Talk:Moo shu pork

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

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

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

message: 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)
thread_title:  Cantonese transliteration 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Name 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Chinese interwiki

message: Can it also be called 苜蓿肉 (mùsùròu; meaning "alfalfa meat")? Badagnani 01:08, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Alternate name?

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

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

text: 黄花菜 (huang hua cai) is another name for 金针 (daylily buds). Badagnani (talk) 06:35, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Shandong origin, pre 20th century

message: 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)
thread_title: Potential sources

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

message: 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).
*1. Washington Is Not, as Some Restaurant Critics Say, a Total Disaster Area [PDF]
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
*2. No Matter How You Spell It, It's Still Mo-Shu-Ro [PDF]
"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
*3. Expert Suggests Dishes For Oriental Celebration [PDF]
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
*4. For Chinese Fare It's the Real Thing [PDF]
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
*5. Dem Sem That Is Appetizing [PDF]
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
*6. A Pearl of a Restaurant in Midtown [PDF]
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
*7. Obituary 1 -- No Title [PDF]
May 19, 1968 - Obituary
Badagnani (talk) 10:15, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: NY Times articles

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

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title:  Request 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title: Egg dishes at [[death anniversary]] banquets

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title: Muxu dragon

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

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

message: "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)
thread_title:  Contradiction in American Chinese section 

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thread_title:  External links modified (February 2018) 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Moo shu pork in the United States in 1958