Childhood Food Stories from Chaoshan: Pig’s-Trotter Rings, Ji Gong Pills, and Want Want Snow Biscuits on the Altar
Epigraph
An electric scooter swerved past the basketball court, about to turn into the market, when I caught the faint echo of a voice drifting from somewhere nearby. Fearing I had misheard, I made a U-turn. This time, not only could I clearly hear “sweet potato-starch tofu”, but I could also see the source of the sound – a loudspeaker on a motorbike – calling out tirelessly. How distant that voice was, and yet how familiar – as though in a dream, it pulled me swiftly back to the street stalls of my childhood, to that oil furnace, crackling and sizzling.
I. Fried Sweet Potato-Starch Tofu at the School Gate
Sometimes the grocery shop diagonally opposite the school would sell it, and sometimes a little street vendor would set up a stove rack beside the bike repair shop just past the grocer’s, frying all sorts of snacks. The hot oil would sizzle and spatter, fine bubbles rolling across the surface like tiny crab eyes, while the cubes of sweet potato-starch tofu floated and bobbed about, free as champions at the oil-and-water game. Just watching made my mouth water. If I happened to have a few coins in my pocket, I would step forward and buy a small bag to eat while it was still warm.
More often, though, I would go home first, ask my mum’s permission, fish out a few coins, and be back at the stall in no time, only to carry home a warm, fragrant bag and share it with the whole family. We each had a little taste – it was never quite enough – and my mum always ate the least. She may have eaten sparingly, but she always had the most to say: “Not being completely full is the best thing – it tastes all the better for that. Eat too much at once and you grow weary of it, and then it won’t taste half as good next time.” She would add that filling up on rice was what mattered most, and treats like these were for occasional indulgence only. In short, my mum always had a ready stream of reasons.
Still, on the days when she was in a good mood, she might stop by on her morning shopping trip and bring home some uncooked sweet potato-starch tofu, which she would deep-fry herself for us. When my mum cooked, there was no holding back – we ate until we were full. On those occasions, my mum had far less to say. Watching us eat with such delight, she seemed thoroughly content.
Sweet potato-starch tofu actually has nothing to do with tofu at all. It is made mainly from sweet potato starch and water, borrowing the name “tofu” solely because of its shape. For the older generation of Chaoshan people, sweet potato was a staple in its own right. My mum once told me that during the People’s Commune era there was never enough to eat – every single meal was sweet potato congee, “eating it until you were afraid of it” – unlike now, when rice reigns as the main staple. The forebears of Chaoshan used their ingenuity to transform rice into a rich variety of delectable dishes – rice noodle rolls, kway teow, guǒ zhī rice-sheet soup, and more – so it followed quite naturally that they could coax delicacies like sweet potato-starch tofu from sweet potato too.
II. Ten-Fen Ice Lollies and Strings of Chaoshan Snacks
Only a third of the shop’s space had anything to do with schoolwork. Another third was given over to toys, and the final third was packed with every manner of wùshí imaginable. Much of it came in the most basic packaging: one large transparent plastic bag stuffed with skewers of treats threaded on bamboo sticks, the bag’s mouth gaping open – spot something you fancy, reach in and help yourself, take as many sticks as you please, tasting sweet, or spicy, or both sweet and spicy at once. They sold all sorts of sweets here too – chewing gum, lollipops, popping candy… Just remember to pay, because plenty of eyes were watching from all corners.
There was also a freezer in the shop, and inside it, ice lollies that cost just ten fen a piece – the most beloved treat for children in summer. Children of those days were fiercely energetic. At school we would play skipping rope, then eagle-catches-chicks, running and leaping with all our might, usually ending up drenched in sweat. Then we would dash off for a cup of bubble tea, or buy ourselves an ice lolly. Sometimes, with a ten-fen ice lolly in my mouth, I would walk to the banyan tree near my home, then stop – crunching it down in big bites, five gulps compressed into two, licking the corners of my mouth clean like a thief before finally, content, heading home.
The market of that era was not yet as monopolised as it is today. Many snacks came from small, unknown food factories, and I cannot really recall what they tasted like now – only that after finishing an ice lolly, my whole mouth was coated in a lingering sweetness that clung to my tongue. I know now, of course, that was cyclamate at work. But children paid no heed to such things. If something looked novel, curious, or simply charming in shape, they had to buy it – some even became hooked. I was not quite that bad; just occasionally curious enough to try a taste.
Looking back now, as for these snacks – though we children had not yet lived through or learned much about food safety scandals – even as we marvelled at the endless novelties of the food industry, a quiet thread of doubt and unease had already taken root in our minds.
Nowadays, even at the end of the school day, you no longer see those teeming crowds of children clutching snacks in their hands. Before the bell has even rung, the school gate is already jammed with motorbikes waiting to pick up their young passengers. The children come out and are whisked onto a seat, the motorbikes give two or three “whirr-whirrs”, and both people and machines vanish from sight. These were scenes I had never known in my own childhood. In our generation, we were walking ourselves to school and back from the very day we started nursery. Perhaps that was part of the reason street-food vendors came to realise the school gate was no longer a good spot to set up shop.
Then there was another new sight. On one of the main roads near the school, at the mouth of an alley, a signboard jutted out reading “After-School Meal Centre”. Busy parents, or those who felt they could not supervise their children’s homework themselves, would send them there after school: the children ate a meal, and afterwards a dedicated teacher helped them with their homework.
