j a m e s f o r s y t h ✡ n e t

We came across young boys in Wuhan with a peculiar looking hairstyle. The hair is shaven all over except for two circles at the front and back. The back circle is sometimes allowed to grow long into a bogan-style tail. These hairstyles are different to some of those pictured above, as the latter have tufts on the sides as well.

On returning to Australia, I realised I’d never learnt the Chinese name for this hairstyle. Many Chinese people I’ve asked since have said that they didn’t know. Anyhow, the other evening Ying, Asher and I were out for a walk, and we saw a Chinese mother and son - complete with peculiar hairstyle! I asked her what the name of the hairstyle was. She replied “茶壶盖”, with a distinctive Beijing accentuation, rendering it “茶壶盖儿”. She explained that it literally refers to the lid of a teapot.

I was quite pleased with myself for finding this out. It’s weird, when I googlesearch 茶壶盖 I seem to mainly get teapots, not hairstyles.

I’m bringing this article to the front page of this blog because of this startling update: Infants in Wuhan don’t wear nappies. They’re too expensive. Instead they learn to respond to their parents whistling to them when it’s time to go, then they’re held over the gutter whilst the parent exercises extreme patience waiting. The pants they wear look like the below, and are called 开裆裤.

Asher likes this song:

小燕子穿花衣，
年年春天来这里。
我问燕子你为啥来，
燕子说这里的春天最美丽。
小燕子告诉你，
今年这里更美丽。
我们盖起了大工厂，
装上了新机器，
欢迎你长期住在这里。

It’s about a beautiful little swallow. The strange thing is that the child singing the story to the swallow is telling it that the area in which they are situated will be even more beautiful when a new factory is built there.

Unless I’m misunderstanding the story, which is always a possibility.

To watch a flash animation of the song, see here or here.

re: 盖起, it’s gàiqǐ r.v. build up (wenlin). For this usage of 起, see Q188 on p112 of Rohsenow.