Wednesday, May 28, 2025

All roads lead from "Bananas and Blow" to (basically) the same Chinese expression

The naturally occurring rebus in "Bananas and blow" made me think of the idea of "canting arms" -- a coat of arms which represents its bearer's surname by way of a (usually partial and kind of lame) rebus. Wondering if I could come up with one for my own name, I decided "tyke on a fish" was a reasonable approximation of Tychonievich, at least by the rather low standards set by other canting arms, so I ran an image search for child riding a fish and found this:


It’s a Chinese poster of a baby riding a carp, with the caption 幸福有余. The first two Chinese characters mean "happiness," and the second two mean "plenty, surplus, more than enough" but are pronounced the same as the Chinese for "have fish" or "there are fish." Hence the fish illustration. It is for similar reasons that fish are always part of a traditional Chinese New Year feast, because "having fish every year" represents "having plenty every year." When I found the picture, which was yesterday or the day before, I didn't pay any attention to the Chinese. I just wanted a picture of a tyke on a fish.

Earlier today (technically yesterday), I posted "Hey, Mary, show me that riff," featuring a Leo Moracchioli music video. Bill left a comment asking about the Chinese characters on Leo's T-shirt, which I hadn't even noticed. His shirt reads 吉庆有余 -- a variant of the phrase seen on the fish poster, except that it says "good luck" or "fortune" rather than "happiness" (though Chinese doesn't really make much of a distinction between those two concepts). The last two characters are exactly the same, with the "enough and to spare" meaning and the "fish" homophony.

I had looked up the Leo video because the tune of "Bananas and Blow" reminded me of "Sultans of Swing." So two entirely different associative trains began at "Bananas and Blow" and ended with a four-character Chinese idiom meaning "plenty of luck/happiness."

3 comments:

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Speaking of Chinese puns, "banana green" sounds like "anxiety," and so green bananas ripening and turning yellow symbolizes overcoming anxiety. The "Bananas and Blow" rebus featured green bananas.

https://chinaskinny.com/blog/chinese-youth-pun-culture-workplace

WanderingGondola said...

Overcoming anxiety? That'd sure be nice. (Though, I'm not doing too badly at the moment.)

WanderingGondola said...

The two carp are representative of Pisces, the sun sign you, Debbie and I were born under.

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