{"id":138818,"date":"2012-06-27T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T19:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=138818"},"modified":"2012-06-27T12:31:45","modified_gmt":"2012-06-27T19:31:45","slug":"word-week-chai-n%c7%8e-demolish-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/06\/word-week-chai-n%c7%8e-demolish-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week: Ch\u0101i n\u01ce (Demolish It)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Editor\u2019s Note: The\u00a0Word of the Week\u00a0comes from China Digital Space\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/space\/Grass-Mud_Horse_Lexicon\">Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon<\/a>, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and frequently encountered in online political discussions. These are the words of China\u2019s online \u201cresistance discourse,\u201d used to mock and subvert the official language around censorship and political correctness.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>If you are interested in participating in this project by submitting and\/or translating terms, please contact the CDT editors at CDT [at] chinadigitaltimes [dot] net.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/space\/Demolish_it\">\u62c6\u54ea (ch\u0101i n\u01ce) Demolish it; literally \u201cWhere to demolish?\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_138819\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/06\/word-week-chai-n%c7%8e-demolish-it\/demolishit2\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-138819\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-138819\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-138819 \" src=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Demolishit2-300x245.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"245\" srcset=\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Demolishit2-300x245.jpg 300w, https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Demolishit2.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-138819\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bulldozer with the character \u201cdemolish\u201d written on it depicted as the extension of the bureaucratic arm.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cCh\u0101i n\u01ce\u201d mimics the sound of the English word \u201cChina.\u201d Ch\u0101i \u62c6, \u201cdemolish,\u201d has a special meaning in China. Demolitions, often forced on tenants with little or no compensation, are one of the major sources of social instability in China. Developers and the local government profit greatly from <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/02\/scenes-from-a-forced-demolition\/\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">forcibly evicting<\/a> people from their homes to build on the land. Anger over forced demolition lead the people of Wukan, Guangdong to fight the local government, eventually laying siege to their village in December 2011.<\/p>\n<p>N\u01ce \u54ea means \u201cwhere\u201d or \u201cwhich.\u201d Hence, \u201cch\u0101i n\u01ce\u201d also sounds like the question, \u201cDemolish where?\u201d and mocks the ubiquity of demolition.<\/p>\n<p>All over China, one sees \u201c\u62c6\u201d spray-painted on the sides of buildings slated for demolition. People who have had their homes demolished are called ch\u0101iqi\u0101nh\u00f9 \u62c6\u8fc1\u6237.<\/p>\n<p>Victor Mair has a collection of nicknames for China, including ch\u0101i n\u01ce, at <a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=4026\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Language Log<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Editor\u2019s Note: The\u00a0Word of the Week\u00a0comes from China Digital Space\u2019s\u00a0Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and frequently encountered in online political discussions. These are the words of China\u2019s online \u201cresistance discourse,\u201d used to mock and subvert the official language around censorship and political correctness. If you are interested in participating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":991,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[99,14748,34,14744,4202],"tags":[15386,15153,14950],"class_list":["post-138818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cdt-highlights","category-gmh","category-human-rights","category-level-2-article","category-translation","tag-forced-demolitions","tag-word-of-the-week","tag-wukan","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.9 (Yoast SEO v23.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Word of the Week: Ch\u0101i n\u01ce (Demolish It)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/06\/word-week-chai-n\u01ce-demolish-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Word of the Week: Ch\u0101i n\u01ce (Demolish It)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Editor\u2019s Note: The\u00a0Word of the Week\u00a0comes from China Digital Space\u2019s\u00a0Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and frequently encountered in online political discussions. 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