“As Long as You Don't Serve the Chicken that Way!”

While I generally really like the food in China, there is one aspect of Chinese cusine I still can't get used to. I'm talking about the way chicken is served here. If you order a chicken, chances are you'll get the whole chicken, including not just the chicken breast (鸡胸) and leg and thigh (鸡腿), but the feet (鸡爪) and head as well.

I had my first experience of this kind during my first year in China, when I taught English at a no-name university located in a small city in Henan Province. One day I had lunch with a student friend at a restaurant (饭馆) located near the university's main entrance. Another Chinese friend had told me that the restaurant's country style chicken was really tasty, so we ordered it as our main dish.

When we got the chicken, it was cut into pieces that were swimming in some kind of brownish sauce in a large bowl. I put my chopsticks (筷子) into the bowl and picked what seemed to be a big chunk of meet only to find the chicken's head, complete with its beak (鸡嘴) and eyes (眼睛), staring at me. I must say that the sauce and chicken tasted pretty good, even if all the chicken meat (鸡肉) came with quite a few bones (骨头) (the same holds true for the fish [鱼肉] here).

Ever since that day, I've pretty much stuck to Kung Pa chicken (宫爆鸡丁) when ordering chicken dishes at restaurants. However, for our lunch at Changyucheng village, we were served country style chicken. I suspect it was slaughtered, plucked, and cooked that very morning. And once again, I could see the head and feet, so I gave it a pass, even though I'm sure it was, like the rest of our food, very good.

A few days before going on this trip, I watched my DVD of Roman Polanski's film noir classic, “Chinatown”. The chicken reminded one of Jack Nicholson's many great lines in that movie. “Chinatown” is set in 1930s Los Angeles (洛杉矶) and Nicholson plays a private detective (私人侦探) named Jake Gittes.

Gittes begins the movie by investigating what appears to be an ordinary matrimonial case, albeit one involving Hollis Mullray, the chief engineer at the city's water and power department. The close resemblance between this name and that of William Mullholland, the famed real life water and power engineer from that period, is no accident. But he is quickly drawn into a sinister web of intrigue (阴谋) spun by a powerful behind the scenes hegemon, Noah Cross, who is brilliantly played by the aged John Huston.

Cross not only seeks to control Los Angeles's water supply—he murders (被杀) Mullray because the chief engineer opposes his plans—but has also had an incestuous (乱伦的关系) relationship with his daughter Evelyn (Faye Dunaway). Cross wants to establish contact with his “other” daughter.

He thus gets an actress to impersonate Mrs. Mullray, and this woman then hires Gittes to tail the chief engineer, saying that she believes that her husband is having an affair (婚外情). Mullray married Cross's daughter and took care of the girl Evelyn gave birth to after she was raped (强暴) by her father (when the film begins, this daughter is a young woman).

After murdering Mullray, Cross hires Gittes to try and find his second daughter. Gittes mistakenly believes that Mullray was actually having an affair (婚外情) with this lady before he was murdered. At this point, of course, he doesn't know that Mullray was killed by Cross. Cross invites Gittes over to lunch at his private club on Catalina Island and serves him fish, with the heads. Cross says, “I think they (the fish) should be served with the heads.” Gittes responds, “That's fine, as long as you don't serve the chicken that way!”

One of the things I love about Gittes is that he is such a complete smart-ass (具有讽刺性). In this respect, he's very much like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, although, unlike Marlowe, he does matrimonial work and is proud of it. As Alain Silver writes in his entry on “Chinatown” in the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM NOIR, Gittes is very much a “two-bit gumshoe”.

Early on the film, Gittes gets his nose (鼻子) slashed (割) by one of Cross's goons (打手) while snooping about a reservoir (贮水池)—after Mullray is murdered he begins to suspect that something fishy (可疑) is going on with LA's water. Nicholson thus spends much of the film with his nose heavily bandaged (用绷带包着).

Toward the end of the movie, the actress who impersonated Mrs. Mullray is murdered, and Gittes is lured to her place by LA police detective Lou Escobar. Escobar's partner sees Gittes' nose and asks him, “What happened to your nose, Gittes? Did someone slam the bedroom door (卧室门) on it?” To which Gittes responds, “No, your wife got excited (激动) and crossed her legs (盘腿) a little too fast, know what I mean pal.”

The title of this film is very ironic (片名很有讽刺意味) because only its last few minutes actually take place in LA's Chinatown (唐人街). At the end of the film, Gittes has not only failed to persuade the police that Cross murdered Mullray and is scheming to control the water supply, but his efforts to aid Evelyn Mullray lead to her getting killed. The film ends Gittes' two associates leading him away from the scene and one of them telling him, “Forget it (忘了吧; 别去想) Jake, it's Chinatown.”

In Polanski's film, then, Chinatown is not a place but a metaphor (隐喻) for sordid and corrupt things (很腐败的事情), like Cross's efforts to seize the city's water, that go on and remained concealed under the surface. The Chinese would say that such matters are “内幕”, which literally means “inside the curtain” and is the Madnarin equivalent to the English expression “behind the curtain”.

“Chinatown” was released in 1974. Its screening thus came not only on the heels of the Watergate scandal and coverup, but the earlier coverups and secrecy on the Vietnam War perpetrated by both the Nixon and Johnson Administrations. And given what we now know about the lies and deception preceding the second Iraq War, not to mention the clandestine rendition and torture of terrorist suspects, “Chinatown” really does resonates with today's political climate as well. Even worse, much like Gittes' associate, the Obama (奥巴马) Administration's attitude regarding all this seems to be, “Forget it, it's Chinatown.”

