What exactly is 'Hand Shredded A$$ Meat'? A new dictionary for Chinese restaurants may tell you

NBC News ^ | 4/21/2012 | Bo Gu

[Ready4Freddy]

BEIJING – Overseas tourists often find the menus here befuddling, for good reason.

After all, what Westerner has experience with foods like these? “Cowboy leg,” “Hand-shredded ass meat,” “Red-burned lion head,” “Strange flavor noodles,” “Blow-up flatfish with no result,” or “Tofu made by woman with freckles.”

As proud as the Chinese people are of their thousands of years of gastronomic culture, even a Chinese native can feel disoriented when going to another province, given all the different styles of cooking. Many of the food names, often unique to different provinces, get lost in translation, especially in booming cities starting to embrace overseas tourists.

With few English speakers, restaurants usually translate their menus word by word directly from an English-Chinese dictionary. Or they just Google the Chinese characters. A photo that made the rounds online a few years ago got a chuckle from a lot of people: a restaurant with a large “page not found” sign above its door as its English name.

[Carriage Hill]

I was just kidding, m. I sort of *knew* it’d be what it was labeled. I used to loved steamed pork dumplings and all dim sum; now I’m not so sure.

[ADemocratNoMore]

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