Ducks and chickens are delicious! But they're also dirty. (Be careful of 鸭 and 鸡.)
Posted by Jonah Lopin on Sat, Nov 01, 2008 @ 12:34 PM
In china, you can eat 北京烤鸭 [bei3 jing1 kao3 ya1 = beijing roast duck]. You can also eat many kinds of 鸡肉 [ji1 rou4 = chicken meat]. Warning: these foods may cause 口水 (kou3 shui3 = saliva (see last post)].
But beware.
If you ask for a 鸭子 [ya1 zi0 = duckling] you may hear some giggling. The slang meaning of yazi is male prostitute. Hmmm. Not so delicious anymore.
Also, if you ask for 鸡nu3 [i can't get my chinese input editor to give me the character for woman. apologies.] then you are asking for chicken woman, which means prostitute. Careful!!
This kind of slang doesn't usually show up in the dictionary. When I first moved to China I thought people were calling prostitutes ji4nu3. ji4 means "for sale". I thought whore was "for sale girl". But it turns out it's chicken girl. Who knew.
So beware of 鸡 and 鸭子!