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This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, rip off language's rubber mask, only to find an identical mask underneath.
Today’s episode is about puns. And if you listened to the first ever episode of this show, you’ll know that I am generally anti-pun. But the puns in this episode are the puns I enjoy - am I relenting as I advance in age?
On with the show.
HZ: Do you remember when you first became aware of why you ate certain things at New Year? And how you felt about it?
MIRANDA BROWN: Well, I mean, I was probably like a teenager or early teenager. I think most 13-year-olds are absolute delights to be around, and I was no exception.
HZ: Oh! Yeah.
MIRANDA BROWN: My mom was actually generally very modern in her outlook - so, you know, feminism, Maoism, get rid of feudal society - but when it came to New Year's and certain superstitions, is what I called them, she was absolutely adamant we had to follow the rules around New Year's. And so we had to eat our lucky foods. even if some of those foods she forbade us from eating during the rest of the year. And I would say, “Why do I have to eat spring rolls? You say they're too greasy and I'm going to get pimples.” And she’d say, “Just eat it. Just listen to me. It's good, you know, make us rich.” And I'm like, “But I don't see the connection between stuffing my face with spring rolls and getting rich.” And she said, “Because it sounds like, looks and sounds like gold. And you need to just pay attention and just do it. It can't hurt. I mean, you, you think you know everything and how the world works, but there are many things that we don't understand.”
HZ: And then if you haven't got rich by the next new year, do take it up with the director of spring rolls?
MIRANDA BROWN: No, I think you just keep eating them.
HZ: Oh, that's alright.
MIRANDA BROWN: This is not falsifiable. This is just one of those things you just do. I mean, the question is, how seriously do people take it? I mean, some people might take it seriously. Other people think it's for fun. Or it might be, I think, more of a psychological thing where you set your goals for the year. For her, it was always like, “Eat more of anything that rises, so you'll be tall,” because I was the second shortest person in a class full of very short kids. And eventually I slid right into the bottom of the third percentile for height. So it clearly did its work.
HZ: There you go. It's proof.
MIRANDA BROWN: Yeah. Yeah.
My name is Miranda Brown. I teach at the University of Michigan, in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, and my teaching is, well, very focused around China, and I teach a big course on the food and drink of of Asia, as well as a number of other courses on various food topics, including modern Chinese foodways, dietary modernization, and I will be next year teaching a class about Taiwan and its foodways, and probably also a class about the history of milk, which is one of my research interests.
HZ: Wow! I was thinking, “These topics sound absolutely enormous,” and then, just in case you weren't busy enough, history of milk.
MIRANDA BROWN: It's been a project. I've been working on the history of milk in China on and off for the last five, six years. So I'm hoping eventually after this next book on the history of Chinese American foodways is completed I can turn my attention to the history of milk and the unexpected history of - unexpectedly long history of - milk in China.
HZ: Incredible.
HZ: But right now, I wanted to hear from Miranda about the foods in Chinese culture that are eaten at Lunar New Year, because their names are puns or homophones.
HZ: What is this principle that is at play here, with foods being lucky because their names sound like other things?
MIRANDA BROWN: The main principle is that there's this very ancient Chinese belief that dates, I think, to the first or second century AD during the Han dynasty, that things that share similar sort of qualities - it could be appearance, it could be sort of textures, and names - share in common some sort of cosmic resonance. So the basic principle is that if you sort of you can activate those resonances by, let's say, you want a lot of money, then you might wear clothes that have gold, or you could eat foods that sound like a lot of money or ‘get rich’, and that would in some ways attract that desired end into your life. And this is especially important during liminal times of the year or when, you know, seasons are changing or when you're celebrating a holiday. The future is being decided, or it's somewhat inchoate. So this is your way of making these sort of desired outcomes, make them realized.
HZ: Because I was wondering: if the foods are lucky, then why can't you eat them throughout the year? But is that just gaming the system in a way it should not be gamed?
MIRANDA BROWN: I think there's something special about holidays, which, are transitional periods, that I think make that kind of eating especially effective. And, I also have to remember that during Lunar New Year, it's the beginning of the year. So, you know, if you're going to sort of set your goals for the year, the beginning is a good time to start.
