1 Apr, 2008 in Taiwan by Fili An Tags:

Taiwan Chinglish peculiarities – Fuck in Tainan

There are a few thing around Tainan that always make me park my scooter and stare, even if it’s the 20th time I go through that street. Fuck is one of them.

Taiwan strange peculiarities - Fuck Tainan Taiwan strange peculiarities - Fuck Tainan-1

Taiwan strange peculiarities - Fuck Tainan-2

I can’t imagine why anyone would ever consider calling his place “Fuck”, but there you have it “Fuck Modelling and Hair Salon” next to the junction of JianKang rd. and Datong rd. Yeah, modeling is spelled wrong too.

A friend was willing to do me the favor of calling those folks up to try and understand what’s behind the name. Here’s what I got (Thank R.!):

I just call “fuck” and asked them why they wanted to name their store”fuck”.

I can feel the guy who felt weird from his voice, actually the Chinese name of the place “髮 剋 ” which means the place could deal with your hair very well and they just think”FUCK” is a name very easy to remember…

“髮 剋 ” fa ke
sound like fuck…very creative

I guess they never feel that way FUCK=some really bad word

haha

Taiwan…full of surprise

Yep, somewhat of an understatement :) I wonder what they’ll do with it now that they heard this is not a good promotion for them.

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  • Amy
    Hilarious story. Fake probably wouldn't be a good name for the agency, either, but Fuck is certainly the worst. I still get taken aback when I see ads for FCUK.
  • Great story. I can't believe you had your friend call. That's so funny!

    It always amazes me when I see stuff like this. I was working with a photography agency in Changchun, China. They specialize in wedding photography. For some reason, they provide English love quotes on their wedding albums, but the quotes are completely messed up and make no sense. Some don't have anything to do with being in love. I wonder if it's the same case. They just pick something that looks like it fits and add it without checking on the actual meaning.
  • C. L
    me totally too! It always takes me 3 seconds to rectify my shock everytime seeing FCUK... ! . French Connection .. great pr job for whoever named that!
  • Carrie - :)
    We do it too, you know, with Chinese characters. Hanzi Smatter has a long running blog with westerners running meaningless or bad-language Chinese characters on their body.
  • Heh, the phenomenon of seeing the word "fuck" in totally inappropriate places in China is dealt with very nicely here. It seems it's something to do with a machine translation of 干 most of the time. I've never heard of it being an unfortunate transliteration though, until now! So that's some nice research there.

    One more point: they didn't actually spell "modelling" incorrectly, if you use the British English system of spelling. Given that English is originally from England, you could argue the "American" spelling is wrong... ;) cf. "jewellery" vs "jewelry", "traveller" vs "traveler", etc.
  • First time i saw it i was surprised too. I saw their advertising truck, the fuck truck, i guess you could call it. have a picture of it, of course. personally, i think it is a great publicity scheme, depending on the contracts they are hoping to get.

    I've seen pictures of fuck modeling here, in the real taiwan, xpat and more.....

    as Taiwanese politics show, any publicity is good publicity.
  • eccparis
    Actually, 'modelling' is not mis-spelled. It's just the English (British) spelling of that word, as in travelling (instead of traveling), marvellous (for marvelous)... American spellings tend to drop the second 'l', that's all.
  • eccparis - that's what I said, a mis-spelllling. It reminds me of this great email I got recently about John Cleese's "Britain Is Repossessing The USA" - http://usma.wordpress.com/2007/01/04/britain-is...

    Thanks for clearing that up ;)
  • Lief - yep, I was well aware of those, especially the TRW post, but I hoping to make sure exactly why they chose that name, and I'm afraid it has little to do with publicity. It seems like pure Chinglish.

    I can just image what a mistake like that would cause in Israel, especially in a place like the old city in Jerusalem. :P
  • Hi Carrie- this may be a strange comment / reply but i am looking for a model to do a catalog / product photo shoot in taiwan. Are you by chance a model or know of any agencies here in taiwan? I need a western model for the product which can be seen at www.myzigo.com to get an idea of what the person needs to be like.

    Thanks!
  • Hi Fili,

    Thanks for contacting me earlier today. I've never heard of Hanzi Smatter. I'm off to check it out. Thanks for providing that information.
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