仆街—吃飽了撐著 (up-to-date term)

Sometimes when you go dinging at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, you might unconsciously eat more than you usually do and get full up. We’ll call this 吃撐了(chi cheng le), getting too full.

So when someone seems to have too much time on hand and is up to something meaningless, such as meddling into others’ affair that is none of his concern, we’ll say he’s吃飽了撐著(chi bao3 le cheng zhe), getting too full up.

Recently the term has been related to a new craze “planking” in a news report as my title. Planking,” or the act of lying face down for a photo op in weird and wonderful places. It carried on largely unnoticed until recently, gaining popularity in Australia and New Zealand. Since then it has become the latest Internet craze.

                                    (from NOWnews.com)

This craze is called 仆街(pu jie) in Taiwan, which is from Cantonese. Not speaking any Cantonese, I checked on the net and found several explanations about this term. In general the word 仆 means to fall; 街is street. The two words are combined to mean to fall, to drop dead on the street, which is a rude curse.

Two women from Taipei also jumped on the bandwagon. They made a name for themselves planking around Taiwan. They also received different responses from people around, from admiration to raised eyebrows. The craze caught even more attention after a young Australia man falling from a balcony when planking.

Somehow the Internet crazes, such as the flash mob 快閃族(kuai4 shan3 zhu2) and the仆街, remind me of the movie Rebels Without A Cause, where James Dean plays the extremely dangerous game of jumping out of the speeding car rushing to the cliff. It seems to have been so natural for young people, now or before, to attraction attention by some “meaningless,” or even “fatal” acts. To a lot of people, their acts might be scorned as senseless and 吃飽了撐著.

I don’t know why, but there’s a saying going around as 醜人多作怪(chou3 ren2 duo zuo4 guai4), ugly people like to stand out with their bizarre acts, which I think has a great influence on the acts of my generation. Since we were young, we were taught not to be different from others. We were asked to put on uniforms, wear the same hairstyle, carry the same book bag, read the same textbooks, and share the same values. We took caution not to stand out with different looks or acts, so that we would be left alone and wouldn’t be labelled as醜人多作怪, which I personally consider a discrimination to ugly people. The point is you don’t like someone’s looks. Consequently whatever he wears, whatever he does, it’s 作怪. But, who wants to be labelled as ugly anyway? You behave yourself as a result.

However, there has always been a craze for being unique. We’re afraid of being different, but we WANT to be different. We’re afraid of 作怪, but we WANT to作怪. So when someone came up with the idea of flash mob or planking, with the help of internet, many young people follow the trend to作怪 . It’s not so 作怪on the other hand, since so many people are doing the same thing. When people are snorting or criticizing such an act as meaningless, those young people might ask, “who says we should always do something ‘meaningful’?”

Back to the title of the report, it does not carry any negative implication about this planking stuff. It uses the term吃飽了撐著literally since in planking, you need to support撐著your body with the strength of your muscles around the belly and the back, which is strenuous.

I’d better exercise my brains to figure out something novel but not so strenuous for people of my generation to作怪. To get my inspiration, I should perhaps grab some food and feed myself first. After all, you got to be 吃飽了 before you got 撐著

吃飽了撐著=吃饱了撑着
快閃族=快闪族
醜人多作怪=丑人多作怪