Chingrish Food

Q: What do the following things have in common?

• Maiden Moon
• Grasp to Fry Ridge in the Sheep
• Egg Flesh Book
• Temple Explode Chicken Cube
• Return a Pot Meat
• Anthracene Explode Beef
• Good Chicken Silk
• The Ginger Explodes Duck Silk
• The City Explodes Shredded Meat
• Shandong Burns a Chicken

A: I found all those things on a restaurant menu in Shanghai last summer. Bonus points if you knew what 'anthracene' was.

And if the translations are that bad in Shanghai, they're worse everywhere else. When I was in Yunnan, in fact, a random restaurant owner convinced my Dad to do some menu translating for them. But for all he knew, my Dad could've been writing gibberish (or Polish). That's why the Chinese government just put out a list of suggested names for dishes in preparation for the incoming crush of Olympic tourists.

The problem is that Chinese dishes aren't always named as you would describe them, so literal dictionary translations are pretty much worthless.