News

Anybody planning a trip to Beijing for the forthcoming Olympics will be relieved to hear that many of the city's restaurants are altering their menus to change bizarre and off-putting meal names.

For instance, the delicacy of 'husband and wife's lung slice' will now appear on menus as 'beef and ox tripe in chilli sauce'.

Rather than 'bean curd made by a pock-marked woman', visitors will be able to order 'mapo tofu', and 'chicken without sexual life' will be changed to 'steamed pullet'.

Around 2,000 proposed new names have been published in a book that is being circulated around Beijing hotels.

A Beijing hotel manager told the Xinhua news agency: 'Thanks to the pamphlet, we do not have to struggle to come up with the English translations of dishes any more, which is usually time consuming.'

Chinese meal names are often based on the appearance of the food and are intended to have an element of fun, while western names focus simply on the ingredients and how they are cooked.

Around 50,000 foreigners are expected to arrive in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games, which begins on 8 August.

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