By Howard Dewhirst
After memories of WWII began to fade, Australians began to drift away from the mother country’s culinary habits, from meat and two veg, beans on toast and spam and chips to more exotic dishes such as Canton Cabbage. Almost every town of any size had a Chinese restaurant and a Greek café, and little else that was ‘exotic’. However, when Mao united China under his northern umbrella, Peking, the Cantonese name for the city, was replaced by the Mandarin language Beijing, and Canton became Guangzhou, even though Cantonese is its inhabitant’s first language. So, now that Canton is no more, do we need a new name for this exotic dish?
While naming places is China’s business, there is an argument that we do not need to change our language to please others, as some have done, witness the recent fad of spelling the English name of Turkey in the Turkish script as Tűrkiyé, because that’s what their President wants. Would you believe that two of the letters he is insisting we use, are not in our alphabet? Yes, I can import them on my PC or iPhone, but why should I?
Continue reading “Canton Cabbage or China Revisited”
