A Case of Chinese Culture in English and More

The Gift of the Magi, The Cop and the Anthem, The Last Leaf，are you familiar with these titles of novels?

I am sure of that.

These are the novel composed by O Henry, who bears a well-deserved reputation as the author of numerous stories characterized by their adroitly twisting endings, from the wildly unlikely to the passably plausible, from the touching to the shocking, and from the richly humorous to the bitterly ironic.

When I was a student of Senior High School in countryside, I unintentionally encounter a copy of a simplified novel, which was The Gift of Magi, of which the plot is clear in mind till today, since the unexpected ending. Anyway, his novels tower many novelist, past and present, with their endings: a rogue is out-witted; a deceiver is deceived; disguise is matched by disguise; a cunning scheme proves counter-productive, etc. etc.

At hand, I got two versions of O` Henry’s novels: The Selected Short Stories of O` Henry and 100 Selected Stories by O` Henry. Both of the two books include the short story: A Service of Love.

Don’t mistake me. I am not going to retell the story or analyze it, neither. I just want to draw your attention to a sentence in the story: Joe and Delia met in an atelier where a number of art and music students had gathered to discuss chiaroscuro, Wagner, music, Rembrandt’s works, pictures, Waldteufel, wall-paper, Chopin, and Oolong. In fact, I don’t ask you to pay your attention to the other part of the sentence except the last word: Oolong.

In Oxford Dictionary, Oolong is explained as follows: a kind of dark-colored China tea made by fermenting the withered leaves to about half the degree usual for black teas. This means 烏龍茶in Chinese. It came into English in 1845. Wikipedia says that The name oolong tea came into the English language from the Chinese name (Chinese: 烏龍茶), meaning "black dragon".

The year of 1845 is sensitive to Chinese men as it is the year when the Opium War ended only three years ago. So it can be safe to say that the word Oolong came into English had something to do with the Opium War and it’s a sign of historical event. And when O` Henry began to write the novel, the word has been popular with the English language and Chinese tea culture has been part of the westerners, especially in Britain and America.