Crime · Chinese-language discourse; operations across Southeast Asia
Piglets
In plain English
The trafficked workers inside the compounds. The same word, with the same verb construction 卖猪仔, was used in the nineteenth century for indentured Chinese labourers in the coolie trade, along with a full vocabulary — 猪仔馆 for the holding barracoons, 猪仔船 for the ships, 猪仔纸 for the indenture contract.
Register
Subjects' own term. The subjects' own vocabulary. Useful for recognition; not a neutral description.
Literally
Piglet. The verb form 卖猪仔 means to sell someone into the trade.
What English gets wrong
Two errors. First, an English reader meeting a pig in this subject assumes 杀猪盘 — but there the 猪 is the defrauded investor. 猪仔 is the trafficked worker: a different person entirely, on the other side of the fraud. Second, the operators do not call their workers 猪仔; their own word is 狗推.
What to write instead
trafficked workers, giving 猪仔 where the Chinese discourse is the subject. The lexical continuity with the coolie trade is documented; whether present-day users consciously invoke it is not, so do not assert that they do.
Related
- Park (scam compound) — 园区 / 園區
- Dog-push — 狗推
- Romance baiting — 殺豬盤 / 杀猪盘
Sources
- Nineteenth-century usage: the 卖猪仔 trade in Qing-era accounts; Macao recruitment-house records, 1865–73
- Contemporary usage in Chinese-language reporting on the compounds