The Chinese love of word play: 02 (善解人意)

 

I’ve been playing a mainland Chinese crossword puzzle game based on proverbs, in this case all four-character ones.  (Some Chinese proverbs can be longer.)

    It’s on WeChat, so has loads of players (and not just in mainland China, I think), a lot of whom have chosen to use fictitious tags which are obviously not names.

    One of them is a four-character one itself, thus mimicking the content of the game, but is a naughty word play which appeals to my wicked / perverse sense of humour.

    There's a common expression: 

善解人意

shàn jiě rén yì

“good-at understand[ing] people[’s] desires / wishes / meaning”

    The breakdown of the component parts of 解 jiě is:

角 jiǎo / horn

刀 dāo / knife

牛 niú / cattle* 

(*or any name under the cattle family: cow, bull, ox, bullock, buffalo)

    Taking a knife to the horn of a cow is perhaps for untying / undoing a knot that the cow’s horn has got caught up in.

    The translation for 解 can be:

• solve/unravel something (a puzzle or a mystery), 
• untie/undo a knot (which is similar to solving a puzzle or conundrum), 
• unravel a piece of knitwear (the knitting coming apart), 
• and therefore also “understand” as a cognate.

    I chanced upon the tag that one of the players of the Chinese crossword puzzle game has chosen for himself (has to be a bloke):

擅解人衣

shàn jiě rén yī

“good-at undoing people[’s] clothes”

    Another meaning of 擅 shàn is “do something on one’s own authority”, so there’s yet another level of word play here in his name tag of 擅解人衣:  that whoever’s-referred-to undoes people’s clothes on his own authority (i.e., not necessarily with consent).

    Brilliant.  Hahahaha.  Love his sense of humour.  Very clever word play too.