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Greetings from just back in Beijing where, unfortunately, the air quality wasn’t so good the last two days.

Coupled with a very light fog, the emissions from the about 2 million cars in the city ensured that the sky was grey.

(If I had gone for a run, I would certainly not have broken any world record).

China is, however, getting all geared up for the Olympics on 8th August 2008.

The world’s most creative and imaginative cuisine (actually there are several Chinese cuisines) is trying to standardize the translation of popular Chinese dishes into some sort of uniformity.


A ROUGH RIDE FOR CHICKENS
Until now, chickens have had the roughest ride on menus.


No longer “abused by the government”.

Take, for example, the Sichuanese classic “Kung Pao Chicken”. That’s how we all know it when calling out the dish in Chinese. In places such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, the translation is just that on the menu, “Kung Pao, or Kung Po, Chicken”. After all, the dish is named after a Qing Dynasty governor of Sichuan whose title was also “Gong Bao” or Palace Guardian.

In China, particularly in the north, the stir-fried dish of diced chicken with chillis and peppercorns is, instead, some times translated as “Government Abused Chicken”.

On Tuesday 17 June, the committee charged with making better sense of translating names of Chinese dishes into English issued a directory which now advises restaurants to no longer allow the government to abuse the chicken and, instead, go with Kung Pao Chicken.


POCK-MARKED WOMEN TOO
Another Sichuan classic will also no longer suffer the indignity of being translated as "Bean Curd made by a Pock-Marked Woman”. Although this was how the dish was created and, therefore, got its name, the revised face-lift on the menu will simply be “Mai Po Do Fu” (as the Chinese know it).

“Spring Chicken”, everywhere in the world, refers to a young chicken and is almost, always roasted when so described on the menu. In China, there are many ways to abuse, oops, I mean, cook a young – or old – chicken. A popular way is steaming. A pullet is a female chicken under a year old.

It might interest you, if you are next in China and ordered “Steamed Pullet”, that it used to be known on the menu as “Chicken without Sexual Life”

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