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“Don’t serve husband and wife’s lung slice”, Chinese government says
By Elizabeth | June 19, 2008
My husband’s alarm clock is set to go off by blaring our local National Public Radio station. Which means that as I cracked my eyelids open this morning, I heard a news report about the Chinese government sending a booklet to Beijing hotels suggesting better English translations for some of the food served in their restaurants. Let’s take a look at some of the choices you might find on a menu in Beijing:
“Husband and wife’s lung slice”-MMMMMM!!! Doesn’t that sound YUMMY? *cough* Know what the dish is? “Beef and ox tripe in chili sauce.” Which makes no sense, because tripe is made from cow stomach, not lungs. I looked up tripe on Google and found a Wikipedia page, which was probably a bad idea while I was also eating scrambled eggs and toast at the time. Tripe is eaten in countries all over the world in all kinds of different ways, who knew? I’d have to be pretty damn hungry to eat it, that’s for sure.
“Chicken without sexual life”-HA! Poor chicken, no nookie for you. Just a sad life lived in a tiny cage until it’s your time on the conveyor belt. The suggested new name for the dish is “Steamed Pullet”. Back to Google again-A pullet is a female chicken under the age of one year. So, steamed chicken. Chicken which has never known love, how sad. She says, as she eats her scrambled eggs.
“Bean curd made by a pock-marked woman”-That’s harsh, yo. The poor woman suffered an unfortunate bout of teenage acne and now everyone knows about it thanks to not only a dish served in restaurants but it’s announced right there on the menu? Dang. Hey! I know what bean curd is! It’s tofu. But the government suggests calling it “Mapo Tofu”, so yep-back to Google. “A famous Szechuan recipe - the name Ma Po Tofu is roughly translated as “pockmarked grandmother beancurd,” named for the old woman who supposedly invented the dish.” Makes sense to me! It actually sounds good, it’s
ground pork marinated in soy sauce and tapioca starch, stir fried, mixed with mashed Chinese salted black beans, chili paste, chicken stock, the tofu, and chopped green onions.
Columnist Raymond Zhou wrote in China Daily newspaper expressed his displeasure with the suggested names, writing that they removed the ambiguity and unintended humor” and take away “the fun and the rich connotation.” He wrote that changing the names “turns a menu into the equivalent of plain rice, which has the necessary nutrients but is devoid of flavor.”
Ouch.
Topics: Food News, Restaurants |
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2 Responses to ““Don’t serve husband and wife’s lung slice”, Chinese government says”
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June 20th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
I love those bad menu translations. I remember a particularly awesome one that gained some notoriety online, and a few people were calling it “racist.” What? Since when does language have anything to do with race? I don’t care if people find it offense, I can’t stop laughing at things like Chicken Parts with Trousers.
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June 27th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
this is too good…
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