Our Phrase of the Week is a fresh employ of an frail phrase: A bumping porcelain piggyback rip-off (touch porcelain pèngcí).

Context

Closing week, the Beijing Day-to-day reported on a fresh lag-hailing app, Solid Nation Transport (强国交通 qiángguó jiāotōng). The app it sounds as if intends to rival Didi, the firm that ate Uber alive in China but modified into later smacked down by the govt. after it IPO’d in New York in 2021.

Global media swiftly picked up the news about Solid Nation Transport, but the Beijing Day-to-day deleted its document and other Chinese language media refuted the bid that the app modified into backed by the govt., claiming it modified into a rip-off. The language aged in one document, also since deleted, brings us our Phrase of the Week, which requires some explanation:

Is that this a wild rooster firm bumping porcelain? The Ministry of Transport states it has no hyperlinks with the app.

Pheasant company touching porcelain? The Ministry of Communications stated that the Qiangguo Transportation App has nothing to do with the Ministry of Transport.

Yějī gōngsī pèngcí? Jiāotōngbùng qiángguó jiāotōng app yǔ jiāotōng yùnshūbù wúguān.

Translation

The term wild rooster or pheasant (pheasant yějī) is slang aged to dispute one thing that is unregulated or illegal, typically a firm (pheasant company yějī gōngsī) or college (pheasant university yějī dàxué). Bumping porcelain (碰瓷 pèngcí) is a general phrase in in style Chinese language.

Its backstory, which is broadly identified in China, refers to the once-elite military power, Eight Banners Brothers (八旗子弟 bāqí zǐdì), now and again called Bannermen, of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912).

In direction of the cessation of the Qing, the Bannermen had change into ineffective and inappropriate. Well paid and tough, they descended into gambling and drinking, funded by extortion and corruption.

One formula of elevating funds for their hedonism modified into a explicit earn of rip-off energetic enormous pieces of porcelain and unsuspecting contributors of the overall public. A team of Bannermen would raise a fallacious but costly-searching porcelain vase on a horse-drawn carriage, deliberately allowing others — typically in a speed — to bump into them, smashing the vase. An ideal fuss would follow and the plump but fallacious charge of the conventional would be claimed by intimidation.

Bumping porcelain (碰瓷 pèngcí) turned a effectively-identified rip-off of the Bannermen, and somehow a phrase aged to dispute any form of rip-off or extortion in China energetic an preliminary deception following by a spot a question to for wide sums of compensation.

But its that procedure has modified over the news of the Solid Nation Transport app. Chinese language media accused the firm of attempting to generate publicity by posing because the govt.’s “unswerving” lag-hailing app: They claimed that it modified into piggybacking on the name Solid Nation Learning App (学习强国 xuéxí qiángguó), which modified into launched in 2019 by the Communist Birthday celebration’s propaganda department, which affords detect materials for the overall public to search out out about the political reasonable Xí Jìnpíng 习近平. It’s now and again translated as “Respect Xi Solid Nation,” a pun on Xi’s name and the discover for learn (Learning xuéxí) in Chinese language.

So the claims in Chinese language media would be greater translated as:

Is that this an illegal firm attempting to piggyback on an unswerving-sounding name to receive money for itself? The Ministry of Transport states it has no hyperlinks with the app.

Pheasant company touching porcelain? The Ministry of Communications stated that the Qiangguo Transportation App has nothing to do with the Ministry of Transport.

Yějī gōngsī pèngcí? Jiāotōngbùng qiángguó jiāotōng app yǔ jiāotōng yùnshūbù wúguān.

On this context, my translation of 碰瓷 pèngcí is “a bumping porcelain piggyback rip-off.”