The NBA is pretty popular in China, and for good reason.\u00a0\u00a0Fans can watch Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian, the sport itself\u00a0requires very little equipment, and a lot of people can play at the same time- all strong suits.\u00a0 Moreover, I’ve heard a couple people\u00a0say that they\u00a0listen to\u00a0NBA announcers to make their English more colloquial.\u00a0 Suffice it to say that you’ll find many basketball fans in China.<\/p>\n
As a born-and-bred Bostonian, I felt it only right to bring some souvenirs celebrating the Celtics’ 2008 NBA Championship victory.\u00a0 Jerseys were expensive, but hats seemed just right.\u00a0 I picked up a bunch of Celtics hats and off I went to China.\u00a0 I had gifts to give, and these hats were perfect.\u00a0 Well, almost.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I took another look at them, and\u00a0immediately smacked myself in the forehead.\u00a0 How could I have forgotten this?\u00a0 Why didn’t this occur to me back in Boston?<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 The problem is, the color of the Boston Celtics is green, and there’s an expression in Chinese – “to wear a green hat” (\u6234\u7eff\u5e3d\u5b50<\/strong>)\u00a0which\u00a0is not\u00a0very flattering.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Whatever the case may be, both professions may be linked with husbands who may not be home for extended periods of time.\u00a0\u00a0 As for grammar, to say that a woman cuckolded her husband would be “\u5979\u4f7f\u4ed6\u6234\u7eff\u5e3d\u5b50\u4e86<\/strong>,” (“She caused him to wear a green hat).<\/p>\n Well thankfully, nobody threw the hats back at me.\u00a0 One of the managers got it for his son whose peers are probably too young to know the phrase.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 As for the others, suffice it to say I have a pile of green hats sitting in my closet in Beijing.\u00a0 So- anybody want one?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The NBA is pretty popular in China, and for good reason.\u00a0\u00a0Fans can watch Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian, the sport itself\u00a0requires very little equipment, and a lot of people can play at the same time- all strong suits.\u00a0 Moreover, I’ve heard a couple people\u00a0say that they\u00a0listen to\u00a0NBA announcers to make their English more colloquial.\u00a0 Suffice…<\/p>\n