Talk:Moo shu pork

Etymology?
Can a native Chinese speaker please check the etymology "wood shavings meat"/"wood whiskers meat" for accuracy? Badagnani 07:18, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
 * My Chinese office mate says that "moo shu" really does mean the wood shavings used for packing materials. She doesn't understand why the dish would be called "moo shu pork", though. — Nubby 20:44, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I think because all the ingredients are sliced very long and thin. Badagnani 20:49, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

(From Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (China-related articles)/Archive1:

Can a native Chinese speaker please check the etymology listed at Moo shu pork? I'm not sure "wood shavings meat" is an accurate translation. Thanks! Not sure where to post this request but I know this is where the experts are. Badagnani 07:20, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


 * If you had been born before the middle of the twentieth century you probably would have seen a kind of packing material (for shipping things like fine China, etc.) that was made of wood but looked sort of like the large-bun size of shredded wheat. (What? They don't make that either?) That takes care of the "mu xu" part, or "moo shu" in whatever romanization that is. The rou4 should be translated as pork.  Odd though it may seem to us, if you just use the work rou4 you are talking about pork. But beef is "cow rou4," and mutton is "sheep rou4."  The wood product looks like nothing else I can think of, so it's hard to think of an alternative translation.  Probably the Chinese restaurants will keep the old way, anyway.  P0M 08:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure the sawdust material isn't 锯木屑? Badagnani 11:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I am absolutely sure. See: http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:5lnQj31bZ6wJ:www.info4tw.com/pages/translations.php+%22mu+xu+rou%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&lr=lang_zh-TW


 * Sawdust consists of the tiny chips that are removed from wood by the blade of a saw. The "excesior" stuff is more like the fine curls of wood that rise out of an old-fashioned wood plane.

P0M 22:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

This doesn't help because 99 percent of U.S. Chinese restaurant menus give the hanzi 木須肉 (trad.) or 木须肉 (simplified). I'm saying it might be a corruption of the original characters. Chinese sources, including zh:WP, use the "Sweet Osmanthus" character (樨) instead of the "whiskers" one, leading me to believe that might be an older rendering. Also, the 1967 source (the earliest reference in English we have for this dish) gives "moo shi" rather than "moo shu," which is closer to the "Sweet Osmanthus" pronunciation. Badagnani 23:05, 14 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The evidence in printed sources, primarily the passage quoted in the Chinese Wikipedia (see below) says that "osmanthus pork" is the oldest attested name and goes back around a century before your "earliest reference in English".
 * "Moo shi" is not a regular romanization. Who knows how the person who wrote it down would have pronounced it. However, "shi" in pinyin romanization is the sound that no cook wants associated with the food s/he has made or intends to eat.
 * You appear to argue that most Chinese restaurants in the U.S. write 須. Nubby has pointed out that an acquaintance knows that 木須 is excelsior. You're unlikely to be able to buy excelsior unless you go on-line for it, but you can buy shredded wheat. If you compare that to mu xu rou you (and Nubby's acquaintance) will see what I and my language teacher colleague have seen -- that the fabrication methods are very similar so they look very much alike.
 * There are at least two ways to get to 木須肉.


 * One is by miswriting 木樨肉 -- because of sloth, because of ignorance, because of lack of the proper words in the font of a Chinese typewriter, because of wanting to avoid a character that reminds one of that which should not enter one's mouth, etc.
 * One is by intentionally writing 木鬚肉 because of the appearance of the food and fabrication methods used in preparing the food, and then simplifying it to 木須肉 because the meaning in identical and the middle character is easy to write, easy to read, and is found in the font of every Chinese typewriter.
 * It would be impossible to prove that no person ever wrote 木鬚肉 because s/he thought the name suited the visual appearance of a dish of "shredded pork and vegetables." It is impossible to prove such a negative. On the other hand, up to now nobody has come up with an 18th century text that writes 木鬚肉. Maybe those who write 木鬚肉 are just being pedantic and falsely assume that 木須肉 wasn't just a quick and dirty way of writing 木樨肉, that 須 isn't just there for its pronunciation but actually means "whisker." P0M 22:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

You said: "However, "shi" in pinyin romanization is the sound that no cook wants associated with the food s/he has made or intends to eat." However, I think the "shi" seen in the 1967 U.S. English-language source is not the pinyin syllable that in Mandarin is spelled "shi" and sounds like "shir" (like "shirt" without the "t"), but simply an ad hoc romanization for the pinyin syllable "xi" that appeared on a Chinese menu in the eastern U.S. in the 1960s, before pinyin was widely used here. Thus, it wouldn't be a representation of the "excrement" syllable, which would be pronounced "shir" (with third tone). Badagnani (talk) 07:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

You earlier said that Excelsior is 木絲 or 刨花. What are the sources that says such a packing material is/was called 木须? Badagnani (talk) 07:24, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Characters
Why are there three different characters given for "xu"/"shu"? Badagnani 18:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Northern?
What is the evidence the dish is of northern Chinese origin? Badagnani 13:04, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

