Language Log (languagelog2) wrote,
Language Log
languagelog2

God use VPN

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=22954

One of Kohei Jose Shimamoto's photos on Facebook:

Fó tiàoqiáng 佛跳墙
("Buddha jumps over the wall")

This is the name of a famous dish with a long history:

Steamed Abalone with Shark's Fin and Fish Maw in Broth

Also called "Buddha's temptation", the dish gets its colorful name from the supposition that — drawn by its irresistible aroma — even vegetarian monks would be tempted to jump over the walls of their monasteries to get a taste of it.

It would appear that this is the signature dish of the YOGA Kitchen — Yǒu jiān chúfáng 有间厨房.

In Cantonese pronunciation, jau5/6gaan1/3 有间 — except for the final nasal — sounds a bit like "Yoga".  The usual word for "Yoga" is  jyu4gaa1 瑜伽.

The translation ("Buddha jumps over the wall"), as I will explain below, is actually very clever and has deep meaning, but it may not have been created by the YOGA Kitchen, since it is actually rather widespread on the Mainland (see here and here).

All right, we start with the name of the dish:  Fó tiàoqiáng 佛跳墙 ("Buddha jumps over the wall").  It's easy enough to see how they get from "Buddha" to "God", but how do they get from "jumps over the wall" to "use VPN"?  If you are familiar with internet blocking in China, this is easy too.

To prevent people from watching YouTube, using Facebook and Twitter, reading international news, etc., the government throws up the Great Firewall.  But China's netizens are resourceful and use VPNs to jump over the wall.  The usual formulation for jumping over the Great Firewall is fānqiáng 翻墙, and tiàoqiáng 跳墙 is a close enough synonym for that.

"Buddha jumps over the wall" –> "God use VPN".  Ingenious!

[h.t. Ki-Tsìng; thanks to Maiheng Dietrich and Yixue Yang]

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