格瓦拉

Almost always refers to Ernesto 'Che' Guevara (切·格瓦拉, 1928-1967), the Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary, doctor, and guerrilla leader who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution and was later executed in Bolivia. His Alberto Korda portrait - beret, defiant gaze - became one of the most reproduced images in 20th-century pop culture. In China his image carries a complex resonance: revolutionary icon plus, in the 1990s-2000s, an avatar of nostalgic anti-establishment idealism.

Three pure-phonetic characters: 格 (gé, 'pattern') + 瓦 (wǎ, 'tile') + 拉 (lā, 'pull'). Together: 'Gue-va-ra'. The 切 (Qiè) in 切·格瓦拉 is for 'Che' - Argentine slang of address - not the verb 'to cut'.