Cross-cultural, Daily Living, & Adjustment Issues

Hi there,

This may look a silly question but I'm puzzled because a Chinese workmate asked me to not use green color in my e-mail messages since green would be an offending color for Chinese people. Do you feel it's true?

Many thanks in advance for any answers.

Best regards,

PG

It's not a silly question at all.

The literal translation of cuckold in Chinese is "to wear a green hat." Thus a green hat and, by extension, anything green that is worn by a man are equivalent to pronouncing to the world that his wife is cheating on him. Sending an e-mail to a Chinese man written in a green-colored font could suggest that either he has or will lose his girlfriend or wife to you or perhaps another man.

Related, the color white is associated with funerals in China and the term "yellow movie" (黃色電影) is used to refer to pornographic films, equivalent to what we would refer to in English as a "blue movie."

Thanks a lot for your prompt response.

By the way, it was my first post on this forum.

Let me take this opportunity to introduce myself shortly: I'm a French man who makes his living by translating IT stuff into his native mother tongue on behalf of a multinational IT company. I had the opportunity of working with Chinese colleagues (from mainland China and Taiwan.) I always have been curious about this request about green color.

The meanings of colors do vary depending on cultures. The color for cuckolds is yellow in French. We wear black whereas Chinese people wear white to express mourning and US blue movies are pink to us.

Many thanks again for your explanations.

PG

P.S.: By the way it was a she-colleague who asked me to not use green color any longer when writing to her...

Some girls laughed as they passed by me as I walked along a Chinese street wearing a partly green baseball hat. I have since lost it; I'm not as funny as I used to be.