Ah, China. Where my toothpaste tastes of tea, and my shampoo is minty…

I have never seen a more disappointed face than my then nine-year-old’s when he bit into his ice lolly to discover that it was durian flavor. But all China expats know the feeling. Red bean is the worst offender, lurking at the center of cakes, pretending to be chocolate, but there are other unexpected tastes to be encountered by the unwary. Pea-flavored ice cream? Blueberry pizza? Mung bean popsicles? You’ve got it.

In part this stems from the days when China was less open to the world, and chocolate imports were negligible. Candy and desserts were made with locally-grown products instead. Mainly though it’s just a cultural thing. There’s no objective reason why toothpaste should taste of mint, and pineapple on a pizza is as much of an outrage as blueberries. Many would argue that we should open our minds to a broader palette of flavors, and learn to love that jackfruit.

However if you’ve got kids, then good luck persuading them that red bean is better than chocolate, or to brush their teeth with green tea paste. We learn to dislike flavors when they arrive unexpectedly, our bodies concluding that if it doesn’t taste like it should it must be bad. And we’re most vulnerable to getting the wrong thing when we’ve recently arrived, struggling to read labels and to adjust to a new environment. This is when kids can take a violent dislike to a flavor they might learn to love if it was introduced carefully instead of coming as a disappointment. So here’s a guide for China newbies on some of the taste traps to avoid.

Red bean paste – 红豆沙 – hóng dòu shā

This isn’t too hard to learn. Look at the middle character, dòu. It looks like a bean! Well, kind of. If you squint.Hóng means red – you’ll hear a lot of talk about hóng bāo, the red envelopes given as gifts or as, erm, financial incentives. The character’s a bit trickier, but not impossible. Like a lot of Chinese characters, it has two parts, one suggesting the meaning, the other the sound. The squiggle on the left means, roughly, “writing”, and is included in most colors. The other part, 工 gōng, is he pronunciation (gong, hong… who’s counting?). It means “work”, looks like a hammer, sort of, and sounds like the ringing of a hammer on an anvil. If you can’t read the packaging, or there is none, then you can ask:

yǒu hóng dòu shā ma?

The answer will either be yǒu (“yes, it does”) or méi yǒu (“no, it doesn’t”).

Chocolate – 巧克力 – qiǎo kè lì

This is easier to say, because it’s a “loanword”; it sounds like “chocolate”. (Chinese ideas of what sounds like what can be baffling. May 20 is one of many “Chinese Valentine’s Days” because “5-20” wǔ èr líng sounds like “I love you” wǒ ài nǐ. NO IT DOESN’T.) The characters are harder, but it might help to think that 克 kè looks a bit like a key, and 力 lì means strength, and looks a bit like someone flexing their muscles. Again, you can ask:

yǒu qiǎo kè lì ma?

Yǒu means “have”, and ma makes it a question.

Tea – 茶 – chá

The sound is easy to remember if you’re from Britain, where “a cup of char” has long been slang for what we too consider our national beverage. Unlike Brits though, the Chinese put tea in everything, including desserts and toothpaste. The character’s not too hard. The line across the top, with two smaller lines cutting it, indicates a plant.The arrow shape underneath resembles a tea leaf.

The “spearhead” shape of tea leaves is imitated in the Chinese character

Mint – 薄荷 – bò he

Mint isn’t much used in Chinese cooking, and you won’t find it in most supermarkets. So it must taste like an exotic and challenging ingredient. You can find it in toothpaste though, due to western influence. The first character is a really tough one to remember (though see the “plant” lines over both characters?) You only really need to remember the second one though. I don’t know any mnemonics for it, but it’s derived from the hugely important character 可 kě, part of the ubiquitous phrase 可以 kě yǐ, meaning to be allowed to do something. If you learn only one word of Chinese this might be the most useful:

kě yǐ ma? (Can I? Is it OK?) kě yǐ. (OK)

So there you have it. We encourage you to introduce your kids to the new world of flavors available in China, but when they know what’s coming, and are open to it. That durian ice lolly? It went in the bin, and we got him a strawberry one instead.

Photos: chooyutshing, Florin Gorgan via Wikimedia Commons