On Mon, 7 Jun 1999, David Johnston wrote:

It's a longshot, I know, but does anyone know a Chinese word meaning 
"bimbo", "stupid woman", "half-wit", or just "stupid"?

Stupid would be (this is not ping-yin, just my own rough romanization, so
you might want to check with someone else who actually knows ping-yin) 
bin-dan, sagwa or fan tong (the last roughly translates as rice container.
Basically, it means that you're so stupid that the only thing you can do
correctly is eat). 

A few more you might want to know.

There's one for a specific set of circumstances, a-do.  It's used in the
case where the father was great, but the son is incompetant.  A-do was the
son of one of the three leaders during the Three Country War in China, and
though his father was an excellent general and emperor, his son was 
unsuited for the job(to put it lightly).

The phrase 'playing an instrument to a cow' is used when something very
fine is given, and the reciever is completely unappreciative of it due to
ignorance.  The story is that one of the most famous musicians once
composed a beautiful piece next to a cow eating grass, and elicted no
reaction from the cow.  In anger, he played so that it sounded like flies
were buzzing about, and the cow swished it's tail back and forth.  So, the
musician learned the futility of putting that much effort toward his work
when the cow would not appreciate it.  This would be the attitude that
Akane usually exhibits when Ranma will not eat her cooking (until she
tries it herself, that is.  This is known as an 'ephiphany'.  ^_^)

Last situation I might think of is if Cologne were trying to teach Ranma
something, and he was completely unable to grasp the concepts (In martial
arts, this is highly unlikely, but say in advanced polymer production
techniques? ^_^).  The phrase "One cannot make a statue from rotten wood"
might be used by the teacher here in exasperation, or just Shong Mu
(rotten wood) for short.

-Natsume Ranma Ranma
-------
The sardines weren't worth the trouble.  A few more shots, then 
Ryoga-san would overheat and explode.  Ducking around a corner, 
I managed to lose him as I entered the ramshackle residence of 
my Anime supplier.

One look at his face and I knew that I was betrayed.  "Tell me."
I insisted.  He refused, so I slammed him against the wall.
"Last chance.  Where can Ranma-Ranma find good fanfics?"
"Try Jason Liao." he whispered, before he slumped to the floor.
I heard the sounds of a door splintering as I left through the 
window, one step ahead of Tendo Heavy Industries...