Enigmatic Tshirt - meaning?

[schellack]

Hey all

I bought this Tshirt (attached) in Hong Kong. I thought is was kinda random and kooky so I bought it. I was wearing it at HK airport on my way home and was going through customs, and a couple of the Customs guys saw my shirt and started laughing. One tried to explain it to me and said something about "loose balls" or something, but I didn't really get what he was saying. He said though that it was a joke of some kind.

I've also shown a guy from Shanghai at my work but he says it doesn' tmake sense and it's a strange name association of some kind.

Can anyone explain to me what it could mean? Note that the graphic is a pic of two fleas one on top of th other. And below that in English it says "Flea Squared Youth Club".

Thanks!

[renzhe]

It says "Two fleas youth club".

Whatever that means...

[knadolny]

雙蚤青年會 (traditional characters)

双蚤青年会 (simplified characters)

shuāng zǎo qīngniánhuì

"A pair of fleas youth club"

Maybe from the graphic it looks like two fleas making love. It's pretty random, but seems harmless to me.

[skylee]

雙蚤 in Cantonese sounds the same as 雙失 ~ double loss ~ eg. loss of school place + job, loss of job+love, etc.

雙蚤青年會 in Cantonese sounds the same as 雙失青年會 ~ double loss youth club.

Cantonese is what we speak in Hong Kong.

The correct pronunciation of 蚤 is nothing like 失 but because it means flea many people pronounce it as if it is 蝨.

[cantonese]

Skylee is right. I'm a cantonese, so I know what it means. It is a cantonese saying, so it doesn't make sense to a mandarin speaker.

雙蚤 (two fleas) has the same pronunciation of 雙失 (lossing 2 things at the same time). So people made a joke in the sound.

雙失 is commonly refer to a youth who drop out of school and can't find a job. Because in HK, there is a group of yourth in this situation. So wearing this t-shirt, it seems that you are one of them. The sentance is just a joke.

[schellack]

Thanks so much for your extremely interesting explanations!! That would explain why my colleague who tried to decipher it didn't get it ... He's a Mandarin speaker.

Thanks again!