When asked the reason for the painted eyes on the bow of a junk, a Chinese would likely respond: “No got eye how can see?” Moreover, “no can see, how can walkey?”1 It was a long-established belief that the pair of large eyes would keep the junk vigilant of the evil spirit and thus secure a safe passage. The above response was uttered in Chinse Pidgin English or Pigeon English. The language was collaboratively developed by Chinese and westerners in the 18th century, essentially serving as a lingua franca first in Canton and then in other treaty ports and Hong Kong. Considering its restricted domains of use, Chinese Pidgin English has a limited vocabulary, as a result, many words have multiple senses depending on the context in which they appear. A good example is “walk,” which can be spelt walkee or walkey in the pidgin. The verb refers to locomotions of different sorts, for instance, the movement of humans, as in “Mi go walkee, maskee that colo” (‘I will go for a walk despite the cold.’).2 Moreover, moving objects like watercraft could be described as “walkee.”
The Age of Sail was not only characterized by the construction of diverse ship types but also the unprecedented interconnection of nations. The Age of Sail and the Age of Discovery jointly created great stories in maritime history – the discovery of the New World, the first world circumnavigation, the record-breaking tea clippers, the fierce battles, the transition from sails to steam, and many more. Sailing ships are differentiated according to their types of rigging. Chinese junks use lug sail, a fore-and-aft sail securely battened, while western seagoing sailing vessels are typically square-rigged.
The crew of a merchant ship often comprised people of diverse nationalities. Upon arrival at the destinations, some crew members would need to interact with the local people in activities such as goods clearance, chartering, merchandising, etc. Therefore, familiarity with the local mode of communication was essential. In the 18th and 19th centuries, ship crew and passengers disembarking at trading ports like Canton, Shanghai, and Hong Kong would adopt Chinese Pidgin English as the lingua franca for cross-cultural communication. With hundreds of ships visiting China annually, it was necessary to identify the types of western sailing ships. The nomenclature of ships in pidgin English is:3
“three piecey bamboo” (a full-rigged ship)
“two piecey bamboo” (a brig or schooner)
“two and a half piecey bamboo” (a barque)
Bamboo is a common plant in China and the parts of bamboo can be used for different functions. Bamboo shoots are used in many Asian cuisines; the culms can be used for making kitchen utensils and furniture; and as construction material for building bridges, theatrical stages, and scaffoldings. Bamboo is one of the four “gentlemen” of plants – 梅mui4 (plum blossom), 蘭laan4 (orchid), 竹zuk1 (bamboo), and 菊guk1 (chrysanthemum). Chinese literati often used bamboo as a symbol of humbleness and righteousness. So, the bamboo in the pidgin phrases refers to the tall and straight masts of ships. The pidgin word piecey, derived from the English word piece, functions like the classifiers in Cantonese. A classifier is necessary between a number and a noun, as in the phrase 一jat1 隻zek2 船syun4 ‘one ship’, where 隻zek2 is the classifier. Cantonese has a wide range of classifiers to indicate different properties of nouns, but Chinese Pidgin English cuts them down to one word – piecey.
The pidgin expressions refer to the rigging of sailing ships. A fully rigged ship is a sailing vessel with three or more masts, all square-rigged (sails were set perpendicular to the keel). The more the masts and sails, the larger the crew to set up the ropes, sails, and other parts of the ship. One of the world’s largest sailing ships was the German steel-hulled Preussen (Preußen).Fully rigged, the ship had five masts, carrying six square sails on all masts. A brig is two-masted and a schooner has two or more masts. They differ in the rigging: a brig is square-rigged whereas a schooner is fore-and-aft rigged (sails were set along the line of the keel). A barque has three or more masts; the fore-mast, main mast, or any other masts are squared rigged while the mizzen-mast (or aft-mast), usually shorter than the fore-mast, is fore-and-aft rigged.
