I have no idea how this stuff keeps finding me, other than to think the Universe is really trying to tell me something. A while back I wrote about how I found out that the word ‘bing’ means ‘disease’ in Chinese. As with most of my cultural intake from China, I learned about this word from a fortune cookie. If you can believe this, I found myself eating Chinese for lunch yesterday. In Atlanta. Almost a thousand miles from where I found the original fortune. And at the end of my meal I get this:
Clearly this is a sign. Why else would I keep getting fortunes with the word ‘bing’ on them? And how many more can I expect to come across? How much more Chinese food must I consume to collect the entire set?
So, ‘bing’ not only means disease, but it also means ‘cold’. But not cold as in ‘I have a cold’, which would logically follow along the idea of having disease or sickness. No, this is more like cold as in ice. Which means to me that when I eventually visit China there is a good chance that I am going to order a Coke with ice only to get back a Coke with tuberculosis instead.
Actually, the character bing here means ice. It is also the first character in ice cream. I could go on about the many different meanings that bing has, but it reminds me of my former life when I translated chinese for a living.