These people weren't able to find any Chinese restaurants in China that could make this dish. Is it authentically Chinese, by name and recipe, and if so what is the story behind its origin in China before being introduced to North America? Badagnani 01:22, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Wine
Is the Chinese wine typically used for this dish huangjiu (i.e. Shaoxing jiu) or mijiu? Badagnani 13:04, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Pseudo-Chinese dish?
Here is an article (in Chinese): http://hearty-food.spaces.live.com/, I'll try to find more references. Yao Ziyuan 01:25, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: the link is now here. Badagnani 19:53, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * That's excellent. The English speakers often have to rely on English sources (usually very meager as regards the origins of Chinese-American dishes like Crab rangoon, Pu pu platter, etc.), as well as poor translations of Chinese sources. It does seem clear, though, that the dish is not known in all regions of China. So if we can somehow, with the Chinese sources you locate, isolate the region of China where this combination of pork, cabbage, egg, mu er, and lily buds originated, that will be just great. Badagnani 01:43, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I've just read the commentary. It's very interesting, I must say, to read a commentary on an article I helped to write. In any case, I'm not sure I follow the meaning, but I think it means that the word "dan" became a curse in China so people use euphemisms when referring to dishes containing eggs, calling them "sweet osmanthus" (guihua) rather than "egg" (dan). But beyond that I'm afraid I don't understand why that would imply that "mu xu rou" comes from guihua. Badagnani 01:57, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It would be great if you could comment here; you added the tag so I think it's appropriate if you contribute to this discussion. Badagnani 05:32, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I lived in Taiwan recently, and Muxu pork or chicken was a commoen dish in generic sit-down Chinese restaurants-however it was primarily an egg-based dish, although had many of the other ingredients listed such as the black fungus, and was not served with pancakes. -- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.36.81.52 (talk • contribs)


 * Interesting. So perhaps this dish did begin in north China after all (since it's using pancakes similar to those used for Peking Duck), then was introduced to Taiwan during the migration of nationalist north Chinese in 1949, and also to the U.S. in the 1970s. But the question still remains, is the discussion about the etymology of "mu xu rou" accurate in the blog linked above? Badagnani 22:12, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I had lived in Beijing for seven years. Mu Xu Rou (Mu Xu Pork) is a traditional dish of Northeast China. No restaurant in Beijing serves Mu Xu Rou with pancakes. Mu Xu was actually 木樨, a kind of flavor. Now 木樨 is pronunced as Mu Xi as in Mu Xi Di (木樨地), a neighborhood in Beijing. Please ask some one from Beijing to ask for the Chinese characters if they don't show up correctly.


 * It means "xī" (Sweet Osmanthus) tree. But why would the dish be named "Osmanthus Tree Pork"? That doesn't seem to make sense. Then how were the characters changed to become 木樨肉? Are you sure the dish you saw in Beijing didn't have changed characters? Maybe the dish in the U.S. has the original spelling. Finally, how and when did the pancakes get added to the dish? A lot of people have been contributing to this discussion page with various bits of information, then when deeper questions are asked, they don't respond. Badagnani 15:37, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I can't speak to when this dish was introduced in the US, but I ate it in Taiwan in ~1965. It was not a new or special dish at the time. It was a common dish. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.116.160 (talk) 12:07, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Bad joke
The U.S. origin of the dish, I'm sure it's a bad joke. A quick web search using the dish name and "1950s" as search keywords gives many result about stories of the dish in 1950s. - but the article claimed the dish was invented in 1970s/1980s.

50年代初刚来北京，找了当年革命纪律的隙罅，溜到住处附近去上小馆. 东单东观音寺胡同里开了一家康乐餐厅，在一个小四合院里，主人是位女士. 餐厅布设得很典雅，有书画陈列. 我们这帮江南小孩，自然啥也不懂，只想吃些窝窝头、馒头之外的东西. 吃了几次，尝到一种“过桥米线”，叹为美味. 过桥米线当年大概是五角一碗，即使按今天的标准看，做得也够地道. 可是天哪！我当年的月薪才28元，够吃几次？幸而来京之时，母亲怕我初到北方给人骗走，在衬衣里缝了50元人民币，供万一逃难之用. 我见到来北京后见局面很稳定，将这50元悄悄取出，全用在到康乐吃过桥米线和上别的饭馆吃木须肉了.

This is only a random web search. It is pretty sure that the dish has a long history. Yao Ziyuan 18:42, 18 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not a bad joke, it's that most Americans, through their interactions with people who are actually from China, are told that "we don't have this dish in China." Of course, if the dish has only historically been known or available in some regions of China, and most Chinese people haven't lived or visited every region of their country, it's quite possible that many Chinese have indeed never heard of or eaten this dish.


