The mainland Chinese modern drama series I’m still watching that has given the husband stealer the name of 胡莉 Hú Lì (which sounds like 狐狸 húli / húlí / fox, vixen) has a second word play on the name of another woman.
This second woman’s name does not so obviously reflect her character as 胡莉 does for the crafty woman who steals someone’s husband and tells barefaced lies (about being pregnant, to snare the man into marrying her), among a host of other nasty deeds.
She works in a publishing firm, and is keen to climb to the top, which is understandable enough, except that she uses underhand ways to undermine the female protagonist to get there.
Her name is 沈冰 Shěn Bīng, with 沈 being a common enough surname and 冰 bīng / ice also fairly normal as a choice for a woman’s name.
The word play is with the verb 生病 shēng bìng / to be sick.
Don’t forget, word play does make allowance for tone difference; cf. 胡莉 Hú Lì and 狐狸 húli / húlí.
Now, you might say, “OK, tone variation is accepted, but 沈 Shen has an ’n’ ending, whilst 生 shēng has an ‘ng’ ending.” That, too, is allowed in word play, which doesn’t have to be that strict.
Besides, in real life, there are regional variations that don’t quite match the standard pronunciations of Mandarin (the lingua franca), for example:
In Taiwan, “聽 / 听 / tīng / listen” is pronounced “tīn”, so there’s the n / ng variation for Taiwan.
In Yunnan (S.W.China), “孔 kǒng / hole or surname [e.g., of Confucius]” is pronounced “kǒm”; “蟲 / 虫 chóng / insect” is pronounced “chóm”.
Southerners do not distinguish between s and sh, so 上海 Shànghǎi comes out as Sànghǎi in southern pronunciation.
It is, therefore, good enough to give the horrible publishing house woman the name of 沈冰 Shěn Bīng as a word play for 生病 shēng bìng.
Any Chinese will immediately make the association without nit-picking on the slight variations in the initials or finals, just as tone variations are not a problem either.
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