The glory of the sailing ships dimmed when steam began to be used as the main power of propulsion in the 19th century. The emergence of steamships not only ended the era of sail but also greatly increased the efficiency and reliability of marine transportation. In 1807, Robert Fulton built the first commercial steamboat, a paddle wheeler, for river use. The first steamship to successfully cross the Atlantic Ocean was SS Savannah, which travelled from Savannah, Georgia to Liverpool, England in 1819. Chinese Pidgin English also caught up with the new inventions. There were two types of early steam-powered vessels in the west: “outside walkee” and “inside walkee.” An “outside walkee” refers to a paddle wheeler, and an “inside walkee” means a screw steamer. Although both types were equipped with steam engines, different propellers were used. A paddle wheeler was a steamer with the paddle wheel attached to the back or side of the vessel, i.e., the paddle wheel was “outside” and visible. The screw of a steamer was completely submerged, i.e., “inside” and not visible. The propellers “walkee” in order to move the vessels through the water. Screws won in the competition of propellers because screws were less bulky and less vulnerable to damage than paddle wheels. Famous screw steamships included RMS Titanic.
During the transition from sail to steam, hybrid ships equipped with sails and engines existed. An example was SS Savannah, which harnassed steam power only briefly during the transatlantic passage. Retaining the sails had practical functions in the early years of steamships. Sails could replace steam in case of unexpected problems in the steam engine or coal supply. Sometimes ships would use sails and steam simultaneously to speed up the journey. Sailing ships and steamships co-existed for a considerable time in the 19th century. However, social and scientific changes including the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, advancement in ship architecture and engineering, and the rise of cruising ended the Age of Sail in the 20th century. Today, the diesel-powered Götheborg of Sweden (a replica of the Swedish East Indianman Götheborg, which sunk in 1745) is the only functioning sailing ship. The magnificence of classic vessels like Cutty Sark, HMS Victory,and USS Constitution can be appreciated in museums.
Paddle wheels were also used in Chinese junks, but they were operated by labour instead of steam engine. Such vessels, like the picture on the left, were called 水seoi2輪leon4船syun4 (literally ‘water-wheel-ship’) in Chinese. In 1830, Forbes,a paddle steamer built at Calcutta, was the first steamship to be seen in Chinese waters.4 Chinese called steamships 火fo2輪leon4船syun4 (literally ‘fire-wheel-ship’), or simply 火fo2船syun4 or 輪leon4船syun4.
During World War II, two devices were developed in order to send instant messages and speed up communications. The devices were nicknamed “walkie-talkie” and “walkie-lookie.” In wartime, fast and accurate communications were key to reducing casualties and winning battles. The US military developed a transceiver which was a backpack radio carried by a soldier and nicknamed it “walkie-talkie”. The “walkie-lookie” was originally designed for military use but was later used as an early portable television camera for broadcasting after the war.5 The Oxford English Dictionary shows that “walkie-talkie” and “walkie-lookie” were first attested in 1939 and 1946 respectively. The earliest use of “walkie-lookie” given in the dictionary is as follows.
‘Walkie-lookie’, the picture equivalent to the small remote voice instrument known as ‘walkie-talkie’, will come from the ‘block’ system’s light-weight, easily portable television camera.
The name “walkie-lookie” has fallen out of use, but “walkie-talkie” persists as a layman’s term for two-way radio. Whether a connection exists between these nicknames and words like walkee, talkee (‘say, speak, talk, tell’), and lookee (‘see, look at’) in Chinese Pidgin English is hard to say, but the transparency of the names is in the spirit of the language.
1. Sirr, Henry Charles. 1849. China and the Chinese: Their Religion, Character, Customs and Manufactures. London: Wm. S. ORR & Co.
2. Hayes, A. A. 1878. Pidgin English. Scribner’s Monthly 15:372-76.
3. Lubbock, Basil. 1967. The Opium Clippers. Glasgow: Brown, Son & Ferguson, Ltd.
4. Blue, A.D. 1973. Early steamships in China. Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 13: 45-57.
5. Pierri, Florencia. Item of the week | The Walkie-Lookie. The Sarnoff Collection. The College of New Jersey. https://davidsarnoff.tcnj.edu/2020/08/17/item-of-the-week-the-walkie-lookie/