HZ: Do you have any favourites that you're looking forward to this new year?
MIRANDA BROWN: Yes, I like the niangao, the sticky rice cakes. The idea is that they're sticky, so they attract or stick the good luck. But they're not eaten very often, actually, outside of the New Year. It's made with glutinous flour, which is considered a little hard to digest by most Chinese moms. But you steam sticky rice flour with some dates, and then after it congeals, you let it sit for a while or put it in the fridge, and then you cut it up and pan fry it for just a little bit of extra fat, and that's actually kind of a nice food.
HZ: Mmm, it sounds great. And the name also means - it's a homonym for something else, isn't it?
MIRANDA BROWN: Yeah, so niangao is like, nian is like ‘year’ and then gao is like ‘high’ or ‘rising’. So the idea is that, you know, this year, your position in life or your physical stature will be higher than the last. Height is very important to Chinese parents with respect to their children; you hope that they will grow tall.
HZ: What are some of the others? There's quite a big list of the lucky foods.
MIRANDA BROWN: One of the most universal ones, of course, is fish, steamed fish, usually steamed whole. I think this is a more or less universal food in the Chinese-speaking world. This one's important because the character for fish, yú, sounds like the word for abundance, or surplus. So the idea is that if you eat fish at this time of year, then you will have surplus, either agricultural surplus - you know, until recently China was an agricultural society - or if you're a merchant or worker, you'll have abundance in terms of what you need; food mostly, but also in terms of money or other material concerns.
HZ: And there's oranges and tangerines and pomelos as well.
MIRANDA BROWN: The citrus actually has changed a little bit over the years. Some of the citrus is actually newer than others. The chéng zi, which is one of these citrus fruits, that sounds like the character for like chénggōng, or becoming successful or achieving your ends. So this citrus is important because it signifies achievement and success.
HZ: Lettuce is also lucky, hence you might see Chinese businesses hanging it up and people feed it to the dancing lions who chew it up and spit it out to spread the luck.
MIRANDA BROWN: Lettuce, yes. So a lot of the leafy greens are called bǎi cài or cabbage - that's not a perfect sort of translation because there are many kinds of leafy greens that are vaguely lettuce-coloured or cabbage-coloured. That sounds like the words for ‘many riches’. So bǎi means ‘a hundred’ but actually more loosely and more generally ‘many’. And then cài, which means greens, is actually translated, it sounds like the character cái, which means riches. So it's an imperfect pun, but people will recognize that sort of connection.
And actually, the New Year's greeting in Cantonese actually explicitly mentions happiness and wealth, or striking it rich: gung hay fat choy, so the fat - my Cantonese is not very good, but it's fat choy, which is to get rich, strike it rich. In Taiwan they say “Xin nian kuai le,” which is “Happy New Year, may your new year be happy,” but in Cantonese it's a little bit more direct.
HZ: There's vast linguistic and food diversity within China because it's such a massive country and then you've also got all the other places where Chinese is spoken; do you know about any of the homophone foods that may be specific to different regions but not generally in the lexicon like fish is?
MIRANDA BROWN: Well, I mean, there's two things. One is that certain foods are more popular in certain areas. Like in the North and in Taiwan people, for example, eat dumplings during New Year's. but their dumplings are sort of shaped like bars of gold. And so they refer to the dumplings eaten during New Year's as yuanvao, which is the word for kind of money. In fact, I might actually have an example… Here it is.
HZ: Gasp! It's so beautiful.
HZ: Miranda shows me one in bright gold, which is a sort of a symmetrical boat shape about the size of her hand, maybe a bit smaller. Historically this was one of the shapes that gold or silver ingots came in, but Miranda's didn’t look very heavy, so I assume it's a replica and not a solid chunk of gold.
MIRANDA BROWN: Right, I mean this, I picked up at 7-Eleven in Taipei. But yeah, the idea is, if you shape your dumpling like this, it looks like money, an ancient like silver or gold bar. Now, dumplings are not eaten for New Year's in the deep south of China, however there they have oysters dried oysters, and that's because a dried oyster sounds like the phrase like a good thing in, in the local Cantonese dialect. So there are these regional variants, some of them come down to name, some of them don't but there is always, you know, variants, for sure. There are some foods that are a little bit more sort of niche: there is a kind of like Chinese seaweed that the Cantonese eat. it looks like hair moss, and that has to do with the fact that in the Cantonese dialect, it sounds like some kind of lucky sort of occasion.
