Little Mighty got his lunch, and Stephen Chow left his mark on the Chinese language

March 9th, 2008 by Mei

“Has Little Mighty picked up his lunch yet?” (小强领便当了吗?)

This was a question posted on a Baidu forum on The Ravages of Time, a Chinese comics series marginally based on the events in Three Kingdoms. Twenty years ago this question would have been incomprehensible. Then Stephen Chow movies happened, and these words now make perfect sense to many young (and some old) Chinese speakers.

Little Mighty

Little Mighty (xiao qiang) is a cockroach. The insect got its mighty nickname from the Stephen Chow movie “Flirting Scholar“. Chow was engaged in a misery contest with another down-and-out character, as they competed to sell themselves into slavery (this was a Stephen Chow movie, after all). Chow’s rival just lost everyone in his family to the plague. Then his little dog rolled over and died on the spot to strengthen his argument. How does one top that level of suffering? This was when Chow’s character decided to adopt Little Mighty the cockroach, right after he stepped on and killed it. As Chow cradled the dead cockroach and wailed “Little Mighty please don’t die …”, Little Mighty’s name was forever carved into the collective consciousness of Chow’s audience, which was pretty much everybody in China.

But Little Mighty is now much more than a cockroach. When the various movie, animation, and comic book heros refuse to die despite what physics and biology dictate, don’t they remind us of someone familiar? Yes, Little Mighty comes to mind frequently enough that it has become a nickname for any character who, like Little Mighty, seems impossible to kill off.

In the context of The Ravages of Time, it is the one and only Luu Bu who ended up with the Little Mighty title. Luu Bu died early in Luo’s Three Kingdoms novel, but in the comic series he simply lives on and on, parading around in an armor that vaguely resembles an insect. The Little Mighty nickname didn’t even have to be suggested, it was destined for him.

Picking up lunch

The lunch reference came from another Stephen Chow movie “King of Comedy“. Chow’s character worked as a movie extra, often playing hapless bystanders who got killed the instant they appeared on screen. After these quick deaths, the extra’s work was done for the day, and he could pick up a free lunch and go home.

Has Little Mighty picked up his lunch?

If he has, he must have been killed off in the scene and was ready to go home. The forum poster was simply asking whether Luu Bu had died in the comic series, in Stephen Chow’s Chinese. When I first saw this question, part of me wanted to say “can’t these people talk normally?” But another part of me smiled, and started to mentally pick out a Stephen Chow movie to watch again.

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