Posted on 06/18/2008 6:26:55 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
BEIJING (Reuters) - It's official. Hungry foreign hordes craving a fix of diced chicken fried with chili and peanuts during the Beijing Olympics will be able to shout "kung pao chicken!" and have some hope of getting just that.
As it readies for an influx of visitors for the August Games, the Chinese capital has offered restaurants an official English translation of local dishes whose exotic names and alarming translations can leave foreign visitors frustrated and famished.
If officials have their way, local newspapers reported on Wednesday, English-speaking visitors will be able to order "beef and ox tripe in chili sauce," an appetizer, rather than "husband and wife's lung slice."
Other favorites have also received a linguistic makeover.
"Bean curd made by a pock-marked woman," as the Beijing Youth Daily rendered the spicy Sichuanese dish, is now "Mapo tofu." And "chicken without sexual life" becomes mere "steamed pullet."
According to one widely repeated story, the Chinese name of "kung pao chicken" comes from the name of an imperial official who was fed the dish during an inspection tour.
With the Beijing Olympics 51 days away, a notice on the city tourism bureau website ( http://www.bjta.gov.cn ) told restaurants to come and pick up a book with the suggested translations.
In China, where meetings are almost as popular as banquets, agreeing on the English-language menu has taken many rounds of discussions over previous drafts since last year.
Just as predictably in this country where nationalism and the Internet make a potent brew, controversy has already broken out over the blander new translations.
""I don't like this new naming method, it's abandoning Chinese tradition," one Internet comment declared. "There are many stories in the names of these dishes."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I love that movie. ;-D
“Grandpa’s hyena.”
panda makes me wanna puke.
yes, i know, it’s a favorite fast food.
We were in China for a couple months (hubby was on job assignment.) The food was marvelous! We were never sick the entire time. Sometimes we weren’t quite sure what we were eating (one particular restaurant we dubbed the “Don’t Ask Cafe” because our translator would order for us and we were afraid to ask what we were eating...but it tasted good, LOL!) Most food is extremely fresh...as can be attested to by the crates of animals and fishtanks full of fish in front of the restaurants.
yes, i know, it’s a favorite fast food”
Panda must be slow cooked. When cooked properly, panda tastes just as good as snow leopard.
That's supposed to make it better???
They can’t be trusted to produce safe food for my dog to eat. Why would I want to eat what they produce? With their record in human rights abuses and incarceration of Christians, why would I want to go there? They should not have been given the opportunity to host the Olympics, in my opinion.
If I was participating, I’d bring my own MREs, and my own bottled water. I’d even pay for the extra weight myself.
Dog was never very popular in Northern China. It’s more of a preference in Guangdong (Canton) or Fujian province. As pork has become more readily available, one doesn’t see dog on menus as much.
My grandparents’ golden retriever was stolen and eaten by Nationalist troops. At least the Japanese invaders left the dog alone.
Once I had fish eye soup; here’s a hint: the little pearls aren’t onions or gelatin. It was tasty, though. In fact, once you get over the strangeness, a lot of food around the world is pretty darn good. My only rule is that whatever I’m eating has to stop moving.
Made with the finest beaks and claws in a bed of spackle.
LOL!
My cousin learned to cook in Shanghai and does a great job replicating that cuisine. There are few to none Shanghai restaurants in the Midwest. Most of the Cantonese take-out food is worse than anything I’ve eaten in China.
Much of the key to a good Chinese meal are fresh ingredients and balanced quantities of meat. A lot of restaurants here use marginal quality beef and pork - too much fat and tendon. I was at O’Hare airport last Sunday and I couldn’t believe how big some folks were - talk about too much fat!
but not as slowly as rattlesnake?
“diced chicken fried with chili and peanuts”
Many Maalox moments in the making.....
“Much of the key to a good Chinese meal are fresh ingredients and balanced quantities of meat.”
Don’t forget the lead and assorted heavy metals. At least the “Chinese” food in the US won’t kill you - even if it is “Cantonese take-out.”
Much of Shanghai’s infrastructure, including water filtration system, is up to Hong Kong, Japanese and European standards. Beijing, host to the Olympics, has few major industries in comparison to coastal provinces due to its distance from the coast. Like Washington, DC, Beijing’s biggest industries are tourism and churning out idiotic government decrees. Beijing’s biggest environmental problems are air pollution from high sulfur coal-burning power plants and sandstorms from the Gobi desert.
However, you are probably correct about other industrialized areas.
OK, genius -
what’s in a “poo poo platter”?
what’s in a “poo poo platter”?”
Where do you think the water used for shrimp farming and agricultural irrigation in China comes from?
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