Swearin' Up a Storm
As any adolescent boy will tell you, the first, and perhaps easiest, things to learn about a foreign language are its swear words (after all, we could rattle off quite a few ourselves in a variety of languages we don’t speak). And for some, what could be more quintessentially “Beijing” than the colorful expletives that locals use to pepper their speech? So much so that swear words, it could be argued, is a cultural thang.
At least that’s the logic the creator of an online football forum used in devising his site, which aimed to organize footie fans across the city to graphically diss on football players and referees online and at games. However, according to a Beijing Today report, city police, ever worried about preserving the capital’s image in the run-up to the Olympics, were not amused – they had the 20-year-old would-be football critic detained this past summer for seven days and banned him from watching live matches at Beijing stadium for a full year, while other forum members were fined and/or issued warnings.
The forum members, for their part, argued that the graphic language used on the site is in the tradition of Jing Ma (京骂) – the aforementioned local custom of using colorful expletives in everyday speech (if you speak even just a smattering of Chinese, you’ll know it when you hear it). But authorities have remained unmoved: video cameras were installed to monitor foul-mouthed fans at the Guo’an-Barcelona match in August, and just last weekend, four fans were banned from watching any games at the Fengtai Stadium for a year after they were caught mouthing off and letting off a flare -- an incident that has prompted authorities to announce the implementation of "more stringent searches" at games.
Of course, no one can give a clear definition of what exactly constitutes this colloquial tradition (similar, in some ways, to the claim that obscenity-laden lyrics are endemic to hip-hop culture), but suffice it to say that the question of “jing ma” is deeply embossed in the capital’s consciousness – witness the constant stream of “ta ma de” (他妈的) this and “ta ma de” that (the Chinese equivalent to “friggin” and its more graphic varieties) that some people use in their everyday speech.
For now, though, it would appear that organized swearing at football matches will go the way of spitting, queue-cutting, going shirtless and littering – at least that’s the great whitewashed hope.
Links and Sources:
scotsman.com: http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1181092007
newsvine.com: http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2007/07/28/863651-beijing-cracking-down-on-rowdy-fans
sinosports.net: http://www.sinosports.net/soccer/soccernews.php?id=1191028741
panasianbiz.com: http://www.panasianbiz.com/2007/07/7_days_in_jail_for_insulting_o.html
youku.com: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_cz00XMTAyMzE4MA==.html
QQ.com: http://news.qq.com/a/20070728/000111.htm
Chinanews.com: http://www.chinanews.com.cn/ty/gnzq/news/2007/07-28/989300.shtml
Qianlong.com: http://culture.qianlong.com/6931/2005/06/28/1400@2695310.htm
sina.com: http://sports.sina.com.cn/n/2007-08-02/12383077436.shtml
http://english.sina.com/sports/1/2007/0803/120693.html
chinadaily.com: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/2008/2007-08/04/content_5448277.htm
Beijing Today: http://bjtoday.ynet.com/article.jsp?oid=22878034
cctv.com: http://news.cctv.com/sports/soccer/china_a/20070929/104079.shtml