Yellow Cake
January 6, 2007
China Story #1: Cake
FLASHBACK — Summer 2006 — Beijing, China
I recently spent 6 months in China, half of that time was spent studying at CNU (Capital Normal University) in Beijing. During my summer study program at CNU I was living with a Chinese roommate from Hunnan. His Chinese name was 黄登高 (Huang Deng Gao) and when I first met him he didn’t have an English name. His first name 登高 (Dengao), which means climbing high, sounds sort of like the Chinese word for “cake,” 蛋糕 (dangao). So, I started calling him cake for fun. Eventually this caught on with the other students on the program and everyone just assumed his English name was Cake. And that’s how 黄登高 got his english name Cake Huang, or Cake Yellow since 黄 (huang) also means yellow in Chinese.
