Monday, May 29, 2006

It's better than our dorm...

I was chatting with Wen about a picture I saw in a newspaper. The story is about an executive who is going to jail. Anyone living in Sweden will know what it is about. Let's say that he is not a very popular person. The picture is from the prison where he might spend the next two years. I asked her what the stuff scribbled on the wall means. She said something that is pretty bizarre, but true; the prison cell is actually better then the student-housing at the best university in China.
The prison cell (from an Expressen article)

Here is a link to some pictures from the girls dorms at Peking University. These are pretty nice compared to the guys dorms! And much better to how it was just a couple of years ago.

The writing on the wall.

生無盡 (Simplified characters:生无尽)
Maybe the meaning is "Endless life"?

The character below is probably written incorrectly, because I can't find it in the dictionary.
The closest I can find is 龐 (Simplified:庞) 龐巴
Could it be a name with the meaning "Huge bar"? The radical that is incorrect usually implies something related to disease. Would be interesting to find out who wrote it.

UPDATE(29th May): Tian from Hanzi Smatter told me this:
you are correct about the "endless life".

the two lower characters, the one on the left is a very old one, that means "puss". It is no longer used and replaced with 癑。

癑巴 is a slang term means "whimp" used in various parts of China.
Strangely, when I search for "癑巴" in Baidu I don't get a single hit.

3 comments:

Johan said...

Would be cool to know who wrote it and why. Anyone out there who's been to the Asptuna prison? (No questions will be asked about the details of your 'visit' there) ;)

Uma said...

Hahaha, yeah, Wen is right, our dorm is actually worse:)

To be honest, the first impression i got from the picture is that.. it is an advanced form of Beida's dorm...

Anonymous said...

haha, yeah we are three pretty girls who like to spray perfumes all over, which makes the room smell pretty good, and we often got high scores for the good care of our room, although we don't tidy it quite often, if ever. Normally there're 4 girls in a room but since the fourth girl had difficulty fitting in our culture, there're only three of us left, and since I go home or sleep at Johan's place quite often, the two girls actually could have it for their own most of the time.

Actually I kinda miss having roommates who actually live in the same room with you, watching zhouxingchi movies over and over again during lunch and chat at bedtime...