The other day I was reading the Chinese section of my paper 我报 and one of the headlines in the entertainment section screamed that Japanese comedian Tomonori Jinnai was caught ‘stealing food’, i.e. 偷吃. The article then went on to report how he apologised to his wife, Norika Fujiwara, and fans for his misconduct.
I’m not sure about other dialects, but I know for sure that in Mandarin and Cantonese, the term 偷吃 means that a man is fooling around behind his wife’s or girlfriend’s back. In Mandarin the two characters are pronounced ‘tou chi’ and in Cantonese ‘tao sek’. It just occurred to me this morning as I was waiting for my bus to work that this is an example of how food is linked with language play. It seems that the Chinese people love food so much that even life’s carnal pleasures has to be linked to food. Well to be fair, food IS one of life’s carnal pleasures, to me anyway. Ha.
偷吃 is indeed an apt metaphor though. And one that, in my opinion, is subtle yet to the point in its underlying meaning. However the actor’s apology for his lascivious greed came too late as Norika Fujiwara has decided to divorce him. Good on her! Guess real life isn’t that funny for Jinnai after all.