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Q: Chinese words that are difficult to explain/translate into English?
There's been many that have crossed my mind over the years that made me ponder "wow, I literally have no way of translating/explaining that to/in English." But alas, as it is late on a Friday afternoon and the winds of the weekend are knocking against my fatigued brain and my eyes are fighting against the strain of the climax of the 50-hour-week, such words depart me at this precise moment.
Any you can think of?
10 years 41 weeks ago in Teaching & Learning - China
Reason,and honesty are not in the Chinese vocabulary 
My personal pet peeve is 小气 xiao qi. This word seems easy on the surface, but in practice, I've heard it used to describe a very wide variety of personality problems, like rudeness, selfishness, arrogance, impatience, and so on. There are individual words that describe those more clearly but I always hear people say "oh so and so is really xiao qi".
Many years in China and still no closer to figuring out what "exactly" it means.
ohChina:
I think it means someone is mean and doesn't want to spend money, time, energy, emotions etc when he/she is supposed to spend.
In my case, it is usually food items. Sometimes the Chinese will tell me the name of some food item in Chinese then ask me what it is called in English. Occasionally, the question is impossible to answer because that food is not eaten in the west so there is no reliable translation.
"Mei ban fa" seems to be a combination of "no can do" + "f*ck you"....
I think the best way is to use it as local persons did, translation sometimes makes lots of funny stories...
just remember the word - what is it? when to use it? that's enough.
