08.26 | san ba in august

There's no need to be mean to yourself. You can be entirely gentle. It's just that what you have to (gently) remind yourself is that there is, in fact, no secret ingenious alternative to just walking the uncertain and sometimes uncomfortable path forwards
   – Oliver Burkeman

✉️ letter #37

Oh hi friends, it’s been a while.

I took a break after admitting that I was probably experiencing some major depressive period in May. Sadly, it never really ended - stretching into and deeply coloring my experiences of June, July and now most of August as well.

But it’s VIRGO SEASON (which I don't really believe in but I do like the memes) and my birthday!

...and this year's candle extinguisher’s a special one… kinda.

Mainly it’s just “special” because 38 (san ba) is a gendered insult in Chinese. So it tickles me that I’m about to turn it.

I looked around the internet and this thread on a Chinese language stack exchange had the most extensive history of the slang term that I could find.

Taiwanese like to use the word "三八" to describe female behavior bordering on  craziness such as frivolous actions or doing reckless things. It appears that the word originates from the Cantonese or Minnan dialect, but in reality it is not. In fact, "三八" is the authentic Central Plains vocabulary.

刘福根, author of 《汉语詈词研究》 combed through "A Short History of Chinese Swear" (汉语骂詈小史) which listed "三八" as "vulgar or primitive and showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable". It took reference from a book 《拊掌录》 which contains the following:

北都有妓女，美色而舉止生梗，土人謂之生張八。因府會，寇忠湣令乞詩於魏處士野。野贈之詩曰：“君為北道生張八，我是西州熟魏三。莫怪尊前無笑語，半生半熟未相諳。”座客大發一噱

張八 refers to a prostitute from the north during the Song Dynasty, widely known for her beauty and yet unrefined manners. People called her "生張八 sheng zhang ba", "生 sheng" to indicate “生梗 shengbian” or “生硬 sheng yin”. 野 who penned the above poem described himself as 魏三 because he is the third child in his family. Thus, "三八" is derived from combining "三" in 魏三 and "八" in 生張八.

Song Dynasty is the period where mass migration of people from Central Plain to Guangdong and Fujian occurred. The "三八" saying eventually crossed the Strait to Taiwan and became popularize as a swear word.

First of all, how crazy is it that this insult that’s lasted for over 1000 years? I can’t think of anything someone from Chaucer’s era of English could say to me that I’d register as still hella mean now.

Second of all, an unrefined beauty who became widely known across all of Song Dynasty China sounds like the kind of person I would love to know. Unfortunately, Googling did not turned up much about this ZhangSan lady besides the poem quoted above. Alas, this sassy sexworker remains a mystery.

Anyway, I'm going to bring what I'm imagining is that energy to finally write up this newsletter.

🎵 music to read this to

It’s been a while since the last music recommendation so here’s a little playlist of eight moody women-led tunes I’ve really resonated with this year so far. I've apparently got an affinity for people crooning their most depressive thoughts to sonically upbeat tunes.

There's little tidbits from each song's lyrics that I've resonated with, but it feels a little too 2001 AOL Instant Messenger away status for me to list them all here. So here are just the two that, being not in English, are probably a little more difficult for most of my readers to pick up on:

WEEKEND (Seiho Remix) - Schuwa Schuwa + Seiho

Swim through the gaps between days that look a lot like dreams.
Let's kiss the pain that continues until we sleep.

真空垃圾 Vacuum Improv - Voison Xi

保存真空中力气
去陌生天庭
Save your strength in a vacuum
To get to that unknown paradise

🌱 newsreel for a different world

• Neel Dashena at Vox writes that we should begin naming heatwaves the way we do hurricanes, so that people can recognize them for the natural disasters they are... especially considering they're actually the deadliest weather phenomenon we regularly run into.
• Oliver Milman talks in The Guardian about how mealworms could be a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional meat options. Maybe. But I wonder if factory farming mealworms is just going to lead to the same problems we have now. By the way, is it just me or does "eating bugs" seem to have its own recurring news life cycle?
• Ol' journalist friend Adam Minter writes a loving tribute to Goodwill, which not only is an amazing source of thrift recycling and do-gooder charity, but also a very well-managed and lucrative one - it made $5.5 billion in revenue in 2021. Goodwill is one of very few truly successful social enterprises.
• Here's something otherworldly to think about: whenever it is we begin extracting resources from the moon, we're gonna need to have a long, hard look at our laws on international space resource management. Lawyer Michelle L.D. Hanlon discusses some of the implications our current system will have on our moon mining future.

🧠 newsreel for a different mind

Trying out something a little new here and throwing in links about mental wellness and treating ourselves and each other better.

• Turns out that "offering at-risk men a few weeks of behavioral therapy plus a bit of cash reduces the future risk of crime and violence, even 10 years after the intervention," says a study on the program Sustainable Transformation of Youth in Liberia.
• Anne Friedman (who has her own amazing newsletter) writes about the death of hustle culture & the #girlboss - and not a minute too soon. "Millennials, particularly those of us with college degrees and feminist impulses, once thought we could crack the ambition code. Where boomers had failed to shatter glass ceilings and Gen Xers had failed to fully scale the corporate ladder, my generation would do better. And if we couldn’t change corporate America, we’d build our own businesses and simply sidestep the problem. We all know how that worked out! It’s become apparent that many of the promised rewards of professional striving are never going to materialize. Why, some women are wondering, should I keep trying so hard?" Why indeed.
• Scientists have directly linked the feeling of awe to the shrinking of the self aka "the way that people imagine their size in the context of their surroundings," and "greater feelings of collective engagement." I think when I started this newsreel section, that's what I was hoping for. Things to inspire awe, to get me out of my own head and connect me to the greater world.

✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun

Speaking of awe, I don't think I've been in awe of anything on Youtube as much as I was of this video creation.

I don't want to ruin it by explaining too much about what it's about - but basically if you've watched Space Jam (the original), The Last Dance (that Michael Jordan basketball documentary), and are interested in that becoming your gateway into absolute madness, I implore you, watch this. It pays dividends.

Did you enjoy it?

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