hide binders (high binders)

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>This seems very feasible.

Sure does seem plausible to me.

>It may be that the Chinese 'highbinder' has a discrete origin

But Occam's razor suggests that "highbinder" = "Chinese/tong thug" is more
likely a specialization of earlier "highbinder" = "thug", doesn't it?

>'Boo how doy' literally, at least in his translation, means 'fighting men'.

I'm skeptical. However, I'm also ignorant of Chinese and Chinese
'dialects'. My primordial urge is to make this mean literally "bad boy" but
that requires "bu hao" from northern Chinese and "doi" from a Guangdong
dialect (maybe Taishan? = standard Cantonese "zai" = "child"?). Is any
Chinese scholar lurking here?

-- Doug Wilson