Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Trendy Pro-Communism Purses



Reader Chris Port emails:

"I saw this site offering purses with (in addition to skulls) 'cool Asian script that no one knows the meaning of!' This looked like a job for Hanzi Smatter. Here's a closeup pic of the purses [shown above]. Thanks for any enlightenment you can grant, Chris"

= great effort; strive; try hard
= complete, finish, settle; whole
= orderly, neat, tidy; whole
(simplified version ) = political party, gang, faction

Professor David Porter of University of Michigan has a collection of original pro-Communism Chinese slogans. The original quote was:

努力完成整党任务实现党风根本好转!

which translates as "It is our great duty for the [communist] party to complete recognize itself and keep the spirit positive."