fter Barack Obama's visit to China, the Chinese, demonstrating their well-known perspicacity and humor, began calling him “Obamao.”

Obama is written in Chinese as 歐巴馬 or 奧巴馬. Ma (horse) 「馬」 is a very common family name in China. The first two characters are used phonetically in this context. Changing “Obama” to “Obamao” means substituting 毛 (Mao, “hair”) for the last character. “Obamao” is therefore written as 歐巴毛, or sometimes as 奧巴毛.

Liu Mingjie, a Beijing merchant, created the famous Obamao T-shirt, shown at left. The caption is a reproduction of the handwriting of Mao Zedong (毛澤東), whose ill-conceived economic policies led China into twenty years of poverty and mass starvation. Mao used the old-style characters. The caption reads, “Serve the people.” 「為人民服務」。 (Wèi rén mín fú wù).

Another way of translating it is “To Serve Man.” Hmm. Do the Chinese know something about Obama that we don't? Obama is reminiscent of another tall, smooth-talking guy who didn't quite get the nuances of the social customs of the dominant species on this planet. A suggestion for those looking for Obama's birth certificate: Forget Kenya. Think Kanamit.