albeit a bit of an oversimplification.
In chinese, our familial titles gives information of whether your relative is maternally/ paternally related as well as if they are older or younger than oneself or one’s parents.
In this case the “kids” are referring to each other with
táng mèi (paternally-related-cousin younger-sister) and
táng xiōng (a more
formal address for a paternally-related-cousin older brother). So Ghost Doc is being verbally respectful (that or sarcastic). I only call my older guy cousins táng gē .
System is a bit of a pain in formal? family reunions trying to remember all the relative ages of all the relatives at the same time. But it does provide some quick useful context for the who’s who moreso than the second-cousin-twice-removed stuff and definitely when both systems are combined.
Bonus: yup all asian languages look like squiggly characters to me as well, so props to all the translators that aren’t translating from their mother tongue.
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unctuation