The recent discussion of tongzigong here brought back a memory. Tongzigong is type of flexibility and basic training given to kids when they are very young. It produces that flexible, springy body that is ideal for Chinese martial arts. But this term, like a lot in Chinese, needs to be….. um… finessed a bit in usage.
For example, I was in class one day and we were doing warmups. As we practiced, the teacher was telling me about the student next to me that he had trained since he was a little kid. Tonzigong is a particular interest of mine since I have two little ones myself, so I asked if the training this student received back then could be considered tonzigong.
When I asked the question in Chinese, the class burst out laughing and the young man that we were talking about (he’s in his 20’s) suddenly started saying over and over that he had lots of girlfriends. This made the other students laugh even more, and the man said, “I’m not a virgin. Really!”
I had forgotten that “tongzi” doesn’t just refer to a child, more specifically it refers to a virgin. Whoops!
2 responses so far ↓
1 Ed // Jan 25, 2008 at 3:26 pm
What, is it a bad thing to be a virgin in Taiwan these days? Seems rather silly to me that one feels that he has to convince the others around him of his non-virginity…
That said, aren’t there other ways to say “virgin” in Chinese that are more specific? Seems rather strange that the word for “child” was adopted to be used for the meaning of “virgin,” too.
(In Japanese, they use 処女 to mean (female) virgin; but in Korean that meaning is not there. Maybe this is true of Chinese as well?)
2 Ed // Jan 25, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Oh, and another question - what does “tongzi” in “tongzigong” mean, then? Does it really mean child-gong or virgin-gong? (I.e., what did the creators of the word mean?)
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