Chaufa & 房事 (Euphemism)

Taiwan’s government is imposing the “luxurious tax” 奢侈稅(she chi3 shui4) to curb the soaring house price. When talking about anything related to the house, the newspapers sometimes put out a headline using the term 「房事」(fang2 shi4), a house issue, literally referring to anything that’s related to the house. But it is also used as a euphemism for sex. When a couple have trouble in sex, we may say房事不和(fang2 shi4 bu4 he2) to describe the situation. That’s why the press use it as a pun.

In my previous writing “Chaufa & chop suey,” I told you about chaufa being used in Taiwan as a modern euphemism for having sex. Another modern one is 嘿咻(he xiu), which is an onomatopoeia used to mimic the sound you make when you’re doing strenuous work, such as rowing a boat or moving something very heavy. It’s also used to boost the morale of a group in laborious work. Somehow the meaning has changed.

Back to ancient times, we had a decorous and refined euphemism--敦倫(dun luan2) (Attention, it’s not 倫敦(luan2 dun), London.) A similar one is 周公之禮 (zhou gong zhi li3). 周公, Duke of Chou, was the one that established Rites of Zhou. The phrase refers to having sex as an ethical rite, 禮. It’s what keeps humans passing along their flesh and blood.

Another euphemism for sex is 苟且之事(guo3 qie3 zhi shi4). 苟且 usually means to drift along, to be resigned to circumstances. When someone lives without any goal or ambition and only drags out an ignoble existence, we can say he’s苟且偷生(gou3 qie3 tou sheng). But here 苟且 means to have sex.

In Taiwan, for relationship that only involves sex, we’ll call partner in this kind of relationship 炮友(pao4 you2). 友is a friend. 炮refers to a bomb as in 炮彈(pao4 dan4), or firecrackers as in 鞭炮(bian pao4). Since 打炮(da3 pao4) is another euphemism for sex, 炮友then naturally would be a friend with benefits.

To make it more directly, you say 性交(xing4 jiao), sexual intercourse, or 交媾(jiao gou4)，交合(jiao he2). For animal’s mating, it’s 交配(jiao pei4). Today we translate from English phrase “make love” into 做愛(zuo4 ai4). From this, we got another euphemism 做愛做的事(zou4 ai4 zou4 de shi4), which means to do what you love to do. It’s a word game like what I’ve mentioned in Idiotic Syntax. You prolong the phrase into something seemingly different.

Well, I’d better stop here and do what I love to do, which is-- reading.

敦倫=敦伦

周公之禮=周公之礼

炮彈=炮弹

做愛=做爱