278 So-so

In this episode, ShaoLan teaches a phrase that she finds many people are proud to know how to say in Chinese, even if they only know a few words. She tells Jesse from Transition the story behind the phrase and what it has to do with a caveman, a horse and a tiger. Can you guess the correlation? They continue on to discuss some other animal-related idioms in Chinese, some of which are quite funny and very useful to know.

To say “so-so” in Chinese, you say 馬馬虎虎/马马虎虎. The first two words mean horse and the second two words mean tiger. So, “horse horse tiger tiger” means “so-so.”