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[Andrew J. Moody]

> > Supposedly it is a corruption of the
> > familiar Chinese greeting HOW_PU_HOW.

Just a guess here, but it looks like the Chinese expression the author is
referring to is (in pinyin) "hao bu hao," which is a question meaning "is it
good or not" or "how do you like it." Literally it is "good not good." It is
not usually a greeting, as far as I know. The familiar greeting in Chinese
is "ni hao " or "ni hao ma" ("hao" is the same character in all these
expressions.

Andrew
Andrew J. Moody
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Aichi Shukutoku Univeristy, Japan