Cup of Cha
This is China

I have been a big defender of Chinglish, but I came across a bizarre column in Beijing Today that talks about the perils of incorrectly using English. However, the story refers to a supposedly embarrassing phrase, which seems perfectly normal.

The newspaper, which despite its name is actually a weekly, has a regular feature that talks about embarrassing moments in the history of Chinglish. This seems like a potentially interesting idea if done correctly, although I tend to find these pieces a little condescending. On the other hand, normally they are written by foreigners, so a Chinese author gives this one a certain degree of difficulty–and in this case a bizarre twist (namely that the supposed mistake does not seem to be a problem at all).

Here’s a bit from the article (Note: the changes that I made reflect that the online article has several typos that are not in the print copy) :

The story goes that a professor went to the US last year to study for his PhD. He loved chicken leg rice, jituifan, very much and was anxious to seek out a restaurant immediately upon his arrival in the US for his favorite culinary delight.

His “chicken leg” [quest] turned out quite [embarrassing] when one day, he innocently entered a restaurant and found a quiet corner where he could privately revel in the chicken dish he was about to wrap his taste buds around.

The waitress, totally unaware of what a strange request was about to exit my friend’s anxious mouth, even more innocently asked what he’d like to order with her pen and pad poised“Chicken Leg,” the professor blurted out without hesitation and a [huge] smile on his face with visions of chicken legs dancing in his head.

The waitress blushed waiting for him to explain or possibly apologize for his strange request. All the people in the dining room looked at him with astonishment and some giggled into their napkins.

The professor thought that maybe he hadn’t make his request very clear, so, thinking more volume might be the solution, raised his voice and repeated, “I’d like [chicken leg]!”The whole restaurant burst into laugher.

What did he say that was so terrible and elicited such a reaction? The author explains:

“What exactly did you order that brought about this unusual reaction from the restaurant patrons?” Rimes asked. “I simply ordered a chicken leg – which I received! It was very [delicious] and so succulent and juicy …” he still seemed immersed in the lovely memory of the tasty poultry morsel that had been delivered to his table that fateful night. His friend finally revealed to him that what he had ordered had a very different connotation from what he imagined it to be. “‘Chicken leg’ refers sometimes to a hooker’s leg,” Rimes said, “and the waitress, as well as all the restaurant diners that night have thought that you were being fairly pornographic!

So if you’re scoring at home, ‘chicken leg’ refers to a ‘hooker’s leg.’ So if you go into a diner in the US, make sure that you never order a ‘chicken leg’ lest you cause a major incident.

If someone can explain this article to me I would be much obliged. Is there a well known ‘hooker’ lexicon that I in my infinite innocence am unaware of? Also, is “Rimes” a real English name? They author says the story is originally from a book called Yixie Yiqu written by Mao Ronggui, but they might have wanted to double-check the internal logic of the episode before re-printing.

Of course the irony is that the article ends up being more Chinglish-y than the supposed original story.

Tags: chinglish
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