǐ cái zhēn de shì fā fú le!" (你才真的是发福了). Literally, “fā fú le” (发福了)
means 'you're being better off' and have evolved to have the double meaning,
“you are being better off because you look fatter than before.”
You may feel weird,
but in the eyes of the Chinese, “fat” may not be a bad thing. It can mean you
life is well off and don’t have to starve yourself and finally lose your weight
a lot. If you're getting fatter, it means you're eating well and not doing hard
physical labor. That said, it's still not a good idea to say it to young ladies
who are very sensitive to body
figures.
Finally, I
explained this to John and he is now able to greet people in a very authentic
way.
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