Despite what you may think of her husband, I am not as inconsiderate as may be gleaned from the above collection of confusion. You see, Maggie’s Chinese (for those not following along), and as such she is caught in that horrible limbo of Eastern tradition verse Western practicality.

For some cruel reason there are two calendars widely used in China. Like most Chinese, Maggie uses a migraine-inducing mix of dates from whatever calendar suits best for the moment. Getting paid, use the Western (Gregorian); planning Spring Festival, switch to the traditional Chinese calendar; May holiday, Western; Mid-Autumn, Chinese; work week, Western; birthdays, Chinese…

God forbid that the Chinese you’re trying to plan things with speaks a bit of English, and then you’ve got them calling months of the Chinese calendar by their Western counterpart. As Chinese months (in either calendar) are simply denoted by a numeral and the word “month“, it can become quite confusing when people start saying ‘this year has two Augusts’.

Further mix into this the sexagenary cycle with its seductive title and curiosity piquing “heavenly” and “earthly” branches, it’s easy to see why one might get frustrated by the whole damn thing.

As I usually do when I’m confused, I decided to see what Wikipedia had to say on the matter.

With the introduction of Western astronomy into China via the Jesuits, the motions of both the sun and moon began to be calculated with sinusoids in the 1645 Shíxiàn calendar (時憲書, Book of the Conformity of Time) of the Qing dynasty, made by the Jesuit Adam Schall. The true motion of the sun was now used to calculate the jiéqì, which caused the intercalary month to often occur after the second through the ninth months, but rarely after the tenth through first months. A few autumn-winter periods have one or two calendar months where the sun enters two signs of the zodiac, interspersed with two or three calendar months where the sun stays within one sign.

Please take some chopsticks and kick them into my skull.

Now, if through some amazing feat I get her birthday nailed down, there’s still a question of how old she is. The Chinese, as a bit of a reward for being the lucky one and dodging a trip to the trashcan, award you with a year’s worth of age the scream-induced second you pop out.

Further, as most Chinese (Confucius knows why) simply count themselves a year older come Spring Festival, if you happen to be born just prior to the new year, you instantly become two years old.

Fortunately, Maggie’s not in the second group, so only has a mildly retarded age calculation.

And so it was when ordering her cake and asked how old she was, I simply shrugged and asked how many number candles they could throw in.

We ended up with a “2″ and a “7″. This happens to match her age going by the Western system, so we went with it – celebrating her birthday on the proper Chinese calendar day, of course.

It was whispered to me in the busy halls of a Dalian Carrefour supermarket by a giggly and slightly shy Chinese woman. I was told never to use it, but that I should know it incase someone used it against me.

It was, if the picture didn’t give it away, Er Bai Wu (二百五) — or 250. Seems innocent enough, doesn’t it? Just sitting there between 249 and 251… nothing overly special about it. The pronunciation in Chinese doesn’t have any goofy homonyms, the numbers aren’t (in and of themselves) unlucky or what not, so why oh why if you use 250 in anyway with someone Chinese, is it the equivalent of calling them ‘stupid’?

This is wide-spread enough that if your purchase is 250 yuan, it will often be rounded down or up to avoid the possibility of the patron thinking the shop is calling them an idiot.

This odd way to insult someone baffled me, and so I began asking Chinese friends and co-workers (and eventually anyone I happened by) what the hell the reason behind it was. I got a lot of half-assed responses, but they always ended with “nah, I’m not really sure. Maybe nobody knows.”

I was starting to believe this until last night, when with a sly smile Maggie turned to me and said, “Hey, I finally found out where the whole erbaiwu thing comes from.”

She stumbled upon two explanations online, but as the first was some boring story relating to a Hong Kong card game — she nixed that and fed me the cool “long, long ago” version.

So…

… Long, long ago during the Waring States Period (475-221 BCE) there was a well-respected, and rather wealthy ambassador named SuQin (苏秦) who travelled throughout the kingdoms of China delivering messages between emperors and such. Though generally liked, he had some enemies, and upon entering the Kingdom of Qi (modern day Shandong) some thugs killed him.

The Emperor of Qi was really pissed off, as SuQin was a friend of his court. He laboured to find a way he could discover the killer and then had an idea that I’m sure made him feel royally proud of himself. He cut off SuQin’s head and placed it on the capital’s main gate with a sign that said: “One Thousand Gold To The Killer Of This Enemy of Qi!”

A greedy bunch the Qi were, and four guys instead of one showed up to claim the reward. With a dilemma of who to hold responsible, the Emperor asked the men how he should divide the reward. They all agreed it should be split four ways — 250 each. So, the Emperor decreed (c’mon, how often do you get to write that word?) that the punishment be given to all four and informed his guards to:

“Ba zhe sige erbaiwu tui chuqu zhanshou! / 把这四个二百五推出去斩首! / Take these four 250s out and remove their heads!”

Alright, maybe I’m just a big 250 for believing such a goofy tale … but leave me be, no longer do I need to keep searching for that most elusive answer. Also, like the Cultural Revolution, that day in Tiananmen, and Mao’s body; it gives me a bit of knowledge about this country that most Chinese don’t know – and I can hold it over them and gloat. Hey, I never said I wasn’t petty.

Some will see the differences, some will see the similarities. Check it out for yourself, and post your comments.