掛羊頭賣狗肉 (slang)

Taiwan’s Health Department of food and Drug Administration has been under fire for its intention to demand that the chocolate truffles be changed of its labeling or taken off the shelves due to suspected “deception” claimed by the Consumer Protection Commission that they do not contain “truffle” 松露(song lu4)as the name of the product suggests.

In Chinese, if someone tries to deceive his customers by selling something else he has claimed to sell, we call it掛羊頭賣狗肉(gua4 yang2 tou2 mai4 gou3 rou4), to hang a goat’s head (outside your store ) but sell dog meat.

FDA’s act triggered so much criticism that it made a turnaround later. Chocolate truffles are called so for their appearance, but not their ingredients. If FDA calls this “deception,” I can give you a long list of products that should be taken off the shelves, including many cuisines or snacks seen everywhere in Taiwan.

For example, Taiwan’s well-known drink 珍珠奶茶(zhen zhu nai3 cha2), pearl milk tea. Do you actually see “pearls” in it? In宜蘭Yi-lan’s specialty snack 牛舌餅(niu2 she2 bing3) beef tongue crackers, you don’t see beef tongue either. Nor do you see coffin in 棺材板(guan cai2 ban3), coffin board, a Tainan specialty snack popular in night market.

When you walk into a Chinese restaurant and look at the menu, I believe you’ll get amazed and confused by the name of the cuisines if they are translated literally. We have紅燒獅子頭(hong2 shao shi zi tou2), stewed “lion’s head” in brown sauce; We have 螞蟻上樹(ma3 yi3 shang4 shu4), “ants climbing up the tree;” We have 蒼蠅頭(cang ying2 tou2), “fly’s head.” What would you like to order?

Like chocolate truffles, most of the “horrifying food” mentioned above are named for their appearance. 珍珠, refers to 粉圓(fen3 yuan2), pearl-like balls made from sweat potato powder. 牛舌餅 is crackers with the shape resembling a cow’s tongue. 棺材板 is made of a thick slice of toast. 獅子頭is meat balls from pork.

螞蟻上樹 is ground pork fried with 粉絲(fen3 si), cellophane noodles or bean thread noodles. (Please notice it’s a food instead of “fans” as it is sometimes used to refer to.) Here the “ants” are actually the ground pork. It is said when the woman who invented the dish presented it to her diseased mom-in-law in bed, the poor- sighted woman asked, “Why are there ants in the dish?”

What about the gross蒼蠅頭? It’s just another example of our thrift. A cook fried the roots of leeks, which were usually thrown away, with 豆豉(dou4 shi4), Chinese fermented black beans spicy, and豆瓣醬(dou4 ban4 jiang4), salty paste made from fermented soybeans and made it a dish. Look at the dish, and you’ll know why it got the name.

Now you see my dad certainly did not掛羊頭賣狗肉when he named me. And you can never ask me to go “off the shelf” by claiming that I’m not such a lady 淑女(shu2 nu3) as part of my name suggests----Well, I look “like” one.

掛羊頭賣狗肉=挂羊头卖狗肉

宜蘭=宜兰

牛舌餅=牛舌饼

紅燒獅子頭=红烧狮子头

螞蟻上樹=蚂蚁上树

蒼蠅頭苍蝇头

粉絲=粉丝

豆瓣醬=豆瓣酱