小雞雞 VS 大鵰 (Euphemism)

One night before my son Steve took out the garage, he asked me if it was ok for him to go out in his boxers for he was too lazy to change. I said it was ok as long as his小雞雞(xiao3 ji ji) wouldn't be seen. Immediately he replied, "What小雞雞?  It's 大鵬(da4 peng2)!"

Though I know he was joking, his reply reveals a typical concern of most male's for the size of their "it." To my delight, he used a more "learned" term, 大鵬 , Dapeng, or Roc, firstly recorded in the Taoist classic Zhuang-Zi. Most people will use the term 大鵰(da4 diao) or (dwa diao) in Taiwanese, big vulture, which is also a brand name of a tonic drink for man in Taiwan. Generally it is pronounced in Taiwanese as the commercial of this product does.

Some euphemisms we use for man's genital are related to bird. The two in my title are good examples. 雞雞, chicken, is more of a baby talk used by parents to their baby boys.

Another similar expression is 小鳥(xiao3 niao3), little bird. That's why sometimes we call a male streaker 溜鳥俠(liu4 niao3 xia2), a man who walks his bird. Chinese bird keepers often take their cages out for a walk the way people walk their dogs. This is called溜鳥. Here the溜鳥俠 walks his own "bird" instead.

There’s a big commercial board on my way to school showing a big cage and a pair of jeans saying, 再大的鳥都裝的下(zai4 da4 di niao3 dou zhuang di xia4), meaning “it contains a bird however big it is.” I guess  now you get the meaning of it.

If you're the second child of your family, you got to be careful when you tell people about this. When speaking of one's ranking of all siblings, we say 我是/排行(pai2 hang2) 老___, meaning I'm the ______ child of the family. For example, if you're the first child, you can say我是老大(wo3 shi4 lao3 da4). For the third one, it would be我是老三(wo3 shi4 lao3 san). Accordingly the second child would be我是老二(wo3 shi4 lao3 er4). It's kind of embarrassing to say this because 老二is also used as a euphemism for man's sexual organ. Don't ask me why not the third of the first. I really don't have a clue.

For a man, his genital is vital for both himself and the lasting of the whole family. As a result, it is also called 命根子(ming4 gen zi3), 命is life while根is the root. In the classic novel 金瓶梅(jin ping2 mei2), the writer used 那話兒(na4 hwa4 er2), which is seldom seen these days. 小弟弟(xiao3 di4 di), little brother, as used to referred to a little boy, sometimes carries the same meaning as any other euphemisms mentioned above.

Young people these days love to say 好屌(hao3 diao3) to mean “awesome” while reserved people, especially ladies, don’t care for it so much because the word屌 means man’s genital. In Hakka, it is used as “fxxk.”

Once my friend Mary asked me when chatting that in Taiwanese, we have lots of curses dealing with women’s genital like “fxxk your mother’s . . . ,” but what should we say if we want to swear by “giving regards to” someone’s father? Well, I guess we’ll leave this to those smarter minds!

小雞雞=小鸡鸡

大鵬=大鹏

溜鳥俠=溜鸟侠