What Does 'Carry the Black Pot' Mean in Mandarin?
Nobody wants the black pot in China!
Today, we are going to learn something about guō 锅（pot）and some expressions related to this.
guō 锅-Pot
火锅 huǒguō -Hotpot
火锅 huǒguō—Hotpot, and “huǒguō” literally means fire pot in chinese. (huǒ=fire, guō=pot）
But guō is also used in some metaphorical terms in Chinese, like these two below:
Bēi hēi guō
背 黑 锅
Bēi hēiguō is a phrase to express that one person take the blame for something that he or she didn’t do.
Literally, “bēi” means to carry on the back, and “Hēiguō” means black pot, but here, “Hēiguō” is a metaphor for charge, accusation or bad reputation. So “Bēi hēiguō” means to hold the bag or take the blame. It’s normally used when innocent people have to take the charge or the blame for something bad that somebody did.
Let’s check some examples:
zhè shì nǐ de cuò ，bù néng ràng tā bēi hēi guō.
这是你的错，不能让他背黑锅.
It’s your fault, you can’t let him take the blame for you.
wǒ bù xiǎng bēi zhè ge hēi guō
我不想背这个黑锅。
I don’t want to take the blame for this.
Shuǎi guō
甩 锅
Shuǎiguō is another phrase that’s based on Bēi hēiguō, which is ”shuǎiguō”. Shuǎi means to toss and guō means pot. So this phrase literally means to toss the pot. And it’s used to express someone did something bad but didn’t take the responsibility.
For example：
Rén wèi shén me xǐ huan shuǎiguō?
人为什么喜欢甩锅？
Why do people like to run away from responsibility?
Tā zuò cuò le zǒng xǐ huan shuǎi guō gěi bié rén 。
他做错了总喜欢甩锅给别人。
He always let someone else take the blame when something went wrong.
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