豬八戒照鏡子 (Xie hou4 yu3)

Imagine a husband stuck in a dilemma caused by two women he loves, his mom and his wife, who just don’t get along. In Chinese, we call this problem between the two women 婆媳問題(puo2 xi2 wen4 ti2), the issue between mom and daughter-in-law. No matter which side he takes, he’ll irritate the other. What if he chooses to be wise and doesn’t take sides? It’s even worse--He irritates both. We have a Xiehouyu for this poor man’s situation--豬八戒照鏡子(zhu ba jie4 zhao4 jing4 zi3) And before I give you the latter part of this Xiehouyu, let’s see who豬八戒 is.

He’s a household name as one of the three disciples of 唐僧(tang2 seng) in Journey to the West 西遊記 (xi you2 ji4), one of the Four Great Classical Novels in the Chinese literature. It’s a story about a pilgrimage of a monk, 唐僧, along with his three disciples, to “the Western Regions” to obtain sacred texts (取經 qu3 jing)

In the fiction 豬八戒 was originally a divine general living above. He was relegated down to the human world as a punishment for he harassed 嫦娥(shang2 e2), another famous figure ending up on the moon, after getting drunk at a feast. But he mistakenly took a pig’s form during his reincarnation. Thus came his last name, 豬, pig.

What about his name 八戒(ba jie4) ? It means eight commandments, eight things you should abstain from, such as greed, lust, gluttony. . . , which is ironically everything he is. He’s the one who’s always lured by the seductions, gets into troubles and has to be saved by his senior, 孫悟空(sun wu4 kong), the monkey. In some way he’s the symbol of our impulsive lusts.

So, what happens when 豬八戒 looks into the mirror (照鏡子)? He’ll see a figure of a swine instead of a human being. Now you know the latter part of this Xiehouyu, 裡外不是人(li3 wai4 bu2 shi4 ren2). 裡 means inside; 外 is the opposite, outside. 不是, not, 人, human. For a pig, when he looks into the mirror, he won’t see a human’s figure no matter in or outside the mirror. It thus depicts what the poor husband I mentioned at the beginning is like.

We certainly won’t have only one Xiehouyu for this well-known 豬八戒 Let me give you another. 豬八戒吃人參果(zhu ba jie4 chi ren2 shen guo3)  吃 means eat. 人參果 is a fictional fruit that’s extremely precious because if you eat some, you’ll live forever. But for a glutton who’s always gulping whatever he eats, it will be a waste to offer such a treasure as人參果 He won’t tell the difference anyway.

I’d like to give another one for you to guess. What’s between the lines if we say 豬八戒擦粉(zhu ba jie4 ca fen3) Zhu ba jie powders his face ? I’ll give you the answer after I come back from my Lunar New Year’s holidays. (Hint: 豬八戒 is considered ugly.)

婆媳問題=婆媳问题

婆: mother-in-law

媳: daughter-in-law

問題: problem, issue

豬=猪

鏡子=镜子 mirror

西遊記=西游记

取經=取经

孫悟空=孙悟空

裡外不是人=里外不是人

參=参