Canton, South Dakota
by tdaxp ~ May 6th, 2007
By the time this posts (a little after 12:3:4 5/6/7) I should be on my way to Beijing China. Many people know Beijing as “Peking,” and indeed PEK is still the international airport’s city code. Unlike the Soviet Union, China didn’t rename cities so much as change the way one converts from chinese characters (in the city’s case, 北京) to latin letters (either pe + king or bei + jing).
Beijing isn’t the only city so re-transcribed. In souther China, Guangzhou (廣州) was once known as “Canton.” So to celebrate the upcoming trip and the cross-cultural understanding that such retranslitterations are meant to achieve, Lady of tdaxp and I visited Canton, South Dakota.
Two miles ahead!
The sky had an epic quality through most of the drive. (Sadly, that was the quality that canceled the Cinco de Mayo celebration in Falls Park and caused damage through the midwest.)
Mainstreet Canton, South Dakota, is perhaps less busy than its Chinese counterpart’s.
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Canton was formerly the richest town in the territory: Dakota was settled from east to west, and Canton both had the earliest rail line and rich farmland. Even today, agribusiness is serious business. Elevators tower over the city.
Skyline
I love to eat what the natives eat…
Cantonese cuisine
Though more international fair is available for those with picky palettes…
Last, m’Lady and I stopped by an antique store, which along with the Chinese styles that have traditionally been popular in America…
we also found a tin Chinese checkers set.
That game perhaps wraps up our entire trip. Just as Canton is a Chinese-sounding city populated by German-Americans, chinese checkers is the German game Stern-Halma renamed “Chinese Checkers” for American audiences.
America is a melting pot of people, cultures, ideas, cuisine… and even board games
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