You - Attack of the Squid!

Squid is something that will show up on Chinese-only menus. Sometimes it's just you 魷 by itself and sometimes it's you yu 魷魚 - like "squid fish".

And just to make it more interesting, while you's radical is fish, the right side is also the word you 尤, same tone and everything. That character means "outstanding" or "special". This is one of those cases where it is hard to tell whether squid is considered to be an outstanding fish, or if they just use that character because they sound the same. (And the characters end up meaning "fish outstanding-sounding fish".)

Unless cooked perfectly, squid tends get rubbery, so westerners don't like to eat it. But I have this theory that if you see it on the Chinese-only menu, it's more likely to be cooked right. But I could be wrong. (The key to cooking squid, I hear, is that it should be cooked under two minutes, or over two hours. In the first case it doesn't have time to get tough. In the second it is stewed to tenderness.)

How to remember: well that right side looks kind of squiddy to me. The little legs hanging down and looping up and all.

The Pinyin spelling is yóu or you2 (second tone)

Yu - Something Fishy

You've learned about seafood with legs and shells, which tend to use the bug radical. Now we move on to those with fins or tentacles. Yu is just plain fish, but like meat and bird, it is both a radical and a character. It's often used to modify another character, for various kinds of fish and squids and things.

This one is tricky, though. While it certainly means fish, you will see it often on the regular menu on dishes that clearly don't have any fish in them, as Yu Xiang 魚香. The English translations usually say "garlic sauce" on them. What's going on? Does Yu also mean garlic? Nope. What those characters mean is "Fish Fragrant (Sauce)". It's a tasty sweet garlic sauce that goes really well with fish. Kinda like "steak sauce" tastes good on steak, but isn't made of steak.

How to recognize: to me it looks like a Chinese junk boat with the laddered sails, and an extra sail sticking up on top, and oars splashing down below. However, there are a few other characters that look kind of like that. It also looks kind of like a fish tail, with the finny part sticking down. (And sometimes it looks to me like the Darwin symbol people put on their cars -- you know the fish with legs?)

The Pinyin spelling is yú, or yu2 (second tone).

Long Xia - Lobstah

Riddle: what looks like a cross between a shrimp and a Chinese dragon? A Lobster!

And that's exactly what the Chinese call them, Dragon Shrimp, or long xia 龍蝦. That should be easy to remember. You can review the individual characters by going back to the main entries for Shrimp - Xia, and Dragon - Long.

If a restaurant offers these, you will see them in the big tanks, plotting their escape. The handwritten Chinese signs may mention various ways of cooking them, but will often just have the prices for large 大, medium 中 or small 小. (We'll get to the size characters later.) Up next, something fishy.

Pinyin spelling is lóng xiā, or long2 xia1 (second and first tone).

Chong - Don't Let It Bug You

Chong means insect, bug, or worm, and you may be relieved to know that you won't see Chong by itself on many menus. Where it's important is that it is a radical for a lot of seafoods and a few other things, like egg 蛋, as I mentioned in the previous post. And that makes sense, because crabs and crawfish and lobsters and prawns and squids and clams are all kind of sea bugs. (I have a New Englander friend who has always called soft-shelled crabs "fried bugs.")

As a radical it usually appears on the bottom, although not always.

I recognize the bug radical because it's simple enough to remember, and because it looks kind of like a bug to me. The square can be eiher a round body or two bulging eyes, and it has twisty stick legs.

The Pinyin spelling is chóng, or chong2 (second tone).

Chun - A Quail of a Tale

The last of the common poultry I'm going to mention is quail. Not because it's common of itself (I've never actually come across it in a restaurant) but because the eggs are pretty common. More on eggs soon.

I'm also going to use quail to illustrate an interesting element of spoken Mandarin Chinese -- every word is one syllable. And that's limiting, even when you have four musical tones to add meaning. There are a whole lot of homonyms in Chinese. (Homonyms are words that sound exactly alike but mean very different things). If you go to Mandarin Tools and search their dictionary for "ji" (chicken), you will find 142 entries. Yikes!

Luckily for us, the written version is quite clear, because different meanings use different characters. So if you look at their 142 entries, you will see that only words with closely related meanings have the same character. But even though it's clear when you read it, it's not clear when you speak it, so the Chinese will often use two words together to clarify what they mean. (They also use a lot of puns and metaphors, because, after all, everything you say could refer to something else.)

This is why beef is "cow meat" 牛肉. And it's why with some poultry and most seafood, you will see a lot of repetition. So...

I've most often seen quail as the character at the head of this post: Chun 鶉. But you might see it as An Chun 鵪鶉 - and both characters mean "quail."

How to remember: Well, it's got the bird radical, and it isn't chicken or duck. Soon you will learn a character that will help you remember Chun at least. The left side of Chun is a character that means "enjoy" 享. The top is the same top as for "palace" and "capital city" - a lid over a box. But the bottom half is what might help you remember quail: it's zi 子 (pronounced "dzuh") and it's the word for "little thing". It's an important food word, and we'll get to that before we even get to eggs. It helps us remember quail because quail are little things.

The pinyin spellings for quail is ān or an1 (first tone), and chún or chun2 (second tone).

Ya - Duck Season

Duck is a popular luxury dish, and most Chinese restauants will have at least one special dish, if not several. Peking Duck, Tea-smoked Duck, Crispy Duck. You name it, it's probably tasty.

The radical is the "bird" 鳥 symbol, on the right again. On the left, the part that means duck looks more like a lollipop than a duck. I remember it by picturing a head-and-neck close up of the Aflac Duck, looking straight at you screaming "AFLAC!"

