One word, One Story Per Week【囧】一周一字一故事

It's time for our weekly "One Word, One Story" session! Grab a chair and get ready to hear a story. Today, we'll talk about the word “囧” (jiǒng).

囧 is an ideogrammatic character representing a “window.” The Shuowen Jiezi, an ancient Chinese dictionary, describes it as follows: “A bright and beautiful window that lets in light, an ideogram.” It also signifies brightness, clearness, and the transparency of windows. In an alternative form, “明” (míng), it is written as “朙” (lǒng), with the radical 囧 (jiǒng) and the radical 月 (yuè), which means “moon.”

In modern times,囧 has gained popularity as an Internet emoticon, particularly in Taiwan and China. Initially introduced in Taiwanese online communities around 2004-2005, it was inspired by similar emoticons and pictographs used in Japanese online culture. The character囧emerged as an expressive emoticon in Mainland China in 2008 and has become prevalent throughout the Greater China region.

Now that we've explored the meaning of the word, it's story time!

A cat brought a mouse to the bank to apply for a loan. The bank manager widened his eyes in astonishment and said, "We don’t give loans to mice." The cat smiled and replied, "No, lend the money to me. He is my guarantor." Curious, the manager asked, "Why did you choose him as your guarantor?"

The cat casually put on sunglasses and said,"Because if I don’t repay the loan, you can catch him instead." Upon hearing this, the proud mouse had a smug expression on its face, while the bank manager could only laugh and cry at the same time.

The cat’s "logic" left the entire bank staff feeling “囧” . As a result, the bank granted a loan of 2.5 trillion RMB to the cat. This comical loan story became the most famous joke in the bank.