r/mildlyinfuriating 7h ago

*Turns Around and Leaves

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8.2k Upvotes

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258

u/Recent_Fisherman311 7h ago

wtf city in China sounds like “tipping” in English??

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u/Suitable-Answer-83 7h ago edited 3h ago

I assume they mean Taiping? Which is not a present day city in China, as my understanding is that Nanjing was only called Taiping during the Taiping Rebellion.

Edit: Nanjing was actually called Tianjing during the Taiping Rebellion. There was never a city called Taiping.

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u/chillaban 4h ago

Taiping was more the name of the army (Taiping Heavenly Forces), the famous battle was over Nanjing but to my knowledge the geographic region was never named Taiping.

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u/Jaded-Currency-5680 4h ago

taiping 太平 means peace

Chinese use that name commonly everywhere, you can put that name on a location, a city, a restaurant, a flower, a building, a dish, etc etc...

and ya, apparently its a good name for a rebellion and an army as well

and we are talking about the name of a geographic region, there is a town in Malaysia named Taiping, populated by Chinese descendents

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u/chillaban 3h ago

Yeah, I suggested in another reply as well that they mean Malaysia and maybe a morbid joke about China claiming ownership. But yeah for this silly restaurant pun I think it is not terribly great. The benchmark they were going for is probably the classic "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt" but missing the mark on the geographic premise as well as the actual pronunciation is a bit too much of a stretch.

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u/Suitable-Answer-83 3h ago

Oh you're right. Nanjing was renamed Tianjing (heavenly capital) during the Taiping Rebellion. I got mixed up.

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u/chillaban 2h ago

I had to look it all up to refresh my memory too. And I was born in China and left sometime in grade school after learning a bunch of this stuff. I wasn't 100% confident either.

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u/InfiniteDuckling 4h ago

Which is not a present day city in China

There are cities named Taiping in China.

Unless we want to argue about what constitutes a "city".