ocean tuber

lzh and I watched 《美丽的大脚》 a few days ago and it was on CCTV 6 again last night. I first thought it was filmed in northern Shaanxi, but no, it was actually filmed in Ningxia. Anyway, the village in which the film is set produces one major crop: Potatoes. Thing is, they call potatoes 洋芋, which the dictionary marks as dialect, and which I was surprised shows up so quickly on this IME. This 芋 character is defined as taro or tuber crop in my big dictionary, but only as taro in the Xinhua Zidian. It’s also used in 山芋, meaning sweet potato. I would also guess that the inclusion of æ´‹ in 洋芋 shows that the potato was introduced by evil Western imperialists, but I could be wrong on that.