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Photos of butterfly cookies on a dish.
This is used to describe the nose of a traditional Shar-Pei.
Butterfly nose
There is a descriptive saying for traditional Shar-Pei nose which is "butterfly nose". The word "butterfly" here basically refers to the name of a kind of cookie found in area around Guangzhou and the Pearl River Delta. To understand what it means, then we must first understand what exactly a butterfly cookie is. When you see the picture, it is more of a western confectionary rather than a Chinese one. Whether it is a Western cookie or a Chinese cookie is a good question and we shall investigate etymologically later in section below, but by the picture itself, it is not difficult to understand that the nose need to be wide with clear nostril cavity. This is important for traditional Shar-Pei because ventilation and air exchange is a very important requirement of a constantly running and active dog.
Introduction to Butterfly cookie (Wu dip sou)
According to the "New Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary", the word etymology is defined as "the history of a linguistic form (as a word)shown by tracing its development and relationships". How people call a thing in a place sometime in history is determined by how people understand its environment at that time. We saw in the 20th century tremendous improvement in the means of transportation of human being from one place to the other. When traveling become more convenient, words travel too and sometime became part of the adopted language.
We now look back at the butterfly cookie. By reductive reasoning, that the Shar-Pei as a breed concept can go back only as far as the history of the word itself. If the awareness of Shar-Pei as an unique breed go any further back, then it must have adopted other Chinese figurative word to describe the nose. This implies that although the dog existed long before the Chinese think of it in any meaningful way, it is only when awareness of the breed triggers human being to look for a name for it.
This is similar to Carl von Linne (Carolus Linnaus 1707-1778) who invented the scientific classification of name. The scientific name for our daily loving dog is Canis Familiaris, we human are called Homo Sapiens etc. It does not mean that dogs and humans did not exist before Linnaus but it was during this period around Linnaus time that was regarded as the dawning of science, the awareness of human in general to their surrounding environment.
So the adoption of this term "butterfly nose" means that the awareness of this breed as Shar-Pei can go back only as far as the dissemination of this cookie in the region in China. If the Chinese were to be aware of this breed anytime before the appearance of this Western cookie in China, then they must have adopted other object to describe the nose instead of waiting for the Butterfly cookie, which is a Western import, to show up in everyday life.
History of Butterfly cookie (Wu dip sou) in China
So the next question is when did the "Butterfly cookie" first imported into China and become well known among its people in Guangzhou? The answer lies in the geography of Guangzhou. Guangzhou is the oldest and the most busy trading port throughout the history in China. Like Venice in Italy, the city enjoyed its prime time as maritime trading port during the Mongolian occupation in the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). But the trading during this time was mainly regional, vessels sailing along the coast reaching all the way into the Arabian world.
The real direct contact with the Western world on a maritime trading scale was actually around the turn of the18th century. In 1700's when " The Thirteen Hongs of Canton " began to take form in Guangzhou, many foreign traders; British, French, American, Dutch, Spanish, Swedish, Greek established "Factories" outside of Guangzhou. "Factories" means trading offices directly dealing with the Chinese Imperial Traders or "Hongs". Therefore, it can be inferred that the "Butterfly cookie" very naturally was brought into Guangzhou with these traders and became a everyday table cookie among the Cantonese. So, one day, someone, somewhere in the Pearl River delta used the cookie to describe the nose of Shar-Pei.
Putting unrelated dates together, we begin to see some picture.
-Carolus Linnaus 1707-1778 the similar base for "Butterfly cookie nose" naming system for Shar-Pei.
-The formation of The Thirteen Hongs of Canton 1720
-The Boston Tea Party 1776-1774 dumping "British" tea but probably came from the "Hongs".
In summary, the Shar-Pei as a dog (Canis Familiaris) can go back thousands of years but as a breed Shar-Pei, etymologically can not be more than 300 years old. Butterfly cookie in Cantonese is "Wu dip sou". "Wu dip" stands for butterfly, and "sou" stands for cookie.
Red nose
Other descriptive expression of Shar-Pei concerning the nose is a Shar-Pei term called Five Point Red. Please refer to the section on Five Point Red for further details on the subject.
Traditional Chinese Shar-pei standard can be found in the Sharpei Club Hong Kong website.
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Introduction
Nose: Butterfly cookie