The Pinyin spelling is yā, or ya1 (first tone).

Ji - A Tale of Two Chickens

Just as there are two symbols for bird, there are two for chicken 鷄 and 雞, and they both stand for the same word: ji. The difference doesn't hold much meaning -- it's just which radical they happen to use at a particular restaurant. You'll notice that the radical in this case is on the right.

The part on the left is the part that indicates it's a chicken and not some other bird. It's made up of three stacked characters. Claw 爪, thread 幺 and big 大. I'm thinking it means "big scratcher bird." But that doesn't make it so easy to recognize.

A friend thought the second version looks like chickens scratching around outside a hen house. And that, I think, is the best way to remember it. It's common enough that you can just make a point of identifying it on any menu, and you'll learn it. (Assignment: find a takeout menu with Chinese on it. Which version does that restaurant use?)

The Pinyin spelling is jī, ji1 (first tone).

Niao and Zhui - Two Birds in the Bush

There are two characters for "bird". Both are radicals for Chicken and various other poultry, so it's good to be able to recognize them. Just to confuse you, these radicals generally appear on the right rather than the left, as you will see in the next post about chicken.

Niao 鳥 just means "bird" and it is the most often used. It looks a little like fish 魚, which I'll get to later. It doesn't really look much like a bird to me, unless I see the top as a bird's head, and the bottom as a spread-out wing. (And that helps you separate it from fish, because the four dots underneath are enclosed by the wingtip.)

Zhui 隹, according to most dictionaries, means "short tailed bird" which is odd, because (for food birds at least) it only seems to be used for chicken -- and roosters have long tails. Whereas ducks, which never seem to use zhui, always have short tails. The best way to remember it is that it looks like a hen house.

The Pinyin spelling is niǎo, or niao3 (third tone), and zhuī, or zhui1 (first tone).

Du and Chang - the Guts of the Matter

My favorite Thai restauranteur, Lamai, refers to variety meats as "inside parts." They might also be called guts or organ meats. Whether you love 'em or hate 'em, though, it is important to know which dishes contain them.

Du 肚, aka tripe or stomach, is the most common variety meat you'll come across. It's a mainstay at a lot of dim sum houses.

Chang 腸, aka chitlins or intestine, are the second most common.

Fei 肺, aka lung, is not so common, but is sometimes used as a generic term for offal. (For instance, a famous Sichuan dish that usually features tripe is called "husband and wife lung slices" 夫妻肺片. Someday I'll tell you about that one.)

Gan 肝, aka liver. It's very similar to the character for tripe. I have never seen this in a dish yet, but I have a friend who loves liver, so we are watching for it.

In all cases you see a little ladder shape as the left half of the character. This is the radical for rou 肉, or meat. Sometimes you will see that radical on a word that doesn't refer to inside parts. (For instance, "cashew" is yao guo 腰果, which means "waist fruit". The name may refer to the shape of the nut, or it may refer to the fact that eating a lot of them will go straight to your waist.)

Still, if you don't want to eat inside parts, and you happen to see that radical on a character, be cautious.

As I mentioned in the radicals post, this radical doesn't look much like it's main form, rou 肉. It also looks an awful lot like the character for sun 日, especially sun's radical, as in sunset 旰. Sun doesn't get used in food characters much, but just in case, here's how you can quickly recognize the difference: Just remember that meat has feet (at least the animal did before it was meat), the sun doesn't. Look at the slight difference between liver and sunset: 肝 and 旰.

The pinyin spelling of these yummy or yucky dishes are: dǔ or du3 (third tone), cháng or chang2 (second tone), fèi or fei4 (fourth tone), and gān or gan1 (first tone).

Yan - Lamb-a Lamb-a Ding Dong

Lamb tends to be a Muslim Chinese dish. The character usually accompanies the meat symbol, rou, 羊肉.

How to remember it: At least this one has horns or ears at the top to help remember. And the extra line across makes it look like fluffy version of the cow character.

It's a "radical" - or founding character - for a lot of words that have nothing to do with sheep. (More about radicals later.) For instance the word Mei 美, which means "beautiful", is founded on it, and is also the word the Chinese use for "America." (The word "America" sounds kind of like mei guo 美國 to the Chinese, which means "beautiful country -- how's that for pumping the American ego?)

Niu - There's the Beef

Niu, which means cow, usually appears next to Rou, 牛肉, when you're talking about beef, but not always. Sometimes it will stand alone.

To me, it looks like a Free French cross with a leaf on it, which doesn't help me remember it. I suppose if you thought of it as a telegraph pole, it might remind you of the open range out west, where the longhorn cattle roam.

Or you could just memorize it.

These two characters, niu and rou are a good starting place for practice. Get yourself a Chinese menu and look for them, separately and together. You could also look for them in dishes on the all-Chinese specials board. You might see a couple of simple dishes -- boiled beef 水牛肉 or beef congee (thick rice soup) 牛肉粥, or beef noodle soup 牛肉湯麵. (Just beware: Sichuan boiled beef is usually very very spicy.)

The Pinyin spelling is niú or niu2. Second tone, for those who are interested in speaking it.

Rou - Meat of the Matter

When I was but a wee child I noticed that this character was on all of the pork dishes in my local Chinese restaurant menu. I was pretty proud that I had figured it out....

Except sometimes it was on beef dishes. Hmmm.

What it means is "meat", and when used all alone, it almost always means "pork." Other characters can modify it to mean beef 牛肉 or lamb 羊肉, (but I've never seen it used for fish or poultry).

It's easy to recognize. It looks kind of like a rib cage.

The pinyin spelling for it is ròu or rou4. (It's fourth tone, if you're into the conversational lingo.)