Finally! Something I can tattoo on my ass!
If you have ever struggled with a menu in a Chinese restaurant, take a gander at this site:
http://www.inu.org/meiwah/
It's the joint. Bonus points for you if you can send me the unicode entities for “potsticker”. Oh yes, you will be mine.
Update: thanks to http://www.tigernt.com/, I got my characters. They don't look anything like the drawings. Dammit!
锅贴 [guo1 tie1] /fried dumpling/
锅 [guo1] /pot/pan/boiler/
贴 [tie1] /to stick/to paste/to keep close to/to fit snugly/allowance/
Also, “gold” (金) is supposed to be a part of the “pot” (锅) character. I'm not sure that I see it, but maybe.
Another update- my friend beckett came up with this alternate pair of characters:
鍋贴 [guo1 tie1] /fried dumpling/
Then, because we were arguing over which character was correct, I found this on an online menu:
http://www.222.to/shanghaitown/menu.asp
鍋貼 [guo1 tie1] /fried dumpling/
The last one looks closest to what was on the site where I started, but doesn't match the online dictionaries.
As far as guo (鍋) goes, I found a kanji reference to it, which is Japanese, but the Japanese used Chinese characters as a starting point, so I think that we're on the right path.
http://www.kanjidict.com/demo/934b.html
Ah ha! I spoke with a coworker from Taiwan, and she explained that all four characters are correct, and that one set was Traditional and the other was Simplified.
Traditional: 鍋貼
Simplified: 锅贴
Here's some explanation as to the difference:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese
Of course, all of those characters are displayable via Unicode. I use html entities like 鍋 and 貼 to display the characters that I want. I could code my page in UTF-8. Then, I could just cut and paste the characters instead of translating them into numeric codes. However, my work computer doesn't have Chinese locales installed, so I don't have the fonts to show those characters. They just show up as boxes. My home computer shows everything correctly, which is way cool.
Oh yeah - Beckett wins the prize: a homecooked dinner whenever he is in Minnesota or I am in Los Angeles.
Next up: steamed or fried dumplings? Obviously, I am a fan of the fried variety, but Beckett holds the incorrect opinion that steamed dumplings are somehow better. What ever.