Reading Chinese Menus: Characters: 茄 — qié — aubergine/eggplant

茄

According to my vocab lists, 茄 (qié) was one of the very earliest Chinese characters I ever learned; this doesn't really surprise me, since it's the character for my favourite vegetable — the aubergine, or eggplant.

There are a few other characters that 茄 often appears on menus in company with: 子 (zǐ), 條 (tiáo), and 蕃/番 (fān). I wondered if perhaps 茄子 was an emphasis of the egg-like nature of the aubergine, since one of the meanings of 子 is "seed" or "egg", but pne has commented with a more informed view — he says the 子 is probably being used as a mostly-meaningless suffix to disambiguate it from similarly-pronounced characters and/or to make the one character into a proper "word" (which often have two characters). 茄條 usually means that the aubergines are cut into strips — 條 refers to a long, narrow piece of something.

番茄/蕃茄, on the other hand, doesn't mean "aubergine", but "tomato". I don't know the etymology of this, but pne proposes in the same comment that it might be "barbarian's eggplant", since one of the older meanings of 番 is "barbarian", i.e. someone not Chinese (perhaps a politer translation might be "foreigner's eggplant"). Note that 蕃 is just 番 with a grass radical (艹) on top — I've seen both spellings in roughly equal proportions.

Here are some dishes with 茄 in the name:

魚香茄子	yú xiāng qié zi	fish-fragrant aubergine
紅燒茄子	hóng shāo qié zi	red-cooked aubergine
雙椒茄子	shuāng jiāo qié zi	aubergine with green and red chillies (雙椒 is literally "double peppers")
老干媽茄子	Lǎo Gān Mā qié zi	aubergine with Lao Gan Ma chilli sauce
家常茄子	jiā cháng qié zi	"home-style" aubergine
蕃茄炒蛋	fān qié chǎo dàn	stirfried egg with tomato

Another term for aubergine is 矮瓜 (ǎi guā), which literally translates as "short gourd". As mentioned in the comments on that post, though, I've only ever seen 矮瓜 on one menu — 茄子 is much more common.

sung also points out in comments that the northern Chinese term for tomato is 西紅柿 (xī hóng shì), which translates literally as "western red persimmon". 蕃茄/番茄 is a more southern term.

茄:	qié	radical 140 (艸/艹)	Cantodict	MandarinTools	YellowBridge	Zhongwen

Related posts:

• 擂蒸茄子 (lēi zhēng qié zi/mashed steamed aubergine),
• 魚香茄子 (yú xiāng qié zi/fish-fragrant aubergine),
• 紅燒肉 (hóng shāo ròu/red-cooked pork),
• 地三鮮 (dì sān xiān/three fresh things from the earth),
• 蕃茄炒蛋 (fān qié chǎo dàn/stirfried eggs with tomatoes),
• radicals,
• 瓜 (guā/gourd)

If you have any questions or corrections, please leave a comment (here's how) and let me know (or email me at kake@earth.li). See my introductory post to the Chinese menu project for what these posts are all about.