Chinese Foods - Say These Words and You Can Eat Delicious Kinds
Posted by Jonah Lopin on Sun, Jul 20, 2008 @ 10:53 PM
The word 家 (jia1) is defined as:
1. family; household; 2. home; 3. a person or family engaged in a profession; 4. a specialist in a certain field; 5. a school of thought; school; 5. [used when addressing elders]; 6. domestic, tamed; 7. [counting word for families and enterprises].
This is a very important word in Chinese that is used all the time. If you combine this word with the word 常 (chang3), which means "often", and then add the word for restaurant (饭馆 fan4guan3) then you get 家常饭馆, which means family style restaurant.
These restaurants are everywhere. They serve 家常菜. (I added the word 菜 (cai4), which means "food".) This means home style cookin!
Like most foreigners who spend time in China, I developed a repertoire of 家常菜 that I ordered regularly. All these 家常饭馆s basically have 90% of the same dishes, so you can usually order without looking at the menu. You just order from your repertoire.
I'm giving pronunciation only for now, since all you need to do is say these words and you'll be eating well:
1. di4 san1 xian1 - delicious combination of potatos, green peppers, and eggplants.
2. zhu1 rou4 da4 cun1 - pork and scallions with sauce
3. tu3 dou4 ni4 - mashed potatos. (believe it or not, this is literally just like what you'd get at kfc.)
4. gan1 bian1 bian3 dou4 - spicy stringbeans with pork
5. gu3 lao3 rou4 - sweet and sour pork.
6. jing1 jiang4 rou4 si1 - pork strips in sweet/savory sauce that gets wrapped up in little pancakes made of tofu.
enjoy!