That's more than a little unfortunate, as many of the officials, notably convicted perjurer Elliot Abrams, who were deeply involved in the Reagan Administration's Iran-Contra scandal, subsequently held key posts in the second Bush Administration. It's clear that failure to come come to grips with the past— what the Germans call “vergangenheitsbewägung”—ensures that history will repeat itself. The same, of course, can be said for the Middle Kingdom. We'll see if China's film industry manages in the future to produce its own version of “Chinatown”.

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

鸡胸 (ji1xiong1). As is often the case in Chinese, there's a separate word for a woman's breasts, “乳房” (ru3fang2).
鸡腿 (ji1tui3). “腿” is the Chinese word for “leg”, and a human leg is also called a “腿”.
鸡爪 (ji1zhua2). “鸡” is the word for “chicken”, while “爪” is the word for “claw” or “talon”. The character actually looks like a claw too!
饭馆 (fan4guan3). “饭” is one word for food, and the left side of the character has the cooking ladle radical. “馆” on its own can mean any public building.
筷子 (kuai4zi5).
鸡嘴 (niao3zui3). “嘴” can mean “mouth”, “snout”, or “bill”.
眼睛 (yan3jing1). “眼” on its own can also mean “hole” or “aperture”, while “睛” means “eyeball”.
鸡肉 (ji1rou4). As noted in earlier posts, “肉” is the Chinese word for “meat”.
骨头 (gu3tou2).
鱼肉 (yu2rou4). As with chicken, the same logic applies to fish. Unlike English speakers, Chinese people say they’re eating fish (鱼) meat (肉), rather than just “fish”. For readers who are interested, “fishing” in Mandarin is “钓鱼” (diao4yu2).
宫爆鸡丁 (gong1bao4ji1ding4). A big reason we laowai like eating this dish because the chicken meat consists of diced chicken breast without any bones. Plus all the peanuts (花生; hua1sheng1) help make it really.
洛杉矶 (luo4shan1ji1). The Chinese word for “Hollywood” is “好莱坞” (hao3lai2wu1).
私人侦探 (si1ren2zhen1tan1). “私人” is the “private” part of “private detective”, while “侦探” means “do detective work” or “spy”. “侦” by itself means “investigate”.
阴谋 (yin1mou2). This word can also mean “plot”.
被杀 (bei4sha1). “被” is used in Chinese passive voice sentences, typically when something bad occurs to some or something, such as being murdered (杀). “Kill” or “murder” can also be translated into Mandarin as “暗杀”.
乱伦的关系 (luan4lun2de5guan1xi1). In addition to “incest,” “乱伦” can mean to violate a natural law. “关系” is the Chinese word for “relationship”. Of course when Gittes confronts Evelyn Mullray about her daughter, she famously says, “She’s my sister … She’s my daughter … She’s my sister … She’s my sister and my daughter!!”
婚外情 (hun2wai5qing2). This literally means “marriage” (婚) “outside” (外) “affection” (情).
强暴 (qiang2bao4). “强” means “strong”, while “爆” is the Mandarin word for “violent.”
具有讽刺性 (ju4you3feng3ci4xing4). This means that someone's verbal speech is full of sarcasm and irony; it's about the closest way of translating “smart-ass” into Mandarin. “讽刺” can also be translated as “ironic.”
鼻子 (bi2zi5).
割 (ge1).
打手 (da3shou3). This literally means “hit (打) hand (手)”, and can be also be translated as “thug” or “roughneck”.
贮水池 (zhu4shui3chi2). “Dam” is “水坝” (shui3ba4).
可疑 (ke3yi2). If you're saying this word, be sure to say the second character as a rising, not a falling rising tone. Otherwise, a Chinese person will think you’re saying “可以” (ke3yi3), which means “can” in the sense of getting formal permission to do something.
用绷带包着 (yong4beng1dai4bao1zhao). This literally means “wrapped (带包着) in bandages” (绷).
卧室门 (wo4shi4men2). “卧室” is the room for “bedroom”, “门” is the word for “gate” and “door”. It actually looks like a gate or door.
激动 (ji1dong4). If one is romantically attracted to someone, Mandarin speakers will use the verb “心动” (xin1dong4), which means that the person’s heart (心) moved (动).
盘腿 (pan2tui3). I got this word for a Chinesepod.com upper intermediate lesson about yoga (瑜伽; yu2jia1), but I suspect it's used in this context as well.
片名很有讽刺意味 (pian4ming2hen3feng3ci4yi4wei4). This phrase basically means that the movie's (片) name/title (名) has (有) an ironic (讽刺) meaning/flavor (意味).
唐人街 (tang2ren2jie1). The Mandarin word for town doesn’t appear in this character combination. Literally translated they mean, “Street (街) of boastful (唐; also the name of Chinese imperial dynasty) people (人)”.
忘了吧 (wang4le5ba5). This just means “forget” (忘了) it”; “吧” is a suggestive particle used when issuing suggestions or mild commands.
别去想 (bie2qu4xiang3). “别去想” can mean “forget about it”. However, it can also mean “Don't (别) think (想) about it”.
隐喻 (yin3yu4).
很腐败的事情 (hen3fu3bai4de5shi4qing2). “腐败” is the word for “corrupt” and can also be translated as “rotten” or “putrid”. “事情” means “matter” or “affair”.
内幕 (nei4mu4). “内幕” is the Chinese equivalent to the English “behind the curtain”; however, Mandarin speakers say “inside (内) the curtain (幕)”.
奥巴马 (ao4ba5ma3). At least this translition sounds pretty much like Obama's name; the same can't be said for his predecssor's Chinese name “布什” (bu4shi2), which is pronounced like “Boo-sure.”