 * Would you please provide the source for your quote as well as more sources showing that this dish existed in China before it appeared in the U.S.? Further, it wasn't correct for you to have removed the appearance of this dish in North American restaurants. Badagnani 19:36, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Cantonese transliteration
Shouldn't we also add the Cantonese transliteration to the box, as at the time the dish was adopted, and for years afterwards, most Chinese restaurateurs in the U.S. were Cantonese speakers? Badagnani 02:23, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Name
Might the name "mu xu rou" refer specifically to the slivers of "mu er" (black wood ear fungus), simply leaving out "er" (ear)? Badagnani 16:46, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * This is purely anecdotal, but my wife is from Taiwan, is a Chinese language teacher, and once owned a Chinese restaurant with a chef trained in China. She says that it is a play on words.  The name come from the essential ingredient, the wood ear mushroom  (mu er 木耳). But, since the mushroom is shredded in thin slices it no longer resembles an ear but rather a beard, so instead of the mushroom being a wood ear it is now a wood beard. The characters shu ro 須肉 together translate as "beard" (you can verify on Google Translate)  So put mu 木 (wood) together with shu ro 須肉 (beard) and you get "wood beard"  木須肉 which is a play on words because normally ro 肉 translates as "meat." I've eaten a lot of mushu pork and i never had any that was the color that it is supposedly named after. DrHenley (talk) 17:40, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Chinese interwiki
The Chinese interwiki leads to 木樨肉, the middle character referring to the Sweet Osmanthus. This should be discussed in the article. Badagnani 18:08, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
 * According to the Chinese version of this article, it's named because the scrambled egg resembles Sweet Osmanthus flower. This is the source: http://www.dushu.com/showbook/101459/1047971.html but it's in Chinese.

This implies that one of these sets of characters represents folk etymology. But which one? Badagnani 21:04, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Alternate name?
Can it also be called 苜蓿肉 (mùsùròu; meaning "alfalfa meat")? Badagnani 01:08, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Never heard of it. cecikierk

It appears to be the second-most-common spelling, according to this search. Badagnani (talk) 06:32, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Shandong origin, pre 20th century
The Chinese Wikipedia article says that moo shu pork is one of the "Eight Great Dishes" in Shandong cuisine. Is this correct and what is the evidence for this? Here is the text (my emphasis added):

Badagnani 01:21, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Rough translation, sans dictionary, follows:

Mu xu (Osmanthus) rou (pork) is a frequently seen Chinese dish. "It belongs to one of the eight great cuisines, the cuisine of the [original feudal state of] Lu." The name is often distorted into "wood whiskers pork" or "alfalfa pork", etc. This dish is composed of pork slices, egg, tree fungus, etc. stir fried together. Because the color of (stir fried =) scrambled eggs is yellow and broken [by morsels of egg white], the dish resembles Osmanthus [flowers] and is so named. The Qing dynasty figure Liang Gong-zhen [born 1814] recorded the following in his ''Scribbled Notes on the Gardens of the North and East, 3": "In the shops of the northern area they fry eggs with pork and call the dish 'Mu xu pork.' That most likely is because of its mottled yellow color."

The name of this dish first appeared in menus of the "Confucius Mansion" [I am not sure of just what this is. More research is needed.] inthe city of Qu Fu. Its ingredients, in addition to pork, egg, and tree fungus, include "yu-lan pian" Not sure offhand what this means. After this recipe was introduced into regions around Beijing and [similar areas], "huang hua cai," sliced cucumber, etc. replaces the bamboo shoots and "yu lan" slices not available there.

This material must have come sometime in the 19th century, and probably refers to developments occurring some time before the book was written. P0M —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.17.57.81 (talk) 00:41, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Why are you giving 樨 as "xu" in the translation? It is definitly pronounced "xi," not "xu." Even small errors of a single letter like this are important to not make in this work. Badagnani (talk) 06:31, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * 玉兰片 should mean "(dried) sliced bamboo shoots." Badagnani (talk) 06:33, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * 黄花菜 (huang hua cai) is another name for 金针 (daylily buds). Badagnani (talk) 06:35, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

This book lists "fried moo shu shrimp" as a typical Shandong recipe. Badagnani (talk) 04:37, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Potential sources
The Chinese Wikipedia article gives some Chinese sources, which need to be followed up.

Rudimentary Babelfish translation from Chinese to English:

Badagnani 01:41, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Progress
I've rewritten part of the article based on dictionary and Google work I've reported on my user page. There has to be a reason for the "whiskers" when people write "木鬚肉", but I don't know that the reason can ever be elucidated and given a good citation.

The part beginning "While in Chinese American restaurants..." needs citations. I didn't want to take it out, but I'm not sure how one knows the percentage of Chinese restaurants that use one written form or another. Lots of the problem with terminology relevant to this article is that people often write a simpler character because it is easy to write and not because they think it is right. For instance, check out the second character in "豆腐." That's not the one you'll see in most menus. It means "decomposed, rotten, etc." as in "腐敗." People seem to prefer the "fu" of "government." It's all the same foo to me, but who am I to criticize somebody for saving 6 strokes? ;-) P0M (talk)


 * Why do you continue to use the character 鬚? This is not the normal character for this dish; it is 须 (simplified) or 須 (traditional). Badagnani (talk) 00:59, 19 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Not so. Check it out with Google. American restaurants are not the standard for how Chinese is to be written.
 * I got one response from a Chinese professor who agrees with "Nubby" above and who independently came up with 木須 as the name for the packing material, and, unbidden, associated it with the name/appearance of the dish. 木須 does not have any connection with Osmanthus. So if people are writing it and not doing so in ignorance then there has to be another explanation for it, no?
 * I did manage to find out how "rhinowood" got its name -- it's because the leaves reminded people of rhino horns. Compare the English botanical term "horsetail"  P0M (talk)


 * Definitely U.S. Chinese restaurants use 须/須 and not 樨.


 * So what? What do Chinese chefs use? Isn't that more relevant? P0M (talk)


 * Google search for 须
 * Google search for 須
 * Google search for 樨

Badagnani (talk) 01:04, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

See Google Books search. Early representations of the name often use a variation on "shi," "shee," "chi," etc. leading me to believe that the first restaurant to serve this was using the "rhinoceros"/"osmanthus" character ("xi") and not the "whiskers" character ("shu"). We need to find archival American Chinese menus giving the Chinese characters, from the 1960s and 1970s. Badagnani (talk) 09:47, 19 November 2007 (UTC)


 * You appear to be contradicting yourself. Above you said "Definitely U.S. Chinese restaurants use 须." Now you argue for rhinoceros/osmanthus. Furthermore, the "whiskers" character is pronounced "xu" and not "shu". And why use only  American restaurants anyway? We need to have citations not speculations. And all of the evidence I have seen to date, evidence that is not personal research that is, indicates that educated people who wrote down the name of this food used either the rhinoceros (xi) or the osmanthus (xi, xu) character.  Whether the two "whiskers" characters are used as substitutes for a more correct character, or whether they represent a second naming/writing tradition for this dish's name remains to be seen.


 * There are several reasons for a restaurant to opt for a character like 須 that most people know how to pronounce even if they know the right character. For one thing they won't hang back from ordering樨 because they don't know the character. And besides, one of the "right" characters, rhinoceros, 犀 looks too much like another character 屎 and could be pronounced enough like it to create at least a subliminal aversion.  Try naming a blue plate special in a middle class American restaurant "Chicken Schlitz Delight" and you might get a variety of unwanted reactions. Better to call it "Chicken Coors Delight" even if you have to steam off and reapply bottle labels. ;-)   P0M (talk)

I'm not contradicting myself; there's a distinction between the very first appearance of this dish in the U.S. and the characters that are used by U.S. restaurants 40 years later (today). I'm using the evidence of the romanizations that appear from 1967-70, and the ones that appear from the 1970s to the present. The first ones appear to be "shi" and "xi" and later ones appear to be "shu." All of your comments and speculations are good, and well taken. By the way, are there sources for the packing material being called 木须? I thought you earlier said you found no such sources. Badagnani (talk) 06:16, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the distinction between "xu" and "shu," there isn't one in English, as we don't have the "x" phoneme. We have to go by the ad hoc transliterations that were selected by these late-1960s restaurateurs and see whether the romanizations they're using correspond to "xi" or "xu." "Xi" would most likely be represented in English as "shi" or "shee," and "xu" as "shu" or "shoo." Badagnani (talk) 06:18, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Good observation about 犀 and 屎 but the pronunciations are not the same--the consonant, tone, and vowel pronunciation are all different. Badagnani (talk) 06:22, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Please provide the source(s) for the "rhinowood" etymology. Badagnani (talk) 06:23, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

You say "the osmanthus (xi, xu) character." But the osmanthus character is not "xu," it is "xi." Badagnani (talk) 06:28, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I see, you say that Gao's Dictionary gives both "xi" and "xu" as possible pronunciations of 樨 and 犀. But the Wiktionary entries do not. Should they? Badagnani (talk) 07:52, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Evidence of earliest U.S. spelling
See this book, published in 2005. Badagnani (talk) 09:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

NY Times articles
Here are 7 articles from the New York Times, where moo shu pork seems to have first entered American Chinese cuisine, dating from the late 1960s through early 1970s. I think they all need to be paid for, unless someone can find them on old microfilms. Number 2 seems most important because it's the earliest, and number 3 because it's a whole article, from very early for the U.S. (1967) about the dish, possibly about the first person to popularize it in New York City (and perhaps the country).

