It's all about business, stupid

So, I hope you have heard by now that sending dirty jokes by text message is going to cost you from now on. How much? you ask. Well, that depends on where you live. In Beijing, you will not be able to send texts again from the same number, and in Shanghai, your number will be cancelled. I am not sure whether the same rule applies to dirty jokes in English. I don't think our system is designed to pick up four letter words, just real dirty, bad, nasty characters.

Now, in my humble opinion, this new attempt at cleaning up text messaging is instigated by a saboteur who wants to destroy the value of the Chinese mobile network. This kind of rule is simply not enforceable in our language. Chinese is the most vague and imprecise language in the world. We have tones that drive foreigners crazy. You must have been through the "ma-ma-ma-ma" routine, where you don't know whether you are asking a question, calling your mother, or your horse, or cursing, or all of the above, depending on which tone of "ma" you use.

Also, we have, probably, the most polysemies out of any language in the world. The mobile censor system in China operates on picking out sensitive words that might indicate to the computer that the message is a dirty joke. Words such as "xing" () often means sex but is also a popular suffix to describe a specified quality; and "fang shi" (), literally house issues, also means having sex; while "cao" (), which means manage or take, is also the F word. So, here is a joke about dirty jokes that I want to share with you: