Reading Chinese Menus: Characters: 球 and 丸 — qiú and wán — balls and more balls
Earlier this week, I posted about less-common menu characters that are still worth learning. One of these characters is 球 (qiú), which literally means ball/sphere/globe.
I first came across 球 in the name of a dish I ate at Dragon Inn in South London — 南乳脆鱔球 (nán rǔ cuì shàn qiú), or crispy eel with red fermented beancurd. 南乳 (literally "southern milk") is the red fermented beancurd, 脆 means "crispy", 鱔 is eel, and 球 is... ball?
However, there are no balls, globes, or spheres in this dish. 球 actually refers to the way that the eel pieces curl up as they're cooked (see photo). It's also sometimes used in the names of prawn (蝦/xiā) dishes, since prawns have a similar tendency to curl. Below are some examples from the menu of Red & Hot near Euston Station in London. The English translations are theirs, not mine — the Chinese names don't specify that king prawns are used in the dish. Note that the dish names would still be intelligible without the 球:
| 宮保蝦球 | gōng bǎo xiā qiú | gong bao king prawn |
| 魚香蝦球 | yú xiāng xiā qiú | fish-fragrant king prawn |
| 西芹蝦球 | xī qín xiā qiú | sauteed king prawns with celery |
While 球 is also used on dim sum menus to mean balls-as-in-meatballs, the character I've most commonly seen used for this on other menus is 丸 (wán). 丸 primarily appears in two contexts: soup (湯/tāng) and ingredients for hotpot (火鍋/huǒ guō). Here are some examples:
| 魚丸湯 | yú wán tāng | fishball soup |
| 冬瓜丸子湯 | dōng guā wán zi tāng | winter melon and meatball soup (note the 子/zi here — ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small} john sheds some light on this in comments — and also note that the type of ball is not explicitly specified) |
| 牛肉丸 | niú ròu wán | beef balls |
| 豬肉丸 | zhū ròu wán | pork balls |
| 蟹味丸 | xiè wèi wán | crab-flavour balls |
The last three of these are common ingredients in Chinese hotpot, which is this week's dish post.
| 球: | qiú | radical 96 (玉/王) | Cantodict | MandarinTools | YellowBridge | Zhongwen |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 丸: | wán | radical 3 (丶) | Cantodict | MandarinTools | YellowBridge | Zhongwen |
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