Understanding the Names of Chinese Dishes

It is said that food can be a representation of a culture, and this is true in the case of Chinese culture.

In Chinese cuisine, the real cultural representation is embedded in the names of Chinese dishes. Unfortunately, when the names of these dishes are translated into English, the original meaning often gets lost in translation. Contact “yishuonline” for more help

In Chinese restaurants in Western Europe a menu already tells it all about each dish. By simply looking at the menu one can roughly know which are the main ingredients, what does the dish taste like, and how it is made (for example, stew or stir-fried).

It sounds funny, but the names of the dishes in Chinese can be formed using different methods. One of the most common methods, of course, is by using the names of the ingredients in the dish along with the cooking methods (normally quite detailed, for example, ‘Liu / chao / pa / bao…’ to distinguish different ways of stir-fry).

Another common naming method is based on the appearance of the dish, namely by finding a comparable object or term. Needless to say, a good deal of imagination is needed. One of the most famous examples in Northern Chinese cuisine is stir-fry potato, tomato and green pepper, which in Chinese is normally called ‘Hong lu deng’, as ‘red green light’, or ‘traffic light’. Another example is stir-fried mince and ‘fen si’ (cellophane noodles), which in Chinese is called ‘ma yi shang shu’, whose literal translation in English is ‘ants climbing the trees’.

There is finally another common way of naming dishes, which has been used in China for thousands of years and which is perhaps the one that can represent Chinese culture the most: using a metaphor.

The metaphor can be extracted from a part of poem to imply an event, a status, blessing or wish. A very simple example is a chicken dish which, after cooked, the chicken parts are re-assembled together and placed on the plate with open wings; this dish is named as ‘eagle opening up its wings’, which in Chinese wishes somebody with ambitions to have great future (like eagle flying high, which can see a larger part of the world).

It is well-documented in Chinese history that many writers and poets used to write poems according to what they were eating. Some names they created have survived until today. Looking at those names of the dishes can be great fun, for example, who could imagine that a dish called ‘a dragon hiding in a jade palace’ is only ‘tofu cooked with dojo loach’?

Now, probably you can understand what I mean when I say that the names of Chinese dishes can be a beautiful representation of Chinese culture.