Lufsig

Lufsig, a toothy stuffed wolf dressed like a lumberjack who holds a miniature distressed grandma in one arm, is selling out from Hong Kong to Sweden. The toy became a symbol of anti-government protest last weekend when someone threw one of them at CY Leung, Hong Kong’s chief executive. Opponents call Leung “the wolf,” and apparently his diet includes grandmas.

Lily Kuo reports that the Ikea toy’s popularity is due to a vulgar etymology: “The toys Swedish name ‘Lufsig’ in Mandarin Chineseis lu mu xi . . . , which is a transliteration that doesnt mean much except for when you pronounce the characters in Cantonese. (The two languages share the same characters.) Then the name sounds rather like lo mo sai, or ‘Your mothers ___,’ and throw lo mo sai’ sounds like a profane Oedipal command that is common to many languages.”

There’s another linguistic dimension: “Little Lufsig, thus, highlights one of the biggest grievances Hong Kongers have with Leung and his support from Beijing: the intrusion of mainland China into Hong Kongs politics and culture, symbolized by the slow creep of Mandarin into the territory.Cantonese, a rich, slangy, fast-changing language, is the most prominent dialect of Chinese in mainland China after Mandarinand for decades was the language most often heard in Chinatowns around the world.”