Try these out on your Chinese friends

Traditional Chinese expressions that are meant to be taken literally

To put your fist in your mouth

When you embarrass yourself by trying to remove bits of food from hard-to-reach areas between your teeth with a toothpick. First you try to extend your fingers to get that toothpick all the way into the back of your mouth, then you use a couple more fingers to get better traction and before you know it there's a whole lot more than Chinese broccoli stuck in there.

A fit person soon finds themselves in the company of hangers-on

The park is full of these people. Not really your friends, not even acquaintances, just desperate strangers trying to coast off your prowess on the monkey bars. They know a pair of strong knees when they see it and some of them don't even have the courtesy to place their hands away from your crotch area.

One head on top of another is better than one head alone

This dates back to when Chinese acrobatic troupes first hit the village scene and promoters were thinking up of ways to increase ticket sales. After intensive market research, they found that people were willing to pay big money to watch one acrobat balance her partner seamlessly on top of her head instead of just a bunch of spinning plates.

I'm walking on electric light wooah, and don't it feel good

Derived from a local pop song that became a summer hit a couple of decades ago. The upbeat tune recorded the journey of an obese woman who overcame her weight problems through gastric bypass surgery, finally allowing her to walk on lightbulbs without breaking them.

Full of hot air

Someone who is described as full of hot air is very very useful when you're behind in the preparations for your kid's birthday party and you need to blow up all the balloons real quick.

Crying buckets of tears

This phrase applies to fans of weepy Korean/Japanese tv dramas who often complain of their clothes being soaked after only 1 episode viewing. A popular solution to this problem is to strap buckets to your eyelids, turn on the tv and bawl away to your heart's content.

If you swallow a live snake, it might just find its way out through your nose

In the old days, there was no such thing as Xbox, Twister or karaoke. When the party got dull, you just grabbed a reptile and hoped for the best - the first recorded instance of this parlour trick was some time during the Tang dynasty. The original saying has since been modified over time to its current form as a popular internet expression to describe the extent of one's hilarity i.e. "I was swallowing a live snake when I read this and I laughed so hard it shot out of my nose."

Next update: Monday July 10