WASHINGTON--It isn't misplaced charity to sug- gest that the restaurants of Washington have a certain wayward charm.... July 26, 1966 - By CRAIG CLAIBORNE Special to The New York Times - Article "WHEN I first gave lessons in Chinese cooking," an authori ty on Chinese food said recently, "everyone wanted to know how to make moo goo gai pan and lobster Cantonese. Now, all of a sudden, they want to make mo-shu-to."... November 2, 1967 - By CRAIG CLAIBORNE - Article ACCORDING to the honorable 4,657-year-old Chinese calendar, the Chinese New Year -the Year of the Pig--begins next Sunday. Locally, the celebration will be marked, as it has for many years, by lion dances in Chinatown and feasts in Chinese restaurants thr...View free preview February 5, 1959 - By CRAIG CLAIBORNE - Article A selective List of restaurants in New York and vicinity is given on this page on Friday. The restaurants are rated four stars to none, based on the relationship of food and service to cost. Credit cards are honored in the restaurants where indicated....View free preview February 20, 1970 - By CRAIG CLAIBORNE - Article A selective list of restaurants in New York and vicinity is given on this page on Friday. The restaurants are rated four stars to none, based on the relationship of food and service to cost. Credit cards are honored in the restaurants where it is indicate...View free preview May 1, 1970 - By CRAIG CLAIBORNE - Article IN a moment of rare generosity last November, this column did nip-ups and cartwheels and wrote huzzas in praise of a woman named Mrs. Pearl Wong. She was then hostess of what was considered a fairly remarkable Chinese restaurant, the Canton Village near T...View free preview July 11, 1967 - By CRAIG CLAIBORNE - Article May 19, 1968 - Obituary
 * 1. Washington Is Not, as Some Restaurant Critics Say, a Total Disaster Area [PDF]
 * 2. No Matter How You Spell It, It's Still Mo-Shu-Ro [PDF]
 * 3. Expert Suggests Dishes For Oriental Celebration [PDF]
 * 4. For Chinese Fare It's the Real Thing [PDF]
 * 5. Dem Sem That Is Appetizing [PDF]
 * 6. A Pearl of a Restaurant in Midtown [PDF]
 * 7. Obituary 1 -- No Title [PDF]

Badagnani (talk) 10:15, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Alternate names to evaluate
木鬚炒肉 and 木鬚肉燥. Badagnani (talk) 06:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Place 木须 (in packing material context) Chinese sources here
Is this source showing 木须 as packing material? Badagnani (talk) 07:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * It sure looks that way to me. I haven't had time to read through the article from beginning to end, or even really read enough to get the context right, but on first inspection it seems to be talking about excelsior being used as packing material. That's a great find. I suspect it took lots of patience to dredge it up. P0M (talk) 07:44, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it was hard. I thought it was talking about by-products of lumber production rather than packing material. I think to find it I did a Google search for "木须" and "wooden", excluding 肉 and 龙, which were showing foods and stuffed yellow dragons (!). Badagnani (talk) 07:47, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I never really thought it through before, but why would somebody with a saw mill waste perfectly good poplar or pine that could be sawed into planks to make throw-away packing material. At least as long as the scraps produced when rough lumber gets sawed up into nice 2 x 4s or whatever can make sufficient packing material to satisfy the market there would be no motivation to grate the 2 x 4s up to make packing material. There would have to be a large demand for packing material to raise its price to the level that it would make more money for the saw mill to make it rather than lumber for construction. Maybe there was a time when timber delivered to the saw mill was so cheap that they could afford to devote whole logs to excelsior production and burn the scraps resulting from lumber production. But of late lumber manufacturers are gluing small pieces of wood together to make big pieces of lumber.


 * Excelsior, as described in that article, appears to be a by-product of lumber production that is selling at a good enough price to make the lumber yards happy. Whatever they are using excelsior for, they are not just shredding lumber (at a pretty great cost) just to throw it away. I know of two uses for excelsior. One is to pack fragile things of high density for shipping. The other is to stuff furniture items like sofas with. (I haven't seen it used that way for decades. On the other hand I haven't ripped apart any cheap sofas lately either.)


 * What I would like to find now is an old diary from the 1800s that says something like, "Uncle asked me why I was getting ready to serve Granny excelsior. I told him he should serve my excelsior in his restaurant. He got even madder and then, finally, he broke down and tasted it. We are getting rich." I won't hold my breath on that one either. P0M (talk) 08:26, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * It's purely personal research, but I've asked a couple of people from Taiwan what they call the packing material. Both have said that they remember hearing "mu xu." But until some clear evidence comes along I think we have to leave "excelsior" out of the article.


