Why you should never let a chef put too many onions in your 皮辣红 (a linguistic tragedy)

[u/Beneficial-Dress-122]

Today I ran my first icebreaker for my ALSA (Asian Law Students Association) asking everyone: *What is your pet peeve when someone ruins your favourite dish?*

My absolute favourite side dish is **Pi La Hong (皮辣红） -** the Xinjiang cold salad.

For the uninitiated, the name is just an acronym for the ingredients:

1. Pi - 皮牙子 (Xinjiang dialect for onions)
   
2. La - 辣 (Green chilis)
   
3. Hong - 红西红柿 （red tomatoes)

When it’s balanced, it’s tangy, refreshing, and cuts through a lamb skewer. But one restaurant I visited decided to disregard the recipe.

Instead, they served a mountain of raw, aggressive burning onions with something like… two flecks of tomato and chili. The size was about the same as a steamed fish which took up the length of the table.

I had to chug 2 liters of water just to wash the onion breath. But it stayed for another 48 hours.

During the tutorial, I realised that with the ingredient ratio, the dish shouldn’t legally be called Pi La Hong anymore.

This brings me to a bilingual tragedy. For anyone who speaks Mandarin, 皮sounds almost identical to 屁 which means to fart.

If there’s too much onion then it’s called Pi Pi Pi Pi Pi La Hong. I think you know where it’s going.

How on earth do you explain it within a 30 second time limit before digging into a 30- hour week of trespass cases?