JoJo xiansheng, (Mr. JoJo)

Ni Putoghua si hen hao, wode peng you. ( Your mandarin is very good, my friend)

Zai Jien. ( good bye)

Joe H ( Joe H)

(Wo hui shuo yi dien Putonghua) (I am able to speak a little Mandarin)

(unfortunately, not enough to understand everything he was saying :-(

For those of you from Rio Linda, benjo is Japanese for toilet.

MMMMM...it's very interesting as benjo does really mean that. It must be a very old word as now in Japan everyone says: Toile wa doko deska? The Toile is said in a sort of french accent with the inflection on the le at the end of the word. Nowadays many english words are substituted for Japanese words.

As Bill is the banjo master as well, I figured he was saying the Japanese katakana sound for Banjo which would probably sound like "barn-jo"

Joe Howard,

Very impressive my friend. You must have learned your Mandarin from a Mainland Chinese teacher. China says PuTongHua where as in Taiwan it's GwoYu or HuaYu.

Chia-Yo! Chia-Yo!

JoJo

Puthonghua (ÆÕͨ»°) literally translated means 'common language'. GuoYu(¹úÓï)=National Language; HuaYu (»ªÓï)= Chinese Language. So, depends where you are from you refer to it as to locals do. All are simmilar except for the regional accents.

In Malaysia, We call it HuaYu.

<yes, I realise this has nothing to do with magic>

If someone says "HuaYu" to me, I usually answer, "I'm Bill, Who are you?"

This program actually made magic very popular in taiwan.
Now taiwan was fulled with amateur magician.
Almost everyone has magician friends!
Many young and newbies amateur magician was eager to be on the show when they was not good enough.
Also this magic program wasn't too professional.
The camera often shoots in the wrong angle ,or maybe the performer isn't good enough(many rookie magician were eager to be on televesion),thus they exposed many magic. Also there is a magician who often intently exposed card magic sleight under the disguise as gambling demonstration. And I was very annoyed by that magician. He claimed to be king of gambler while infact his sleight was just medium level and his knowledge about card magic seemed to be very limited.
Every days lots of televesion program show a lot of magic tricks perfromed by bad performers,and now magic is not that special and amazing anymore.

When I lived it Taiwan benjo was also used for toilet and the open sewers along the streets. I always assumed it was Mandarin. Of course the Japanese were in Taiwan for quite awhile so the common use of a Japanese word makes sense.

I was playing with my Benjo for 2 hours, then I finally gave up and called roto-rooter :-(

Joe H

Very true for this clip!

Terry

Since magic was not amazing and special anymore,my friends and I who are purist of magic turned into a more skill demanding and real magic.
Such as florish,gambling skills,psychological mentalism...

Wow Mitch you must have lived there a long time ago. Everyone also understands the Japanese word "O Ji San" Grandad or "O Ba San" Grandma. I never heard the word benjo for toilet, but then again in rural Taiwan, anywhere can be used as a toilet. Many of the very old people in Taiwan only speak Japanese and Taiwanese (Hokkien), and not Mandarin. Mandarin was forced on the people of Taiwan after Chiang Kei-Shek got his a&& whipped by the commies and fled to Taiwan and he banned the local languages from schools and TV and forced everyone to speak Mandarin. Nowadays the local language is taught in nightschool and TV.

Back to hacks in Taiwan revealing the secrets of magic. I can believe it. The local magi there are a very strange lot. Very mis-trusting of each other. They can't even get a club together. Notorius (sp) for stealing each others acts, and copying gimmicks instead of buying them from the originators. Many of them try to set themselves up as the latest new Copperfield or Blaine etc, and are quite good at embelishing and inflating their own skills. I'm sounding rather negative I know, but it really is a strange place for magicians. Xiqual (member here) is a great guy who I met while there, who is a very knowledgable magician and alround good guy.

JoJo