The NBA is pretty popular in China, and for good reason.  Fans can watch Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian, the sport itself requires very little equipment, and a lot of people can play at the same time- all strong suits.  Moreover, I’ve heard a couple people say that they listen to NBA announcers to make their English more colloquial.  Suffice it to say that you’ll find many basketball fans in China.

As a born-and-bred Bostonian, I felt it only right to bring some souvenirs celebrating the Celtics’ 2008 NBA Championship victory.  Jerseys were expensive, but hats seemed just right.  I picked up a bunch of Celtics hats and off I went to China.  I had gifts to give, and these hats were perfect.  Well, almost.  On my last day at the hotel where I was staying during the Olympics, I went to get the hats that I had put in the closet.  I took another look at them, and immediately smacked myself in the forehead.  How could I have forgotten this?  Why didn’t this occur to me back in Boston?

Aside from Olympic pins, these hats were going to be given to managers, police officers, and other people who had made the stay a pleasant one.  The problem is, the color of the Boston Celtics is green, and there’s an expression in Chinese – “to wear a green hat” (戴绿帽子) which is not very flattering.  Essentially, “wearing a green hat” means that a man is being cuckolded by his wife, although even an unmarried man would be hesitant to accept the gift himself.  As for the origins of the phrase, some say it started with postal workers (whose hats are all green), while other say that it may have began with military officers.  Whatever the case may be, both professions may be linked with husbands who may not be home for extended periods of time.   As for grammar, to say that a woman cuckolded her husband would be “她使他戴绿帽子了,” (“She caused him to wear a green hat).

Well thankfully, nobody threw the hats back at me.  One of the managers got it for his son whose peers are probably too young to know the phrase.  One of the hats went to a female manager who won’t have any problem wearing it, and yet another went to a Korean friend who will have no problem wearing the thing.  As for the others, suffice it to say I have a pile of green hats sitting in my closet in Beijing.  So- anybody want one?