Chinese Fire Drill

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Steve from Indianapolis.

Hello, Steve.

Welcome.

Thank you.

What’s going on?

Well, I called because I am a culinary student,

And we have a young Asian lady in our classroom.

And I don’t know if you’re familiar with the language of the kitchen,

But it’s usually a little more coarse.

Somebody made a joke about this being a you know some exercise that we were doing being a chinese

Fire drill and i said that’s probably pretty offensive and like why where does it come from

And i wasn’t sure so that’s why i called you guys because what i told my classmates was

That most likely it probably started in the old west because there was a lot of

Racial tension and a lot of their anger was directed towards the Chinese immigrants.

And so that was kind of my opinion, but I had no basis of fact for that.

So what exactly was happening in the kitchen?

Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes it gets a little hectic, and it really wasn’t even that hectic,

But they were trying to figure out what the phrase meant, and my opinion on that was that

It just meant confusion. I know that we think of the high school kids getting out of the car and

Running around and getting back in a new, you know, in a different door or whatever.

But I think it’s often associated with just any kind of general mass confusion.

Confusion is the right word for it, though.

That’s absolutely right.

I’m not sure that it’s only high school students that are doing the old routine at the stoplight, though.

Probably not.

Probably not.

Hopefully nobody’s doing it right now.

When you say it dates back to the, you said the West or the Old West, how far back did you mean?

I was just thinking like the 1840s.

Well, I know for certain it comes from the 1940s.

I don’t think it’s quite that.

I don’t think it goes back to the 1840s,

At least as far as the historical record is concerned.

This term has been pretty well researched.

But it does connect to a larger trend in English,

Especially in British English,

Of using Chinese whatever to refer to something that is disorganized

Or something that is stupid

Or something that is less good than it should be,

Something that is poor or poorly done.

Oh, interesting.

It’s derogatory.

That’s the thing about Chinese fire drills.

It actually isn’t a really polite thing to say.

Yeah, I would find it offensive.

Yeah, and you’ll find that most of the uses of it over the years in print,

And I think many of them out loud that people would say,

Outside of the event at the stoplight,

Are probably meant unkindly or not in a positive way.

But that was one of the reasons I got right on it

Because while I don’t mind our joking around and it gets a little out of hand,

When you do something like that, it’s insulting to the person that’s there.

First of all, she’s not Chinese, and second of all, I knew that the phrase was derogatory,

So I kind of tried to inject a little intelligence into it for one

And tried to put a little curb on it.

Yeah, thank you, Steve.

The one that I use instead of that is a goat rodeo.

A goat rodeo?

Is that similar to herding cats?

Yeah, exactly. That was the other one, exactly, herding cats.

Did you ever go to the county fair and get one of those Chinese finger traps?

Yeah, where you stick your fingers in the ends.

Chinese finger cuff.

That’s right. These are Chinese used in exactly the same way as in the Chinese fire drill.

Because, remember, it’s a little tube made of, I guess, woven paper or wicker,

And you put your fingers in each end, and it’s hard to get your fingers out

Unless you turn your fingers opposite ways, right?

And so the whole idea is that it’s a Chinese finger trap

Because you must be stupid if you can’t get your fingers out of there.

Again, also derogatory.

Not nice.

Yeah.

Well, thank you, guys.

And thank you so much for your call.

All right.

All right.

Bye-bye, Steve.

Bye-bye, Steve.

The number to call is 1-877-929-9673.

You can send us email to words@waywordradio.org,

And you can try us on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org slash discussion.