
Two men struck up a conversation in a pub and one of them kept complaining of family problems with 同父異母 *tóng fù yì mǔ* 'same father but different mothers'. Finally the other man said: "You think you have family problems? Listen to my situation". "A few years ago, I met a young widow with a grown-up daughter, we got married and I got myself a step-daughter. Later, my father married my step-daughter. That made my step-daughter my step-mother and my father became my step-son. Also, my wife became mother-in-law of her father-in-law."
"Much later the daughter of my wife, my step-mother had a son. This boy was my half brother because he was my...