Language Log

From Wei comes this photograph of a sign on a deli that they took the other day in Guangzhou:

Jackie and Mimi, Toni Tan's daughters, spotted two interesting products at the Asian supermarket near their home.

There's quite a fuss in China these days over a product that is called niúròu sōng miànbāo 牛肉松面包 ("beef floss bread").  The problem is that there is no beef floss in the bread.  Even the ingredients state that whatever meat is in the bread is chicken.

For reports and photographs, see here and here.

In Shanghai, Tom Mazanec recently came across a listing for a kind of tea called Tiě Guāngyīn 铁光阴 (second from the bottom in the photo), which he thought might be a knockoff of the famous Tiě Guānyīn 铁观音. The picture was taken at a restaurant near Fudan University called Xiǎo Dōngběi 小东北 (the name of the restaurant [Xiǎo Dōngběi sīfang cài 小东北私房菜, at the top of the menu] is rather endearingly translated as "The small northeastern dishes").

Here is an interesting picture that Francois Dube took today in a cakeshop in Yinchuan, capital of the Ningxia Hui (Muslim) Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China:

Tom Hancock sent in this photograph of a poster seen yesterday outside a Shaanxi restaurant just inside Beijing's third ring road:

David Rowe took this photo of a sign on a market stall in Sydney Chinatown:

From Nancy Friedman (@Fritinancy):

As for menu item #47, your guess is as good as mine. #Berkeley @LanguageLog pic.twitter.com/MlNhu8q4jI

— Nancy Friedman (@Fritinancy) May 4, 2015

Nathan Hopson sent in this photograph of a package of cookies:

Joel Martinsen found this photograph on the microblog of Wáng Dàyǔ 王大禹:

Felix Sadeli sent in this list of colossal mistranslations of food names. We've already seen several of these and explained a number of them on Language Log:

• "Puke " (10/8/10)
• "Gourmet Chinese cookshop " (1/27/14) — "Soup for Sluts" (in the comments)
• "Combating the monolithic tree mushroom stem squid " (5/3/10) ("The jew's ear Juice" — also in the comments)

Here I'll just give brief explanations for four of the droller items in Chinese and Japanese on the list.  Perhaps Language Log readers will be inspired to follow suit for some of the remaining items, especially those in other languages.

Michael Robinson sent in the following photograph of a restaurant which I believe is in the Inner Richmond section of San Francisco:

Having immersed myself in Korean gizzard terminology for the past week, I now turn to Chinese gizzard terms, which are every bit as curious and varied, if not so intermittently scatalogical.  Whereas the problems with Korean terms for gizzard centered primarily on their imprecision and vulgarity, the difficulties with Chinese terms for gizzard have more to do with pronunciation, topolectal variation, and the characters used for writing the various terms.