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Jane Skinner received this from a friend who saw it in Chengdu, Sichuan:

The translation for the mysterious fourth item on the menu, "reclamation of a wasteland by an army unit" is taken directly from Baidu Fanyi for jūntún 军屯.  The translator simply ignored the last two characters, guōkuī 锅盔, which literally mean "pot helmet".

In actual usage guōkuī 锅盔 is a Shanxi topolectal expression for a type of large, round baked wheat cake:

Guokui is a kind of pancake made from flour from Shaanxi cuisine. It is round in shape, about a foot long in diameter, an inch in thickness, and weighs about 2.5 kg. It is traditionally presented as a gift by a grandmother to her grandson when he turns one month old.

(Source)

The name is sometimes translated as "crusty pancake", though I might suggest "helmet pancake" as an alternative.

In this Google gallery of images, you can see the variety of sizes, shapes, and types that go by the name guōkuī 锅盔 (lit., "pot helmet", i.e., "helmet pancake").

As for jūntún 军屯, it refers to army encampments, so this kind of "pot helmet pancake" must evoke memories of being in the field for those who have been soldiers, especially those who served in túntián 屯田 ("military agro-colonies") and bīngtuán 兵团 (“army unit; army formation”) in border regions such as Xinjiang where vast reclamation projects are undertaken.  The bread / pancake certainly looks spartan to me.

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Updated 8/29/22

This is all about paramilitary production units called "bīngtuán 兵团 / 兵團" ("corps") that go all the way back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–9 A.D.) as agents of colonialism in Central Asia.  I will soon make a LL post that deals with this subject.  For now, just keep in mind that the bīng 兵 of bīngtuán 兵团 means "weapon; soldier" (see the title page of VHM, The Art of War: Sun Zi's Military Methods [Columbia University Press, 2007] for a graphic depiction of the protoform of the character]) and the tuán 团 means "group; organization".

Most of the items on this menu need some 'splainin'.  I'll just focus on this one, but welcome readers to tackle a few of the others.

jūntún guōkuī

军屯锅盔

jūntún 军屯 are troops which farm and carry out garrison duties, usually in frontier areas

also called túntián 屯田 ("have garrison troops or peasants open up wasteland and grow food grain") (source)

The system of frontier garrison troops that engage in agriculture to support themselves (i.e., "military farms") arose during the Western Han Dynasty (202 BC-9 AD) and still exists today.  Some of my significant archeological work in Eastern Central Asia (Xinjiang) was carried out on vast lands reclaimed from the desert by such military organizations.

There is a village named Tūntún 军屯 in Sichuan Province, Chengdu, Xindu District that specializes in this type of snack, a flatbread made of flour.  You can see how it is made in this video (there are many other videos that can be found by searching under 军屯锅盔 or just 锅盔).

The dish is said to have been invented during the Tang Dynasty by a laborer who cooked flatbread in his iron helmet over a wood fire. There are many different versions including Shaanxi, Jingzhou (Hubei), Henan, Sichuan, and Gansu. (source)

Since the name of this snack is not only written as guōkuī 锅盔, where the kuī 盔 portion means "helmet", but also as guōkuí 锅魁, where the kuí 魁 portion means "first; leading, chief; leader; stalwart; tall and big; monstrous; (literary) dipper; spoon; the best", there may be some hesitation over what the actual second morpheme is.  The first morpheme is unmistakably MSM guō / Cant. wo1 锅 ("pot; pan", though many people also say that it means "wok", but the latter is from Cant. wok6 鑊 (cf. Mandarin  huò).  (entered English 1952, according to Etymonline)

 

Selected readings

• "Tuntian" (Wikipedia)
• "Shifting valences of 'throwing the pot' in Chinese" (5/14/20)
• "Me Old China" (1/18/13) — and don't miss the comments
• "What's the History of the Wok? A Continuing Investigation", by Rachel Laudan (1/20/13)
• Hong Kong’s fascination with ghosts and woks shows Cantonese can be a lot more subtle than we think", by Luisa Tam, SCMP (2/29/20)
  "The words can be used in a dazzling array of combinations that allow humour to take the sting out of rudeness, and ‘gwei’, or ghost, is not always negative. It would not be an exaggeration to say that a wok is as essential a cookware in Chinese culture as it is in daily local conversations."

 

February 11, 2019 @ 12:10 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and food, Lost in translation, Topolects

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