The Chinese word "培根" (péi gēn) is a phonetic loanword formed through transliteration, specifically designed to approximate the sound of the English word "bacon." The characters were chosen not for their literal meanings—"培" means "to cultivate" and "根" means "root"—but primarily for their phonetic resemblance to the syllables "ba" and "con." This is a common method in Chinese for adopting foreign terms, where the resulting compound carries no semantic relationship to the original concept but serves as a recognizable sound-based label for the imported item (in this case, the cured meat product).