Chinese New Year is coming soon, a time that is spent with family, and where elders give you red packets with money and prod you with intrusive personal questions such as “when are you getting married? When are you going to have kids?”
But for those of you who aren’t quite sure how to greet your elderly relatives, don’t worry, the Senior Citizen Home Safety Association have got you covered with this video that was uploaded online on Monday afternoon.
The video features three elderly people dancing while explaining three ways of greeting your elderly relatives over Chinese New Year.
Handy, right? Well, that is unless you take your cues from the Chinglish subtitles, where very literal translations may leave non-Cantonese speakers scratching their heads.
Lines like: “I wish you no more wind wet pain lor,” “I wish you all touch yourself lor,” and “I wish you win my Sugar Baby” don’t immediately feel like things you should say to your elders.
We don’t know if the Chinglish subtitles were intentional or not, but either way it makes for amusing viewing.
Netizens appear to agree, with the video getting more than 260,000 views and attracting comments such as “so cute”, and “when I get old I want to be just like this.”
But for those of you who don’t understand Chinese, here’s what they’re actually saying.
“Wind wet pain” actually means “rheumatism,” but the individual characters themselves — “fong,” “sup” and “tong” — literally translate into “wind,” “wet” and “pain.”
“Lor” is the Cantonese equivalent for Singapore’s “lah.”
“The touch yourself reminder” is actually a reminder for someone to keep warm, given away by the rubbing-the-shoulders dance move.
Lastly, one of the dancers asks: “New Year go up head smell with granduncle, say what ah?” This actually means “when you’re planting incense with grand uncle, what do you say?”
The response “I wish you win my Sugarbaby,” is actually a reference to a famous actress and literally translates to “I wish you beat Lana Wong Har-wai.”
This refers to the fact that for more than a decade, Wong — dressed in dramatic outfits — has been the first in line to offer incense at the Wong Tai Sin Temple, which is dedicated to the Great Immortal God Wong, and attracts thousands of people every Chinese New Year.
At the strike of midnight, worshippers plant their incense, and the earlier you plant it, the luckier you will be. See if you can spot Wong planting incense in this video from Chinese New Year last year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZRX64VOLVQ
As you can see from the video, the jostling to get your incense sticks in first can get hectic, “because winning against Lana Wong Har-wai isnt easy,” explains the granduncle in the video.
We’re not quite sure how they translated that into “Sugar Baby,” we’re just upset that it doesn’t make a reference to this viral music video by pop band FFX for their 2015 hit Sugar Baby.
