Make War, Not Love

I had a wild time Saturday night.  I’ll tell you all about it later, but for now I’ll give you one quick anecdote.  I happened to start talking to a guy from the US wrestling team.  He wasn’t competing, he was part of the coaching staff or something.  I asked how his experience had been so far, and he said that everything was fine except for one incident.  He’d been at the Forbidden City, taking in the sights.  He was wearing a USA WRESTLING t-shirt which had a US flag on the front.  He said a young woman came up to him, pointed at the flag, and started saying “Make war!  Make war!” He went off on a rant about how lame this was, that he didn’t have anything to do with US foreign policy, that he was an invited guest, and so on.  I was listening sympathetically when it suddenly dawned on me.

The girl wasn’t saying “make war,” she was saying Meiguo, which is how you say “America” in Chinese.  When spoken aloud mei guo sounds virtually identical to ma-kwar.  The girl was pointing to the flag saying “America!  America!”

Too damn funny.