Chinese Whispers

Chinese Whispers: Why Everything You've Heard About China is Wrong

Ben Chu Chinese Whispers: Why Everything You've Heard About China is Wrong。そのタイトル（Chinese Whispers）を巡って。

It used to be a party game. A message would be relayed in hushed tones through a long line of people and emerge at the other end amusingly garbled. Most of us found alternative amusements nowadays, but the name Chinese Whispers survives as a figure of speech: an idiom used to signify how facts or a story tend to get twisted over time and distnce. (pp.17-18)

何故伝言ゲームをChinese Whispers（中国の囁き）というのかはよくわからないという。また、せいぜい20世紀半ば頃までしか遡れない（p.18）。
Chinese Whispersというタイトルのこの本について；

These pages will examine the stories that we whispers to each other about China. They will show how ideas about the Chinese have historically been warped when passing through the long chians of people that mediated between China and the outside world – and how they were often twisted once again when they arrived. (…) (ibid.)

ところで、アーサー・ビナード氏によれば、「伝言ゲーム」をChinese Whispersというのは主に倫敦周辺の言い方であるという（「盗聴ゲーム」in 『日々の非常口』）*1。因みに、Ben Chu 氏はマンチェスター生まれ。子ども時代を香港で過ごす（Chinese Whispers, pp.3-4）。

日々の非常口 (新潮文庫)

*1:Mentioned in http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20100520/1274329649