<h1>The Chinese have a word for everything: zhui4xu4</h1>

One thing that keeps surprising me in Chinese are some of the words to describe things that we never thought of in English. My first word in that category is zhui4xu4, a son-in-law living in the house of his wife's parents. On the face of it this sounds like a precise term in a society that clearly delineates family position. What makes this word more fun, though, is to look up the characters. Xu4, of course, is a bound form character meaning son-in-law. Zhui4 is a bound form meaning "superfluous." Other words using zhui4 include rong3zhui4, verbose, and rou4zhui4, wart. So, the technical term in Chinese for a husband living with his in-laws is the superfluous son-in-law. Archie Bunker would have understood completely.