 * One of my native informants was sure that I was wrong about the rhino-wood name. He's a Ph.D. in chemistry and the best person for correcting Chinese compositions I've ever worked with. I told him I had a citation from the 1800s and lots of contemporary stuff -- but the interesting thing is that this is someone who grew up in China, having been born some time before 1940, and hadn't seen this name, or at least it hadn't registered. He thought that if it was the name of some Chinese dish it must apply to something else. P0M (talk) 02:43, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm very familiar with extremely intelligent native Chinese who are *sure* they know something regarding an arcane aspect of the Chinese language or characters (or are *sure* they know something is not the case), and yet they're wrong. But they're still sure of it. Faced with the sources we've found, and given some consideration I think he'd modify his position, because your dictionary and numerous other sources give these characters. Badagnani (talk) 02:48, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Request
Please reserve argumentative comments for the discussion page and do not use in-line comments in the article for this purpose. P0M (talk) 07:29, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Each has its own purpose. Comments in the article itself are often quite important, otherwise controversial/unsourced/flat-out wrong statements often remain forever, and never be addressed. Badagnani (talk) 07:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I think you should consult with experienced editors. It does make sense to warn editors not to change something that needs to be protected from hasty editing by somebody who has not read the discussion page. Otherwise the comments I have seen from administrators has been to keep arguments out of the in-line comments. For one thing it is likely to make other editors angry. P0M (talk) 07:41, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * There is certainly no such purpose (angering anyone) intended. The subject at hand is more important than anyone staking a claim that they are always right. None of us ever is and, like the scientific method, things that don't check out are modified as we work. Badagnani (talk) 07:44, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Very important source
This source needs evaluation. Badagnani (talk) 07:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The top entry, with the comment about the flowers not being used in the cuisine, is right on. The flowers are indeed sometimes mixed in with tea leaves. I used to buy boxes of "guihua cha" when I could get it in Taiwan. It's a little like jasmine tea, just a different flavor. But the taste that one would get by mixing it in with pork and oyster sauce... I don't think anybody would try it more than once. Not that it would necessarily taste icky, just that it would take a heck of a lot of flowers to compete with the taste of the other spices, and the flowers are probably pretty expensive because of the labor costs involved in gathering them.


 * We need to avoid mistaking opinions for knowledge or for certainties. I don't see anything else in the source quoted that is particularly helpful. That means avoiding asserting something to be a fact when there is no evidence that can be cited, but it also means not denying the possibility of something when we do not have proof that the idea is wrong. If I had the Chinese equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary I might be able to come up with something that proves that people have called the dish the equivalent of "excelsior pork." (The name is better in English than Chinese, btw.)  P0M (talk) 08:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I have green and black guihua cha (osmanthus tea), and it is very good, though my younger Chinese friends say that young Chinese don't like anything with osmanthus in it, because it's "too traditional" and "not modern." I also have some 桂花酱, which is used in chatang. I've added a number of other culinary uses of osmanthus flowers at the Sweet Osmanthus article. Badagnani (talk) 08:22, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The source states that the Beijing neighborhood of Muxi Di (木樨地) claims to have invented the dish. Is this a claim that is actually made in this area, and, if so, is there any validity to the claim? Or is it simply an example of folk etymology? Badagnani (talk) 08:02, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * We already have something that was written down before 1900 about the dish coming from around Qu Fu. There is no proof offered for the claim about Muxi Di. It's just somebody's assertion, and not even an assertion in a peer-reviewed article. So it's worthless except as an indication that one should keep one's eyes open for anything that would really prove something -- e.g. something from 1800 in a court case about a fight over muxu rou in a restaurant... I'm not holding my breath, but I will keep an eye out. P0M (talk) 08:11, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the mention about Muxu Di claiming to have invented moo shu pork is pure hearsay, which I have never heard asserted before. Badagnani (talk) 08:20, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Egg dishes at death anniversary banquets
An editor from Vietnam, User:DHN, has said that the only time he was allowed to eat scrambled eggs was at death anniversary banquets. Some online sources, in deconstructing the "moo shu pork" name, have mentioned the fact that dishes with eggs have the common word for egg, "dan," replaced so that people don't have to say this sort-of-bad word at death anniversary celebrations. But it wasn't made clear if egg dishes such as moo shu pork and egg fried rice, etc. are particularly popular or closely associated with such death anniversary celebrations. Can we find this out? Presumably the traditions are different between northern China, southern China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Vietnam. Badagnani (talk) 08:00, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It has nothing to do with eggs being taboo or anything. It was a case of not being able to afford it unless for special occasions. DHN (talk) 05:44, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh wow--I misread your subtext! I thought eggs were a dime a dozen but I guess I was wrong. Badagnani (talk) 05:45, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Last time I checked they were at least 10 times that price ;-). And I think they're slightly more expensive in Vietnam. DHN (talk) 05:50, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Muxu dragon
What the hell is this dragon and why is he named this way? Does this shed any light on anything? Badagnani (talk) 08:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * It's a character in Disney's Mu Lan movie. See:http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/FarAwaySoClose-UltimateMind/article?mid=1218&prev=1275&next=1178&l=f&fid=55

P0M (talk) 23:37, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Any idea how he got this name (木須龍)? Badagnani (talk) 23:45, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


