This is the usual way we call a cool guy, Kuge.

The word 男, Nan (male), has a pejorative sense in Taiwan Chinese. So, for instance, we call a lazy man 宅男, Zhainan, which is adopted from Japanese Kanzi and means a male who like to stay at home doing nothing, inactive, lazy and with a lot of negative attributes.


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Note added at 1 hr (2007-06-23 01:19:27 GMT)
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The word 哥, Ge (elder brother), expresses admiration in Taiwan Chinese. That's why we would say 酷哥, Kuge, instead of 酷男, Kunan.

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Note added at 1 hr (2007-06-23 01:22:26 GMT)
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Denotatively, 酷男 is all right. But connotatively, it has a pejorative sense. So, most of the Taiwanese girlie girls would choose to name a cool guy 酷哥 or 帅哥 instead.

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Note added at 2 hrs (2007-06-23 03:00:59 GMT)
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The connotative differential between 男 and 哥 is comparable to the German words of "Weib" and "Frau".

Historically, "Weib" is all right to denote a female, specifically a married one, for instance, in the Bible translated into German by Martin Luther. But "Weib" has a pejorative sense in modern German. To a womanizer, we would say that he has a lot of Weibergeschichten (women stories).

We wouldn't say "Greet your Weib for me." Instead, we say "Greet your Frau for me." At present, one could easy insult a German woman by calling her a Weib. For instance, if someone mentions "a certain piece of Weib," he/she shows with this word his/her disrespect to that woman.

In modern Chinese, we do have such differentiations with words on both sides of the Strait, especially the Hong Kong people --- they are masters of expressing such differentiations with Cantonese. Amazing, I would say.

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Note added at 2 hrs (2007-06-23 03:04:14 GMT)
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Mavericker, I suppose that it is not used in Taiwan.

Would you please write the Chinese characters for "fang kai"? Without seeing the signs, it is difficult to figure out the sense of those characters.

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Note added at 4 hrs (2007-06-23 05:00:21 GMT)
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Would you please write the Chinese characters for "fang kai"? Without seeing the signs, it is difficult to figure out the sense of that expression.


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Note added at 17 hrs (2007-06-23 17:23:56 GMT)
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放開 is a verb and means "to let go." It doesn't make the same sense as a "cool guy." Maybe it is just an expression for "to relax" in China. However, we don't use that word in the sense of "cool guy" in Taiwan.

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Note added at 17 hrs (2007-06-23 18:01:24 GMT)
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Well, Mavericker, have you noticed the following text on the same page of the link you provided?

"Better known as Benedict Loo, he is a famous Singaporean breakdancer. He is thoroughly-allured by females worldwide especially due to his handsome eyebrows, deep, powerful, yet sexy voice, muscular frame and of course, his fasionable POLICE-branded glasses. Benedict is always dressed in his grey, shiny jacket like some street mugger, while hiding his beautiful, Pantene-glorified, straight hair with his Bristow cap. Apparently, he even adorns his cap to sleep from time to time, exemplifying his CHAO COOLness."

So, Fang Kai is a proper name. He is a Singaporean breakdancer and of course that's COOOOOOOOOOOL!


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Note added at 1 day8 hrs (2007-06-24 08:39:51 GMT)
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Uff, Mavericker, I would like to help, but it occurs me at moment no idea what could be use by you.