As the 2008 Olympic Games approached, the Beijing government embarked on a gargantuan task: to provide approved translations of all the names of dishes English-speaking visitors were likely to encounter on restaurant menus. They were keen, the official Chinese news agency said, to avoid "bizarre English translations" such as "chicken without sexual life" (used to describe a young chicken) and "husband and wife's lung slice" (a Sichuanese street snack). The agency added, with an unusual burst of humour, that "the images they conjured up were not, one could say, appetising".

Terrible mistakes on Chinese restaurant menus provoke the mirth of foreigners all over the world. Who could forget being offered "burnt lion's head" for dinner? A quick internet search brings up reports of such delicacies as "benumbed hot Huang fries belly silk" and "the fragrance explodes the cowboy bone". My own personal favourite is actually from the chic pink-and-white packaging of a biscuit whose name was translated as "iron flooring cremation" (a one-by-one literal translation of the characters tie ban shao , which should have read "baked on an iron griddle").