Yellow Man

On Wednesday, I was waiting at the bus stop, watching down the road for the bus, when I happened to glance at a man parked on his scooter by the side of the road. He was wiggling something at me, and for a moment I didn't process what, and then I realized that he had his shorts open, and was wiggling THAT thing at me! Aughhhghhghhhhdhgjkalbdfjhkadsfhjfbjasd. I was totally disgusted, but I still had to catch the bus, which meant that I still had to look in that direction to see if the bus was coming so I could flag it down. It was an exercise in selective vision, where I just kind of had to block the man out of my view. This went on for an agonizing 5 or 10 minutes until the bus finally came, to my great relief. As soon as I stepped foot on the bus, it occurred to me that I know a couple of good humiliating things to yell at people if they are behaving inappropriately, and I really should have yelled some things to publicly disgrace the guy. So without further ado: Rebekah's Short Guide to Yelling at Perverts in Chinese!

1) Ni lao segui! = 'You old pervert!' Start the shaming by getting everyone's attention with this one. I've translated the word segui as pervert, but if you want to be totally literal it says color-ghost. I'm not sure about the 'color' part (although in Chinese culture they do associate the color yellow with things that are inappropriate or pornographic, kind of like "blue movies" in English, so maybe that has to do with it), but in Chinese 'ghost' also means 'devil,' so it seems like a pretty good thing to yell at someone bad.

2) Ni bu yao lian! = 'You have no shame!' (lit. 'you don't want face') In Chinese culture, it's very important not to lose face, and to maintain one's dignity. Therefore, to intentionally exhibit face-losing behaviors like exposing oneself in public is almost unthinkable...only a really shameless person doesn't care if they lose face.

3) Bu yao peng wo! = 'Don't touch me!' Hopefully it doesn't come to that, but it's a good expression to know.

4) Zou kai! = 'Go away!' 'Nuff said.