Hong Kong foot? (Body)

These days my students are learning about expressions when seeing a doctor. We talk about symptoms 症狀(zheng4 zhuang4) of different diseases. When talking about the athlete’s foot, my students just called it “Hong Kong foot” as what we called it in Mandarin, 香港腳 (xiang gang3 jiao3)

According to Wikipedia, the name “Hong Kong foot” originated from the stationing of the British army in Hong Kong after the Qing Dynasty of China had lost the first Opium War. Not used to the hot and humid weather in Hong Kong, many British soldiers had suffered from the athlete’s foot for wearing their military boots without good ventilation.

In Chinese, we put hand 手and foot 足 (another name for 腳) together to call siblings. When two persons, though unrelated, are very close to each other like siblings, we’ll say they 情同手足(qing tong2 shou3 zu2) In English, you work “tooth and nail,” while in Chinese, you 胼手胝足(pian2 shou3 zhu2), you work so hard that the skin of you palms and soles thicken.

When you’re scurrying or acting in a great bustle, we say 手忙腳亂(shou3 mang2 jiao3 luan4) But on the contrary, if you work with great efficiency, we’ll say you’re 手腳俐落(shou3 jiao3 li4 luo4). 俐落 means efficient, brisk, neat and clean. And we have a similar expression when praising someone who has his feet on the ground—腳踏實地(jiao3 ta4 shi2 di4)

With the current nuclear crisis in Japan, many nuclear power plants under plan or construction have been stopped. When you stop something in the middle of it, we say we “chop it at the waist,” 腰斬(yao zhan3). 腰 is your waist. The phrase originates from a way of executing in ancient China, which is seemingly very inhumane from today’s point of view.

As its name suggests, the executed convict was cut right into half from his waist. The executed wouldn’t die at once, but bleed consciously to death. It is said that one of the executed had dipped his finger into his own blood and wrote the word 苦(ku3), meaning bitter or painful, on the ground seven times before he died.

The most common execution at ancient times was probably beheading, 斬首(zhan3 shou3), or more orally, 砍頭(kan3 tou2). 首is another way to call your head. Many novelists have written how the family of the executed bribed the executor to ask him for a俐落的execution. An unhappy executor might take a blunt knife and torture the executed. What a time of 紅包(hong2 bao)! (red-envelop, bribery)

I’ve been busier these days as I got some extra work to do. But I certainly will manage to keep writing and posting on this blog. I’ll never let this blog 腰斬

症狀=症状

香港腳=香港脚

手忙腳亂=手忙脚乱

手腳俐落=手脚利落

腳踏實地=脚踏实地

腰斬=腰斩

斬首=斩首