垃圾暨廢物

Entry posted by skylee December 15, 2011 at 01:58 PM

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I am not going to attach a picture to this post. The main reason is that I don't have one. But please keep reading.

This all happened in Hong Kong. Yesterday a friend wrote to me, telling me that he had seen a rubbish bin labelled 垃圾暨廢物回收箱. He then asked me jokingly what the difference between 垃圾 and 廢物 was.

Now don't use google / baidu yet. Try to (1) think of a difference between 垃圾 and 廢物, however unreasonable.

I managed to first come up with an imagined difference (it was racist so I am not going to repeat it here), and then find the real one.

Now you may use google and / or baidu and (2) find out what the real difference is.

Then another friend joined the discussion and she tried to find a better name for the rubbish bin. Why don't you also (3) suggest a better name for this poor laughing-stock-rubbish-bin?

When you explore this issue, you will come across an article titled "垃圾暨廢物" written by famous lyricist 林夕. Do take a look. It is quite funny. And then consider how you would handle the word "暨" (suggest you take care of this under item (3)).

By now you should have found a picture of this rubbish bin. If you have not, use the link below. Have fun.