Chinese fire drill

"Chinese fire drill" is a predominantly American slang term for a situation that is chaotic or confusing, possibly due to poor or misunderstood instructions.<ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> It may also be known as a Polish fire drill<ref>https://thorne_slang.en-academic.com/5092/Polish_fire_drill</ref> or, increasingly, simply as a fire drill.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The phrase has been critiqued due to it associating "Chinese" as a descriptor with incompetence, chaos or otherwise poor quality.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Origins

The term is generally regarded as having originated with British troops either during or prior to WWI, with the phrase then spreading to their American counterparts due to their mixing throughout the war. The phrase then remained popular in American English while eventually falling out of use elsewhere.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

One specific tale of the phrase's origin is alleged<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> to have occurred in the 1900s when a ship run by British officers and a Chinese crew practiced a fire drill for a fire in the engine room. The bucket brigade were to draw water from the starboard side, pass it to the engine room, and pour it onto the simulated "fire". To prevent flooding, a separate crew was ordered to ferry the accumulated water from the engine room up to the main deck, and to heave the water over the port side. The drill had previously gone according to plan, until the orders were confused in interpretation. The bucket brigade began to draw the water from the starboard side, run directly over to the port side and then throw the water overboard, bypassing the engine room completely.<ref name="digerati">Template:Cite web</ref> Template:Unreliable source?

Alternatively, the phrase's origin may lie in the historical Western use of the word Chinese to denote "confusion" and "incomprehensibility", which historians trace to the earliest contacts between Europeans and Chinese people in the 1600s, attributing it to Europeans' inability to understand China's radically different culture and world view.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In his 1989 Dictionary of Invective, British editor Hugh Rawson lists 16 phrases that use the word "Chinese" to denote "incompetence, fraud and disorganization".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Other examples of such use include:

• "Chinese puzzle", a puzzle with a nonexistent or a hard-to-fathom solution.<ref name="word-detective">Template:Cite web</ref>
• "Chinese whispers", a children's game in which a straightforward statement is shared through a sequence of players, one player at a time, until it reaches the end, often getting comically transformed along the way into a completely different statement. This game is also known as "broken telephone" in North America and "wire-less telephone" in Brazil.
• "Chinese ace", an inept pilot, derived from the term "one wing low" (which supposedly sounds like a Chinese name), an aeronautical maneuver.<ref name="word-detective"/><ref name="randomhouse">Template:Cite web</ref>

Other uses

The term can also refer to a prank originating in the 1960s in which the occupants of an automobile jump out, run around the vehicle, and jump back in at a different door, usually at a red light or other form of traffic stoppage.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> This is sometimes also used to refer to a driver and passenger intentionally switching places in the middle of the road because the driver is having trouble with road conditions.

Additionally, the term is documented to have been used in the US Marine Corps during World War II, where it was often expressed in the phrase "as screwed up as a Chinese fire drill".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> It was also commonly used by Americans during the Korean War and the Vietnam War.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Offensiveness

Public use of the phrase has been considered to be offensive and racist. In 2017, a candidate for office in Nova Scotia, Matt Whitman, apologized for using the term in a video and subsequently removed the video.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2020, Washington state Senator Patty Kuderer made an apology for using the term in a hearing; Linda Yang of Washington Asians for Equality stated that the term was racist and filed a complaint with the state.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Kuderer apologized before any formal complaint was filed.

In popular culture

A Chinese Firedrill is the name of a music project by Armored Saint and Fates Warning bassist Joey Vera. It released an album, Circles, in 2007.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The album uses different musical foundations in each song, such that it is "chaotic or confusing", like a Chinese fire drill.

In "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson", the first episode of The Simpsons season 9, a retailer in Manhattan's Chinatown shouts out "Chinese fire drill!" as Bart Simpson sets a firework at his shop.

See also

• List of practical joke topics
• Stereotypes of East Asians in the United States