one of the most beautiful things about language
is that each and every single language is unique there are references
to certain cultural phenomena or certain historical events
or even more like local attitudes things like that all of these can be reflected
in language. And today we're going to be talking about
something that's unique to chinese! And that is the number ---
not even like a phrase -- it's a number --- 250. What does that mean in China?
Let's talk about it! So let's start off with saying the
number in chinese. It's Er Bai Wu. Erbaiwu. So, there are a couple of
ways of expressing numbers in chinese. Well, this is sort of a short easy way to
say 250 in chinese, but it's become slang
for...like...an idiot. If you want to call someone an idiot, you call them
an Erbaiwu. You call them a 250. So yeah how did that come about? How did
this number become synonymous with being an idiot?
So there are actually two possible explanations for
why this is a thing. The first one's a little bit easier. It goes back to
chinese currency. Way back in the day, China had
these little round coins that had square holes in the middle.
They were made of copper and they had holes in the
middle so you could tie them all in a string together.
And one of the units, like a unit of this currency was a thousand, and they
called it a diao. A diao is a thousand of this...
know...it's a thousand of this currency, and if you had half of that they called
it a ban daio, and some people -- because modesty is
a big thing in china --- some people will kind of be modest and
they would call themselves a 'bandiao' or 'bandiao zi'
which means like "Yeah i'm smart but i'm not like all the way there..."
It's a self-deprecating modesty thing right? And then
if someone was really really stupid...like actually stupid,
they would say like a quarter of that one thousand. So you're like
a fourth of the way there. You're a fourth of a unit,
so you would be an erbaiwu, because you know a fourth of a thousand is 250.
But there's another story, and i want to talk about that one, because that one's
far more interesting. So, way back in the day -- i mean way back in the day
during the warring states period,
there was a kingdom called Qi. And Qi is out in eastern china. i think it's
like where shandong is today. There was a famous official called
Su Qin --- i don't know the tones of this
particular guy's name. i just know the pinyin. So, Su Qin was this
really popular, really famous politician who worked for
the king of Qi, and the king and him were like best buds right?
They were really close, and throughout the course of his political career, he
made a lot of enemies...as you do. And one day
he just ended up dead. He got killed by somebody! and who's his bff? It's the king.
Right, the king is really really pissed off, and he comes up with a plan
to draw out the murder, because he can't figure out who the murderer is.
So, what he does is really smart. He comes up with this plan,
and that is to kind of campaign against su qin...
which was...you know which was his bff...and say that Su Qin
was an enemy of the state, and that he was going to
reward the person who killed Su Qin. pretty good! because who doesn't want
money, right? especially if the guy is an enemy of the state. So he puts his
whole campaign together! You know, "Su Qi is an enemy of the
state... but i'm going to give whoever killed Su Qin a diao!
i'm going to give them a thousand liang!" and wouldn't you know it....
people start coming! And not just one guy not two guys
not three guys...but four guys show up at the palace and say
"hey what up man? i killed Su Qin! Come on -- give me the money"
the king's thinking to himself "only one person
has done this. One person killed Su Qin, but there's four people here...
what do i do?" So, he goes to those four guys and he says
"Hey guys come on... don't lie..be real with me here. Be real."
And all of them - of course - are saying, "No! I am for real! All four of them just
keep insisting, insisting, insisting that they did it, so the king says "Awesome!
"Yu will get your reward. I'll split it between all of you."
"So, a thousand liang, i'll split it up into 250 for each one of you."
All four of the guys are happy until
it turns out that they are executed by the king....
because he didn't know which one actually killed his buddy,
and he just said, "You know what? I'll be safe...I''ll be safe and just kill all of them."
So, BAM - all four of them got 250 liang
and BAM - all four of them got executed! Because they were morons and they got
their 250, that's how 250 became associated
with being an idiot in china. So, it's a cool little callback to an ancient story
in history! We don't know if it's actually true or not, but
there you go! You can bust it out you know if someone's talking about chinese
history or talking about lucky numbers or
unlucky numbers. It's a good little bit of trivia! And that'll about do it! thank you all
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