It's Japanese soup
« previous post | next post »
A Facebook post sent to me by shaing tai:
shì rì lì tāng
是日例汤
"soup of the day"
The mistake here derives from the fact that, in Classical Chinese, "shì rì 是日" means "this day", whereas in vernacular it means "is Ja[pan]".
All of the other entries have some weird or exotic aspects. I will not give complete LL style treatment for the other entries, but only point out a few particularly interesting features.
In the first entry, while jīgǔcǎo 鸡骨草 literally (character by character) means "chicken bone grass", a more idiomatic rendering would be "Canton love-pee vine", "prayer-beads", etc. a medicinal plant with the scientific name Abrus pulchellus subsp. cantoniensis.
Zhū hénglì 猪横脷 does mean "pig's tongue".
The last two characters of the second entry signify "house soup".
Lou5 fo2 tong1 老火湯 is slow boiled / simmered soup (lit., "old fire soup")
Lou fo tong (Chinese: 老火湯) is a distinctive variety of soup in Cantonese cuisine popular among Chinese people in Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macau, and overseas. These soups are usually made by simmering various vegetables, fruits, meat or Chinese herbs in a pressure cooker, vacuum cooker, claypot, wok or clay jar for a few hours, and are believed to have skincare, heart-protective, vision-enhancing, bile-reducing, and bone-strengthening benefits. Owing to the hot and humid climate in the Lingnan region, the locals have developed a penchant for drinking lou fo tong for its nourishing and health-boosting effects.
Then comes "It's Japanese soup".
The last item is correctly translated, though Cordyceps militaris would be more easily understood by its common name, caterpillar fungus.
Selected readings
- "Too hard to translate soup" (9/2/18) — pimple soup
- "Braised enterovirus, anyone?" (7/16/08)
Philip Taylor said,
August 15, 2024 @ 3:01 am
I was introduced to caterpillar fungus by my (Vietnamese) wife, and was fascinated to learn of its life story. I have also been privileged to watch caterpillar fungus trading taking place in Tibet — the participants conceal their hands under a black cloth, use hand signals to indicate the price asked or offered, and the whole deal is done in complete secrecy so that the price of the next batch cannot be influenced by knowledge of the price of the preceding. I was therefore very saddened to learn that this vital part of the Tibetan peasant economy is now threatened by over-harvesting and climate change — https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/tibet-china-zombie-fungus-cordyceps-trade
Lasius said,
August 15, 2024 @ 3:29 am
I think the Tibetan carterpillar fungus would be Ophiocordyceps sinensis.
Rosie Redfield said,
August 15, 2024 @ 3:14 pm
Yikes, I wouldn't eat Cordyceps. It contains a heat-stable toxin (cordycepin) that blocks normal processing of mRNAs.
Heino said,
August 15, 2024 @ 7:11 pm
@Philip Taylor
I don’t know how curious you are about the history of the caterpillar fungus and the spread of awareness about it (from Tibet to China and further afield). Should you wish to read more, I recommend Di Lu’s PhD thesis: Transnational Travels of the Caterpillar Fungus, 1700-1949, University College London, 2017 (in particular, Chapters 2 & 3), available at: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1557398/. There is also his later book (which I have noy yet seen): The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949; A Microhistory of the Caterpillar Fungus (published by Springer in 2023: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-24723-1).
KC said,
August 16, 2024 @ 3:03 pm
豬橫脷 is not tongue.
It's the Cantonese term for a pig's pancreas (because it's a long tongue-shaped organ that sits transverse in the body). https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hk/%E8%B1%AC%E8%83%B0
(Wiktionary was edited three months ago saying it's the spleen and commonly misidentified as the pancreas. I've never seen this, so I don't know if this has just shifted in linguistics, or maybe a common butchery error where a butcher would extract the organ that is a major part of a pig's lymphatic system and call it the organ for making insulin. Or the editor is wrong, but he's an EN Wiktionary admin, so no, I'm not reverting it.)
Tom said,
August 17, 2024 @ 3:36 am
@Heino.
Thanks. Those look interesting!