Either to make conversation or as a language quiz, Uncle Jiang would often ask me, “Dustin, what is this?” He was not the only one.
Usually, he asked it when we sat down for dinner. He would pick something up with his chopsticks and ask for its English name. I didn’t know who was supposed to be “the grasshopper” and who the old sage in this situation. Many times, my answer was simple. “Porridge. This is porridge.” In America, we would probably call it Chinese porridge or just use the Chinese name, as we do for Kung Bao chicken and all the other mainstays on a Chinese menu, but the basic vocabulary word Uncle Jiang was looking for was porridge.
Other times, I was surprised when he asked me for an English word and then disagreed (!) with my answer. I held a piece of sweet potato in my chopsticks once, and Uncle Jiang asked me, pointing at the purple tuber, “Dustin, what are you eating?”
“This is a sweet potato,” I replied without thinking twice.
“No!” he said, “This is not a potato!”
He looked indignant, even shocked. I had no idea what to tell him. Maybe appease him by calling it a yam? I stumbled, trying to explain in simple English that a potato is a potato and a sweet potato is a sweet potato, two different things. I supposed he thought I meant it was a sweet-tasting (normal) potato, and I had to infer that the two vegetables do not have similar names in Chinese or occupy similar categories in Chinese thought. Well, why not? I cannot imagine any object more similar to a potato than a sweet potato.
The source of the controversy. I don’t know what else to call it besides “purple sweet potato.”
When I brought one of the boiled purple sweet potatoes to have as my breakfast before class, it was the same routine. My students were surprised by my breakfast, a vegetable grown in their own soil, and asked me, “What is that?”
“A sweet potato,” I told them.
“No! It is not a potato!” they argued, as adamant as Uncle Jiang.
Then why did you ask me? I wanted to counter. Or Fine. You tell me what it is. It’s your vegetable. I have never seen a purple sweet potato like that in my neighborhood of the US.
I was befuddled that they could disagree with me on a term from my native language. How was that possible? I was considered the expert, so they would ask me questions about English vocabulary and acceptable grammar, but they wouldn’t accept my answer if it conflicted with their understanding of what a “sweet potato” should be in Chinese terms.
At the dining hall (or “canteen”, as the students called it) I had a plate of silver noodles once. Or so I thought they were called from reading labels at Chinese buffets. Once again, my students asked me for the name of the mystery item I was eating.
I took a breath. “These are noodles.”
“No! It is not noodles!”
This time I vigorously tried explaining myself. I told them that anything that fits the shape- long, stringy, and noodle-like – is a noodle. If it looks like a noodle, if it tastes like a noodle, it is a noodle. I think they disagreed because this noodle was made from a different flour than the noodles they knew as “noodles.”
Even the rainbow-colored Funnoodle is a member of the noodle family. (Sorry, no silver.)
“It may be a rice noodle,” I bargained, “But this is a carbohydrate in a long, thin shape. IT IS a noodle.” I don’t think I had them convinced. Really, the English language did not have appropriately nuanced food categories to satisfy them.
Besides noodles, Chinese cuisine is big on dumplings, each type with its own name, and so they were crestfallen when, one after one, I would answer my questioners, “Dumpling. Dumpling. That is also a dumpling. Yes, this is a dumpling, too.”
Their furrowed brow seemed to say, “But this one is sweet and is made by rolling a ball of rice flour! That one is pork inside a boiled wrapper. This one has shrimp and is fried in oil. They are different!”
One time, Uncle Jiang changed the game on me. He wasn’t going to wait for me to give him a none-too-specific vocabulary word, he would supply it himself. Over breakfast, he called the golden sweetener “bee honey.” I gave him a doubtful look. He held out for a second, then asked, “Bee honey, or honey?” As I told him it was the latter, I wondered what kind of honey these Chinese had been keeping secret from the outside world that they would need to specify “bee” honey. Surely, Marco Polo would have reported on a non-bee creature also capable of producing honey. And, if this mystical being could do it without regurgitating nectar, it would outsell the “bee honey” tenfold.
I guessed that the Chinese word for honey was a typical Chinese compound word, probably combining “bee” plus a word to indicate the fluid product of honey. (Yes, the Chinese word for honey is a compound word that translates literally “bee honey.”) China did have a multitude of honey varieties (hardly any peanut butter on their shelves but ample honey sections in every grocery store), and canvas roadside tents where a vendor would hang out all day napping and apparently selling jars of honey he had supposedly harvested himself, from bees.
(Here’s an interesting link from a beekeeper with insight into Chinese honey and an encounter with a street beekeeper… er, a beekeeper selling honey on the streets.)
The most egregious battle over appellation came after dinner at my friend Ma Chao’s house. (Ma Chao’s family name means “horse.” I would like to meet an American named Tom Horse or Tom Yellow, two common Chinese surnames, instead of Tom Butler or Tom Cooper.) At the dinner were Ma Chao, Aunt Fong, a kung fu teacher, an English-speaking Director of Foreign Relations at a local university who went by Mike for his English name, one of Aunt Fong’s friends, and me. We made it through dinner without arguing over potatoes, dumplings, or noodles. Then, after dinner, when everyone was all liquored up (as Chinese dinner guests are wont to be), Ma Chao brought out his weapons (as a few of my Chinese friends were wont to do).
Like many kung fu enthusiasts, Ma Chao was a collector of swords and polearms. Ma Chao, Mike, and Aunt Fong’s friend, Lily all wanted to handle them and pose for pictures. I thought that the inebriated swinging blades at each other was a stupid idea, but as the saying goes, when in Rome, disregard personal safety. At their urging, I came over to the living room to take some pictures with them.
Ma Chao and me, handling his weapons.
Ma Chao handed me his sword, and Mike, as my translator, informed me, “That is a knife.The Chinese name is dao.”
The sword I held required both hands on the hilt, and the blade was around three feet long.
“No,” I told him flatly, “this is a sword.”
“No!” Mike riposted, “It is a knife.” He pointed to the cutting edge and said, “See? It is only sharp on one side.”
I explained, “It doesn’t matter if the other side is dull, that only means it is a single-edged sword. But it is a sword!” In my flustered state, I rushed my words, not caring if I lost my listeners over technical details.
“No,” Mike insisted, “sword is for a different word. This is a dao, it is a knife.”
“A knife?” I exclaimed, “Look how long it is!”
That sword could have severed limbs in one stroke. “If it uses two hands and the blade is longer than my forearm, it is a sword!”
I wanted to ask him how he would classify a pointed rapier without a cutting edge. Or, hand him a dictionary and have him look up broadsword. I’m sure it would have been of no use.
Lily pretends to behead me with a Chinese “knife.”
His stance, like that of all my vocabulary quiz masters, was fixed and intractable. I had experienced the same stubborn reaction by enough people that I could tell it was a phenomenon of culture and language, not a personal idiosyncrasy. Somehow, a people that had been raised in rigid classrooms, taught to copy and repeat everything they heard, became skeptical and as combative as a wild donkey when my foreign authority told them what was what in English.
I was left to question what kind of argument would persuade them of a vocabulary word’s legitimacy. What I wouldn’t give to see Uncle Jiang and Mike on a Webster’s usage panel. “No! It is not a transitive verb! It is a noun.”
Mike’s opinion would carry a lot of weight at Webster’s so long as he was carrying this Chinese pole weapon (guandao) with him.
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