Category Archives: Foodways

Yusheng

Nationality: Malaysian and Taiwanese/Singaporean
Age: 22 and 21
Occupation: Student

Description: It is the tossing of fish salad done during the New Years. People would circle around with chopsticks in hand. Then they would throw the salad as high as they are able, the higher meaning better fortune for the next year and having your wishes come true. The fish is the most important part due to the pun of the Chinese word for fish sounding like the word for abundance.

Background: It is something commonly done within her household. I was able to observe this ritual when we did it with a group of friends.

Procedure:

The salad is prepared with sauces, assorted vegetables and most importantly fish. The dish will then be presented on a table where people would gather. Each participant will be equipped with a pair of chopsticks. When the ritual begins, each participant will toss the contents as high as they can while saying their wishes. The duration of the ritual varies. At the end, the salad is consumed like a normal meal.

My thoughts:

In terms of cuisine, the salad is delicious. While the tossing does tend to make a mess, the sense of community and energy it brings is well worth it. There are many elements of this tradition that I believe are very neat. One thing is the origin of the tradition. It is mainly practiced by people who are ethnically Chinese living in Singapore or Malaysian. Most of the wordplay originated from the Chinese language, the fish signifying abundance is well known to any one who is Chinese. This tradition creates a branching and unique identity that separates itself from the traditions of the mainland and Taiwan. Food is commonly seen as something that brings people together; sharing food is often a bonding experience especially with home made cuisine. The community aspect is especially true for those in Malaysia, where ethnically Chinese people are part of the minority.

The Taboo of the Left Hand in Yemen

Nationality: China
Age: 75
Occupation: Arabic Interpreter
Residence: Shenyang, Liaoning, China
Performance Date: 4/20/2-21
Primary Language: Chinese

Backgrounds:

CC was born and grew up in Beijing. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Arabic, and then served as an interpreter for China’s medical assisstance team sent to Yemen. He stayed in Yemen for over 10 years, helping with the communication between the patients in Yemen and the medical workers from China. During his time in Yemen, he got to know many local Yemen people and was able to learn a lot about their culture from local people.

The informant shared this piece of folk practice during an interview via phone call.

The Main Piece:

In Yemen, most people eat with their hands instead of using forks or chopsticks, etc. One has to use the right hand and may not use the left hand to eat. Also, when handing stuff to other people or receiving things from other people, one must use the right hand. It is super offensive to use the left hand to pass objects.

CC gives the reason: after defecation, the people in Yemen use water, instead of toilet papers, to clean their anus. And this is always done with the left hand. So everyone in Yemen keeps it in mind that the left hand is for the “dirty business” and the right hand is used to interact with other people.

Analysis:

I believe this custom reveals that the people in Yemen draw a clear line between their “private” practices and their interaction with others. I personally think that even if someone uses the left hand to hand objects to another person, it wouldn’t be that much of a big deal because the hand is already washed. But the people in Yemen still make this distinction between the left and right hand. It shows their respect for other people’s feelings, as well as their dislike for faeces.

Another interesting things is that the custom makes everyone to clean their anus with the left hand, because normally people might have different preferences for the left or right hand. This case is an example how cultural norms can shape ones habits.

People Don’t Eat Shrimps in Yemen

Nationality: China
Age: 75
Occupation: Interpreter
Residence: Shenyang, Liaoning, China
Performance Date: 4/20/2021
Primary Language: Chinese



Backgrounds:

CC was born and grew up in Beijing. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Arabic, and then served as an interpreter for China’s medical assisstance team sent to Yemen. He stayed in Yemen for over 10 years, helping with the communication between the patients in Yemen and the medical workers from China. During his time in Yemen, he got to know many local Yemen people and was able to learn a lot about their culture from local people.

The informant shared this piece of folk practice during an interview via phone call.

The Main Piece:

CC asked: “Do you know that Arabic People (I personally think he’s mostly referring to people in Yemen) don’t eat shrimps? They say that shrimps are made of the dead skins and dirt from Alah’s feet, saying they’re dirty. When I was in Yemen, sometimes we go to the beach, we might see the beach full of shrimps, but nobody takes them or eat them. But we’re Chinese and we didn’t care, so we would collect a lot of the shrimps and we would eat them. But people know shrimps are delicious, so nowadays more and more young Muslims started eating shrimps, but the older ones I know, they don’t eat shrimps at all. “

Analysis:

I know there are some restrictions on what a Muslim can or cannot eat, but I didn’t know it would involve such common foods like shrimps. It is interesting that this habbit of not eating shrimps is linked to the creation of things: the people in Yemen give everything an origin in their creation myths, and shrimps, unfortunately, have a less popular one.

Hotpot Sauce in Sichuan

Nationality: China
Age: 19
Occupation: Rapper
Residence: Yibin, Sichuan, China
Performance Date: 4/26/2021
Primary Language: Chinese

Backgrounds:

LEX was born and grew up in Yibin, Sichuan, China. He is currently attending Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China.

The informant is a rapper, and so am I. We decided to go and eat hotpot together, and by the way also discuss future collaborations. During the meal, he made a classic Sichuan style hotpot sauce for me and shared the ingredients with me.

The Main Piece:

The Sichuan style hotpot sauce is called 油碟（you die), or oil dish. The ingredients are as follows:

mashed garlic，oyster sauce，sesame oil， coriander，green onion

When the food in the hotpot is cooked, we dip it into the You Die and then eat it.

Analysis:

LEX says all the liquid oil in the sauce can help to cool the hot meat that has just came out of the pot.

Personally, I noticed a significant difference between the hotpot sauce in Shenyang, where I came from, and in Sichuan. In Shenyang, we use sesame butter, which is more thick, with a lot of sugar, making it super sweet. But the Sichuan style You Die has no sugar in it. I think it is because most Sichuan People are accustomed to the super spicy food in the hotpot, because Sichuan food is famous for being super spicy. They grow up eating it and got used to it. But we people from the north are less accustomed to the spicy taste. So, we need sweet suger to offset the spicy flavor.

I also find that the Sichuan style hotpot sauce goes extremely well with animal organs, while the northern sesame butter goes better with meat. The difference in hotpot sauces reveal the different food preferences between northern and southern people in China

Jamaican Curry

Nationality: Jamaican, Chinese, Indian
Age: 79
Occupation: Retired
Residence: San Antonio, Texas
Performance Date: 4/9/2021
Primary Language: English

Intro

This is a recipe told by my grandpa. Now 79 years old, he lived the first 26 years of his life in a crowded house in Old Harbour, Jamaica. He moved to New York in ‘68 and has lived in the US since. A lot of his family still live in Jamaica and the country is still the place of his roots. He is Jamaican, Chinese, and Indian. He has a thick Jamaican accent so if you can read this in a Jamaican accent it may add to the experience. This is a transcribed script of what was said in the story, with the various “umm’s” and “uhh’s” omitted.

How To Cook Curry

“Well, one of the bad things that I did not learn from them (his parents), or did not get help from them, was because I didn’t participate in cooking and all that. I had it made when I was living with my parents in Jamaica, but I never did go around the fire at all. Later in life after I left home and got married I remembered what they used to do, like for instance I remember cooking some of the local dishes like curry chicken or curry goat. I learn a lot from them, like how to prepare it, cut it up and wash it, you clean it real good. With the curry chicken, a special way that the chinese does the curry chicken is the spices. One of the main spice was a scotch bonnet pepper. It was very hot. They have a way of rating pepper by how hot it is and this scotch bonnet goes way up there. Apart from the indian pepper, but it might be the hottest in the world. But the scotch bonnet is not only hot it has a nice flavor to it. So if you’re doing curry, curry chicken or curry goat, you want to use that scotch bonnet. For some reason after you season it up it takes a long process to cook goat, because there’s hardly any fat on the goat. It’s mostly muscle. The goat runs a lot so it doesn’t have a lot of fat like a sheep or a cow. It’s very lean so you have to cook it real long. So they use a lot of curry, that really yellow indian one. And they use a lot of… that thing, let me go to the pantry. They use the pepper and the garlic on the curry. And a curry that they use a lot is the Blue Mountain Curry. Tell her (my mom), they can mix the Blue Mountain Curry with the Sam’s curry and it makes three more bottles. As for the curry, you just got to cook it real long and add a lot of onion and green scallion (a vegetable) and cook it until you take a fork, it can stick it easily, and that’s when you know it’s cooked properly. Yesterday we cooked some curry chicken, but chicken is much easier, it cook much faster than the curry goat. But the curry goat is like a national dish in jamaica.”

Analysis

My grandpa told me this meal over facetime the other day. Ever since I’ve been a kid, curry chicken and goat have been a staple food of our family gatherings. You often can’t go to a family reunion of ours without seeing a curry dish made by grandpa. You may notice that the process of cooking it is very vague. That is actually how he tells people to cook it, saying things like just cook it until it’s done or add a bit of pepper. For example, my dad learned how to cook curry from him, and that is exactly the way my grandpa taught him how to cook it. This is certainly an interesting way of passing on folk recipes. The process of cooking curry definitely has a learning curve when learning it this way: learning how much water and how long to cook it add to the variety that it gets across the family. Without having clear measurements the curry dish always comes out different, and usually pretty tasty. 

My grandpa also gives a variant ingredient with the scotch bonnet pepper. His dad was chinese so this ingredient was an addition from that part of his heritage. By the way, the scotch bonnet is not one of the hottest peppers in the world. The curry dish also has origins in India and not so surprisingly, my grandpa is also Indian. Curry has always been a classic food in his life and will continue to be in ours.