 * If you have a good spiritualist I guess you could ask Walt. Seriously, the one picture I saw had a yellow dragon, so maybe it is the old "scrambled eggs" thing. Anyway, it has nothing to do with this article, so it? P0M (talk) 01:07, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I think your guess is probably right. I wonder how Chinese who know this dish (and know that egg dishes are called this way) perceive this character's name. But hey, the character is "whiskers," not "Sweet Osmanthus"! That means it may be related to the dish after all (and we do have a disambiguation right at the top of this page). Badagnani (talk) 01:12, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Another source
Speculation from a Honolulu newspaper. Were there many non-Cantonese immigrants to the U.S. in the 1940s-'60s? Badagnani (talk) 19:48, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Until 1945 there would hardly have been any immigrants from that part of the world at all simply because of the Second World War. After that, immigration of people not from Europe was highly restricted until immigration reforms that occurred sometime in the 1960s (?). After that, more Chinese could come from Taiwan, Malaysia, and other places outside the PRC. Until we had normalized diplomatic relations with the CCP government, it was hard for mainland Chinese to get in. Chinese in Taiwan and from places like Malaysia are mostly of non-Mandarin areas, Fujian, Chao Zhou, Canton, Hakka speakers... people from areas from which people emigrated to "Nan Yang" (S.E. Asia to us). Taiwan was filled with Chinese earlier, mostly from Fujian (the closest province). Most "Taiwanese" are of either Fujian extraction or Hakka extraction.


 * The reason for the high prevalence of Cantonese in the U.S. has to do with the large numbers of immigrants brought to the U.S. to help build our railway system. The men who managed to set down roots sent back to their home town areas for their wives, their relatives, or sought wives from among people of those same areas. So there was a conduit for Cantonese but not much of a conduit for non-Cantonese. Of course the Cantonese people in the U.S. before immigration reform would have been mostly American citizens by birth with the occasional immigrant being brought in because of connections with these citizens. The people of the original immigration would have started coming to the U.S. in the mid 1800s. By the mid 1900s, most of those people would have been dead.P0M (talk) 23:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but the source does imply that non-Cantonese Chinese first began coming to the U.S. between the 1940s and 1960s. These may have included mainlanders (from Shandong and other northern areas) who had fled to Taiwan. Even if their numbers were small, they could have exerted a disproportionate influence on American Chinese cuisine, bringing new regional cuisines and cooking techniques to restaurants in prominent East Coast cities. Badagnani (talk) 23:59, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


 * So? We cannot put stuff in the article unless it is supported by citation of a valid article or book. Non-Cantonese Chinese didn't suddenly begin coming to the U.S. in 1940. If immigration sources are available my guess is that they would show a sudden increase of emigration from China as people of some means realized that their way of life was coming under increasing threat as Japan became more and more powerful and troublesome outside its own borders, then a decrease of immigrants after Japan became able to control or at least interfere with shipping, then the war years when travel from China to the U.S. probably would have meant going by routes such as the Burma Road, then to India, and then somehow getting beyond India -- maybe to Africa -- and then across the Atlantic.


 * After the war was over it was possible for any Chinese who still had means and who could get visas to get to the U.S. Then in 1948 the communists took over, the U.S. was their great Satan, and anybody who expressed interest in emigrating would have risked very bad consequences. The alternative would have been to make it to Hong Kong or somewhere in S.E. Asia, probably by irregular means, and then seek a visa. After immigration reform, it would have been easier for certain Chinese, e.g. mainland Chinese currently in Taiwan, native Taiwanese, Chinese then living in Malaysia, etc., to get permission from the U.S. government. After Nixon and Carter transformed our relationship with mainland China it would have been easier from mainland Chinese, including mainland Chinese from Guangdong, to reach the U.S.  I can say all of the above from general knowledge, but anything in Wikipedia cannot stand on such loose arguments from "general knowledge."


 * As for their "disproportionate" influence in "prominent East coast cities," I'm not sure why you regard it as "disproportionate", nor am I clear on why you limit it to a special class of cities.


 * My memory is that prior to the 1960s there was a disproportionate presence of Cantonese cooking in this country because of the historical contingency mentioned above. Most of the people who were economically and sociologically inclined to become Chinese restaurant owners and workers were Cantonese simply because most of the Chinese in the U.S. were Cantonese, and most of the very well educated Chinese immigrants from China came under other impulses -- impulses that tended to draw them from the general Chinese population rather than the population of southern China port cities with prior connections to the railway worker imports.


 * Whenever someone opened a non-Cantonese restaurant it would have faced difficulty because the typical customers looking for "Chinese cooking" wanted things like sweet and sour pork and would not have had those expectations met by some hot dish from Hunan (for instance). They would also have been greeted with opportunities for the very same reason. Fresh tastes and new forms of cuisine would have appealed to those who had already fully explored the Cantonese palette. The way these two factors balance against each other it probably meant that a Hunanese restaurant would have had a hard time in Northfield, MN, but might have been an overnight success if it got a good review in the New York Times.


 * As time went by, non-Cantonese cuisines would be expected to drive Cantonese cuisine out of its position of prominence, and not just in big East Coast cities. Why not in Honolulu, Seattle, Reno...?