HZ: Numerology is also important in Chinese culture, and the number eight is considered lucky because it sounds similar to the word for ‘prosperity’.
MIRANDA BROWN: Eight is a lucky number. Four is not. Four is bad because it’s sì, but it sounds like the word sǐ, to die. So you generally try to avoid things that sound like that.
HZ: So the number eight is also incorporated into the lucky foods, like eight treasures soup or congee.
MIRANDA BROWN: In fact, yesterday I picked up from a store an eight treasures niangao or sticky rice cake.
HZ: Nice.
MIRANDA BROWN: There wasn't actually eight things in it, but the name was auspicious, right?
HZ: Yeah, you can eat the rice cake and think about like seven other things.
MIRANDA BROWN: Yes.
HZ: Something I really like about this is the food seem to be very achievable. It's not like, "well, the lucky food is caviar." It's cabbage and tofu.
MIRANDA BROWN: Yes, yes, cabbage and tofu. Tofu is like dòufǔ, like good fortune for all. So that sounds like dòufu. So it's not a perfect pun. Like the tones are a little different. or the intonation is a little different between ‘beancurd’ and ‘good fortune for all’.
HZ: How do imperfect puns wash in Chinese generally? Because I think in Britain, like in British English anyway, people are quite tolerant to puns being a bit inexact.
MIRANDA BROWN: Yes, they are definitely tolerant of that.
HZ: They're like, “anything for a pun.”
MIRANDA BROWN: Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's definitely the case. Yes. in fact, it makes it maybe a little bit more fun, right? If it's not exactly right.
HZ: That's the thing that I really enjoy about this. It seems really fun.
MIRANDA BROWN: Yes, it's definitely fun. It's fun. And also, it's not, you know, necessarily the whole word. Sometimes you'll focus on one of the characters. Like there's this steamed wheat cake, we call it fa gao, which means, ‘fa’ is like to come out, and ‘gao’ is technically some kind of cake-like thing.
People like it because the first character sounds like the first part of ‘fa cai’, which means to get rich, and then the gao part is like, sounds like the word ‘to rise’, or ‘high’. So, steamed cakes remind people, I think a little bit loosely, of wealth, and then coming up in the world. Along with all the new year’s candies that are supposed to be auspicious, like peanut - peanut candies are supposed to be good because signifies fecundity and also, being able to to generate offspring. This is also very important.
HZ: Is there a particular quality of the peanut that brings fecundity?
MIRANDA BROWN: The name. The second character shēng means like to give life or to regenerate, so I mean all of that, life-giving things are generally good.
HZ: Are there homophones that are considered bad luck and therefore foods that should be avoided at this time of year?
MIRANDA BROWN: I don't think of negative homophones, but I will give you an example that I think is very, very interesting. So in Vietnam, you know, there is a lunar near year called Tết. and what's very interesting is actually people eat a bitter melon soup, with the idea that if you consume your bitterness during the start of the year, you'll encounter less hardship in the following 12 months. The bitter melon sounds like the word bitter, trouble, hardship. And so it's a little bit like at the opposite logic, which I think is very interesting.
HZ: Do you find that any foods taste better because the name feels kind of promising?
MIRANDA BROWN: Yeah, like when you have like long, stretchy noodles, they're called chángshòu miàn, which is long life noodles - I feel like I can do it over the holiday because I'm extending my life, even though I know there's probably nothing good about putting that many refined starches into my pre-diabetic body. So, it helps ease some of the discomfort, keeps my doctor’s voice out of my ear for at least the 10-15 minutes that it takes to eat them.
HZ: Yeah, exactly, you don't want the doctor ruining your luck.
MIRANDA BROWN: Yes, that's right, and I'm doing this, you know, for cultural tradition too, for the sake of the next generation.
HZ: That’s very thoughtful of you.
