Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino was amused to discover the Cantonese phrase for "cool" while filming his Kill Bill movies in China - because its literal translation is "cow's vagina".

The eccentric film-maker spent a number of months in Beijing and Hong Kong making the two movies, and enjoyed learning how some local phrases translated into English.

He says, "We had a bunch of languages on the movie all the time. English was being translated into Mandarin and Mandarin into English, and there was a few other languages too.

"Before I ever went anywhere, a friend of mine went to Paris for the first time and came back and said, 'Quentin, you know one of the things that's really cool about Paris is when they speak English, they use the word 'cool' a lot, and when something is really cool, it's 'supercool'.'

"Mandarin has its own version of 'supercool' and that is 'neopay'. But here's what neopay means - cow's vagina!

"After saying it constantly I asked a Chinese member of the crew, 'What is so great about a cow's vagina?' And he goes, 'It's so big!' And you know what? He's right!"

16/04/2004 09:21