 * So what does all this have to do with Mu Xu Rou? My memory is that one could get it in restaurants in Taiwan in the 1960s. In fact, at that time you could get dishes from Shandong that I have unfortunately never seen anywhere else. There were immigrants from all over mainland China who did not want to live under communist control, and they brought their cuisines with them. (There were even Korean and Mongolian restaurants.) I find the idea that Mu Xu Rou was invented or was brought to prominence in the U.S. There may be Chinese people who have never heard of it in their own country. So what? Most Chinese people will tell me that there is no such thing as 油餅 and will try to claim that there is only something called 蔥油餅, but that is only because they have not eaten lunch or dinner for a couple years in a good although rustic Shandong restaurant. Since people were writing about 木樨肉in the 1800s, we already know that the people who imply that it "isn't Chinese" are just ignorant of the full range of Chinese cuisine. P0M (talk) 00:52, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

It's a source--and it says "the 1940s," not "1940." At this point, it's a printed source vs. your own knowledge. But none of our personal knowledges are complete or perfect. Badagnani (talk) 00:56, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

It's very clear why I mentioned a "disproportionate" influence in "East Coast cities"--as you well know, the sources show that non-Cantonese dishes appeared, were first noticed in major publications, and achieved fame c. 1966-1970s in East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. Did you even read the article I sent you? Those contemporaneous sources mention specific restaurants and restaurateurs credited with introducing these non-Cantonese dishes for the first time in a nation dominated by Cantonese cuisine. Badagnani (talk) 00:59, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

You're right about the dish not being invented or brought to prominence in the U.S. That's what we had before because that was the common understanding Americans had (which was wrong). This brought negative comments from various Chinese-language blogs. We've fixed that. Wikipedia is like the scientific method; it keeps getting better and better. Badagnani (talk) 01:05, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

As the dish may have originated in Shandong cuisine, and a lot of Shandong culture got transferred to Taiwan post-1949, I think we should explore the backgrounds of the restaurateurs we know of who appear in the first American sources to mention the dish, c. 1966-67. It is possible they were Shandong people who had come to the East Coast of the U.S. from Taiwan. Badagnani (talk) 01:05, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Manner of wrapping pancake
The manner of wrapping and eating the pancakes should be described. Are they eaten by hand? Badagnani (talk) 20:22, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I've never heard people giving other instructions on how to to the wrapping. If you mess up the operation stuff may fall out on the way to your mouth. The pancakes are so thin and fragile that it would be impossible to bring a full pancake to your mouth using chopsticks. If you start with a big pancake and fill it with lots of filling you may need two hands until you've eaten about half of the filled wrapper. P0M (talk) 00:15, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I think we should do a brief description in the article of how they're wrapped and carried to the mouth. I don't think we have any such description yet. I've always eaten them by hand, like a burrito, and (American) people have remarked that I shouldn't do that, though nobody at any Chinese restaurant ever said anything. (I even order the pancakes when ordering other Chinese dishes, because I like them so much.) But in a source I just came across, it says they are traditionally eaten by hand. Typically I add the food, fold the bottom slightly (so nothing falls out the bottom), then wrap around. Badagnani (talk) 00:21, 23 November 2007 (UTC)


 * That's what I do too. My father's elder sister was a bigot and a social climber. I always had a secret desire to visit a traditional Chinese restaurant in the company of her and her hoity-toity friends -- where I would eat Chinese food the way ordinary people in Taiwan eat Chinese foot. Unfortunately, her middle name was Lucretia... (Just kidding about that part.)


 * I've never seen Chinese people eating Mu Xu Rou any other way.


 * Beware! The orthodoxy police will get you if you put in anything that is based on original research, and that is what you are proposing to do in this case. (There may be recipe books that include hints on how to keep your wrappers from unwrapping, how to keep a stream of juice from trailing out the bottom of the wrapper as it is raised to the mouth, etc. But generally this kind of thing is so obvious that people don't write it down.) P0M (talk) 01:05, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Good info, thanks. I think Google Books will have some info about how they're wrapped. When I visited Egypt, my tour guide said there's no ancient Egyptian book about "how to build a pyramid" because everyone knew how to do it; they didn't need such a text! Badagnani (talk) 01:07, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

All right, here are several sources giving the how-to. Badagnani (talk) 01:13, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Served with raw scallions?
Is moo shu pork ever served with a side dish of slivered raw scallions? Badagnani (talk) 02:46, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Relative frequencies of each phrase
How is that not WP:OR? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marnanel (talk • contribs) 01:19, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Contradiction in American Chinese section
"as wood ears and day lily buds were scarce, a modified recipe was developed. In this modified recipe, which gradually came to predominate in North America, green cabbage is usually the predominant ingredient, along with scrambled eggs, carrots, day lily buds, wood ear mushrooms, scallions, and bean sprouts."

Why would a modified recipe due to day lily buds and wood ears being scarce include day lily buds and wood ears? 79.97.226.247 (talk) 12:05, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
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Moo shu pork in the United States in 1958
My father (Prof. John J. Chew, born in 1923 and 96 years old as I write this) recalls eating Moo shu pork in the spring of 1958 in Washington DC in what he describes as a fancy Chinese restaurant, possibly on Connecticut Avenue, definitely not in Chinatown, at the invitation of his Foreign Service Institute colleagues while on home leave from his assignment in Japan.

Poslfit (talk) 01:38, 1 December 2019 (UTC)