YI AND THE SECRET CITY OF MI

By Michael Horne

Above: A Thrilled YI JIANLIAN Shows Off His New Milwaukee Bucks Uniform at the NBA Draft

It is safe to say the Chinese tend to be possessed of a certain degree of superstition. The government has scheduled the opening of the Olympic Games for 08-08-08. And, it is a well known fact to bookies that when 8-8-8 turns up in the lottery, it’s payday in Chinatown. Not only do numbers have magical powers, (8 is a lucky one) even their sounds are imbued with cues and internal references. If a word sounds like something else, or if a character looks like something else, well then that something else immediately becomes paramount.

Thus it is understandable that in a culture in which, alone among modern languages, written symbols are embedded with both meaning and pronunciation cues, mysterious connotations can be found in what we would consider to be ordinary words, and this is bad news for the Milwaukee Bucks, believe it or not.

Beijing resident and former Milwaukeean Jonathan Ansfield may have found a linguistic reason why Yi Jianlian shows no interest in Milwaukee. It appears our city’s name does not translate well into Chinese, and means “Secret” or “Confidential” city. Writing in spot-on.com , Ansfield, a Newsweek correspondent, provides this fascinating conjecture in an article about Yi.

“What the [NBA] draft really afforded Team Yi was a launch pad to tap new fame and fortune in the American market. But now the biggest bonus seems to be going to Old Mi-er-wa-ji (pron. "MEE-arh-wah-jEE"), as Milwaukee is transliterated in Chinese. Chinese media call it "Mi City" for short. The character for Mi means ‘confidential’ or ‘secret’. Thus Milwaukee, to Yi and his compatriots, is the "Secret City". For now it is.”

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