Thursday, February 24, 2022

乌心工作

Trending on the Chinese site Weibo, a site where free thought has to play hide-and-seek with censors, often with wordplay, is the phrase 乌心工作, which substitutes the first syllable of the Chinese word for Ukraine 乌克兰 for the similarly pronounced first syllable of 无心工作, an idiom meaning not being in the mood for work. The new phrase means something like "people are so concerned with what is happening in Ukraine, that they cannot focus on work."