[Mihalic] FW: Chinese cuisine in the Pacific

[John Burton]

For the list's info: from Robin Hide on ASAONET.
John Burton



  _____  

From: Oceanic Anthropology Discussion Group
[mailto:ASAONET at LISTSERV.UIC.EDU] On Behalf Of Robin Hide
Sent: Thursday, 7 June 2007 10:08 AM
To: ASAONET at LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
Subject: Re: Chinese cuisine in the Pacific


At 09:33 AM 7/06/2007, you wrote:


I think that Chinese food has only recently (last 30 years?) been available
to Papua New Guineans although in places such as Rabaul there were some
Chinese who worked as cooks in guest houses - kiaps and Australian
administrators not being noted for their adventurous tastes in cuisine, they
worked with limited dishes including 'chop suey' in the Australian style. I
once had a very interesting conversation on a plane with an elderly Chinese
woman who had lived in Rabaul all her life and she said that they grew their
own food for most of her life, but it is only recently that Chinese
vegetables have been grown widely. She also said that the Japanese
introduced some Asian vegetables.



This may perhaps underestimate the penetration of Asian vegetables in the
Gazelle Peninsula. Thirty years ago,  David Wu wrote that:

"The most frequently heard Chinese words are names of vegetables on sale at
the Rabaul market. The indigenous people, in Rabaul predominantly Tolai,
either use Chinese names to refer to them, or have adopted Chinese names in
Pidgin" (1977: 1052).  
He listed  (p. 1053) 12 vegetables whose Chinese or Pidgin names were then
known to people in New Britain or New Ireland, including (in pisin) toi tum,
kai toi, kai lun, lau pak, kangkung, pak toi, sala/lesis, tao, sika, tung
ka, min tai, and taro bilong saina.

In:
Wu, David Y.H. 1977. "Intrusive languages other than English: Chinese". In:
Wurm, S.A. ed. Language, Culture, Society and the Modern World, Fascicle 2,
New Guinea Area Languages and Language Study. Pac. Ling. Ser.C, No.40.
Canberra, Pacific Linguistics Ser.C, No.40, 1047-1055.

It would be interesting to know how that list stands up in current tok pisin
usage around Rabaul. 

Robin Hide



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/mihalic/attachments/20070607/fe222907/attachment.html