Just about every weekend I go to my favorite local restaurant, China Fun, for one of the traditional meals I got accustomed to long ago in Taiwan: 鹹豆漿 xián dòujiāng — “salty” soybean milk, meaning hot soybean milk with sliced-up 油條 yóutiáo (“oil-stick,” i.e. fried cruller), dried baby shrimp, pickled veg, cilantro, etc, as opposed to 甜豆漿 tián dòujiāng “sweet” soybean milk with just sugar in it — and 韮菜鍋貼 jiŭcài guōtiē — chive (and pork) fried dumplings, or “pot-stickers” by literal translation of 鍋貼. Up here on the Upper West Side the soybean milk is only available on the weekend, although in Chinatown of course it’s a daily staple. They know me pretty well at China Fun; I never spoke English to them for the first few years, in order to encourage them to help me keep up my Chinese. And when I show up on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon they pretty much know what I want. But of course one has to make sure.
There are two expressions I hear for “the usual”:
照舊 zhàojiù “according-old”
老樣子 lăo yàngzi “old appearance/way”
舊 and 老 both mean “old”; usually 舊 is applied to things, and 老 refers to age, as of people or animals. I believe that 老 is natural in the expression 老樣子 because 樣子 originally refers to a person’s appearance. In fact 樣 shows up in Japanese as the formal suffix -sama, used in place of the more neutral form of address -san.
I have a feeling that 照舊 may be a bit more correct/formal than 老樣子 for “the usual.” Certainly it’s higher on the literary vs. colloquial scale.
