盲虫 - The dark side of cultural development? They’re both in 红楼梦…

anyhow, 屄(unicode: 808f, no pronounciation, cao was created recently ) and 肏(unicode: 5c44, bī), are not defined in gb2312_80 standard. Because of indecency, there character was never introduced in school. The treatment was not much different than the irish work “fuck” in the current English school. over the years, those indecent characters had lose there from, pronounciation, meaning and even got disconnected from reality. Although [尸乏] exists, 肏 was created (probably late Ming dynasty). The character 屌, was using as [尸乏]. There are many similar diasters. Perhaps, it should be reviewed was as the dark side of cultural development.

Not knowing the original character does not, of course, prevent anyone from writing “bi” because it is conventionally written simply as “X”. “cao” 肏 is also conventionally written as 操, a character that is unrelated except that it has a similar pronounciation.

Roy — from what I understand, Chengdu has the best underground music scene outside of Beijing. Kun and I went to a place (小酒馆, on 玉林西路) known for music, but they told us they wouldn’t have any shows within our timeframe. Food has indeed been spicy, most of the time: sometimes we get stuff extra-hot, and sometimes we get stuff extra-bland because they figure the waidiren and the foreigner can’t handle the full blast. I’ve developed a theory about the local accent: that people talk the way they do because they burnt away large chunks of tongue with fiery 海椒.

John — agreed re. ridiculousness, but I still think it’s a fun character, etymology-wise.

Hope you had (hope you have a?) great trip Brendan! We can’t wait to read the next installment.

Still, sounds like fun. :)