MIRANDA BROWN: Yes, also deep fried spring rolls, another very healthy treat: it's an opportunity to teach my daughter about, what it's like to be Cantonese or Chinese in the diaspora.
HZ: We’ve been talking about the ways puns and homophones can be fun and playful with regard to the lucky new year foods, but there’s so much else going on with them in Chinese culture. Harking back to when Jing Tsu came on the show, in the Bonus 2022 episode she talked about how people in China also use homophones to defy censorship; ‘grass mud horse’ was the example she gave (it’s something rude). Another is ‘river crab’. The Chinese government has stated that censorship is necessary to construct a ‘harmonious society’. So people started using the word ‘harmonious’ as a euphemism for censorship - until ‘harmonious’ started getting censored too. What sounds enough like ‘harmonious’ to stand in for it? The words for ‘river crab’. Something that has been censored will be said to be ‘harmonised’ or ‘river-crabbed’.
MIRANDA BROWN: Yes, when there's censorship, people generally use puns to get around the words that are often just - there are certain words that will flag the attention of the authorities, and so, you know, people will use a different character that sounds like it. So, for example, this term ‘harmonized’ initially started off as like a positive word you know, so one of the Chinese leaders talked about harmony in Chinese society. And then later, when people joke about being harmonized, they talk about being censored. So héxié is the word for being censored; it has the word harmony in it. And so in order to get around that word, which became something that the authorities looked into when people would use it in text messages or social media, they use the word for river crab, héxiè. And that's one of the ways that people get around attention from the authorities is to use puns. So punning is a big thing, not just at New Year's, but in general. Puns are huge. I mean, puns are important, because when you pick a kid's name, you think about all the ways in which the name could be used as a pun, potentially, right? You don't want a name that is too easily rendered into a nasty nickname.
HZ: Yeah, unless you really hate your future child, and you think they deserve to be punished.
MIRANDA BROWN: Names are important in Chinese too, obviously names indicate your educational level. and also, they can also sort of give people a sense of what the goals are or what you hope your kid will be like. My mother gave me a boy's name, which I think suggests that she had hoped that I would be a boy, but also it's Muda Dong which means like “I get what I want” or “I achieve what I look for or aspire to.”
HZ: Yeah, how do you feel about that name? Do you feel like it did sort of spark anything in you as you went through life with it?
MIRANDA BROWN: No I don't think it did. I don't think I paid much attention to what my Chinese name meant. I don't know if I really knew. But I know that it probably sort of gave you a sense of how I would be treated in the family, and the level of parental investment, and the sort of expectations and also maybe what people's early assessment of me was. And I think that had played a role in probably how well I did in school. If your parents tell you you're going to do well in school, and you think that you're good at that kind of thing, it generally has a positive effect on your school performance.
HZ: Yeah, although there's pressure as well, you're like, how am I supposed to live up to this?
MIRANDA BROWN: Yeah, there's that too. But I think parental sort of expectation, you know, also changes the way you feel about yourself. Your self esteem, for example.
So one thing is interesting is, the early Chinese believed that actually names in some ways were predestined: names are fate, that's actually how one sort of philosopher put it. The idea is that names are not conventional or arbitrary or just random. They actually exist in human language because they point to the sort of inner essence of a thing. So. that's why you want to pick people's name with a lot of care, right? Because, you know, by picking the right name, you pick, in some ways, you help form or shape the sort of character and the fortune or the subsequent sort of life of the person. And I think that's part of the sort of logic behind - this random-sounding logic - behind eating things that are auspicious-sounding and picking auspicious names for children.
HZ: Miranda Brown is a professor at the University of Michigan, specialising in the cultural history of China, particularly food and drink, which she has written some excellent blog posts about. You can read them at chinesefoodhistory.org.
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Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is…
whim-wham, noun, archaic: 1. a quaint and decorative object; a trinket. 2. a whim.
Well, how do you tell the difference between a whim and a whim-wham?
Try using whim-wham in an email today.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. The music is by Martin Austwick; get his songs at palebirdmusic.com and listen to his podcasts Song By Song and Neutrino Watch. Thanks to MiMi Aye.
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