A few years ago, when I went back home for a festival and passed the stationery shop opposite the school, I was reminded of the shopkeeper from my childhood – a middle-aged man in his forties. Sometimes when I held out my coins, his great big hand would shoot out and clamp over mine, palm and all; other times, when giving change, just as I reached for my money back, that same hand would grab me again, and he would gaze at me with a smug, giggling grin. Later, when I watched Journey to the West on television, I saw the creature with fangs bared – the Jīnmáo Hǒu – and how, every single time it grasped Lady Golden Sage’s bracelet, it would let out a startled “Ah!” and leap away. From that moment on, I christened him “Jīnmáo Hǒu”.
I deliberately peered inside. Everything looked just as it had always been. The shop was old and worn, hardly changed at all – like a faded old photograph, wholly out of step with the upheaval that had swept through the entire village. And there was Jīnmáo Hǒu, still in his place, ageing day by day alongside the tired shop he kept. The thin-as-a-spare-rib old uncle who ran the bicycle shop next door had passed away years before.
III. Ji Gong Pills and Tang Monk’s Flesh
An ancient shop with that air of quiet mystery was the perfect setting to sell two foods said to hail from the immortal realm and the demon realm. And among children, both were hugely popular. It was the golden age of television – Journey to the West and The Legend of Ji Gong were endlessly rerun, the images of the Tang Monk, Sun Wukong, and the Mad Monk Ji Gong seared into our very bones. So much so that, young or old, the first thing people chatted about was whether the Tang Monk had been captured by another demon this time, or what outrageous trick Ji Gong had played next. Vendors surely sensed the opportunity: they swiftly produced these two snacks in time with the trend, and character trading cards featuring Journey to the West figures became wildly popular alongside them.
Each of the two snacks came in a small bag no bigger than half a palm, priced at just a fen or two – well within a child’s pocket money. What fascinated us young ones was where, exactly, these Ji Gong Pills and Tang Monk’s Venison came from. Could Tang Monk’s flesh truly grant immortality? Were Ji Gong Pills really rolled from balls of grime scraped from the Mad Monk’s armpits? A little thought of that made me furrow my brow, but once in the mouth, they were pleasantly sweet and sour – quite tasty, really.
Once I knew the truth about Ji Gong Pills and Tang Monk’s Venison, the magic simply evaporated.
IV. Ah Ma’s Jasmine Tea and Pig’s Trotter Rings
In a primary-school composition, I wrote: “My grandmother is over eighty years old, and she is still very robust.” The word “robust” – I probably borrowed it straight from a textbook of that day and learned it for the occasion. She usually wore a black hair band, neat and tidy, and what I remember most is a navy-blue suit – I have the impression her family had it tailored specially for her eightieth birthday. As far back as my memory reaches, Grandma was already very old – a woman crowned entirely in silver hair. She both smoked and drank, but handled both with an easy grace, never overindulging; it was merely a small seasoning for her days.
As a child, when I went to her house in the early evening, I would call out from the doorway: “Ah Ma!” If there was no answer, I would raise my voice, and soon I would hear her reply drifting down from the rooftop terrace. That meant she was up there tending her plants and flowers. Then I would bound upstairs to the second floor like a happy little sparrow, burrow into the rooftop garden, and hunt for her among the dense clusters of green.
People often said back then that those who loved flowers and plants and stayed close to nature tended to live longer. Usually, halfway up the staircase, the rich fragrance would hit me – night-blooming jasmine, gardenia, and jasmine! In summer, the white jasmine flowers bloomed in generous clusters, and she would pick them and set them in a small teacup on the living-room coffee table, so that the moment we stepped inside, we were wrapped in scent. Sometimes she would toss two or three blossoms into a gaiwan lidded bowl already holding a pinch of tea leaves, and what came out was jasmine tea floating with a fresh, natural fragrance. Even now, in memory, I can still catch that honest floral scent, as though I have returned to the old house and am sitting with Ah Ma, drinking tea together, savouring that slow, slow, unhurried passage of time.
By the time I was in Year 5 or 6 at primary school, my father raised the worry that Ah Ma was getting on – she was over eighty then, and living alone – and that he was uneasy about leaving her overnight on her own. He talked it over with my uncles (my father’s brothers) and suggested that each household send one daughter to keep her company through the night. Ours had only one daughter, so naturally the task fell to me. And so the three of us – myself and my two cousins – squeezed together on the old, high-legged bed painted vermillion on the second floor of Grandma’s house.
Looking back, I cannot fathom why we did not simply set up a rota – responsibility ended up so diffuse that my cousins would frequently cry off their nights, while I turned up almost every day. Sometimes, by the time I had stirred out of bed, Ah Ma had already been out for a long, leisurely ramble and was strolling back unhurried, a packet of pig’s-trotter rings from the market swinging in her hand.
She had bought them for me, no doubt having overheard me grumbling about how my cousins had skipped their turn yet again. Fifty fen a piece, if I recall correctly – and for an Ah Ma who had lived a lifetime of thrift, that was a genuine act of generosity. The Ah Ma of those moments was tender, gentle Ah Ma – not the stern old woman of other days bent on drilling lessons into me – and I was a well-behaved granddaughter, not that mischievous child who had once been sharply scolded at the festival family table for not lifting her bowl, or for calling my brother by name.
By the time I was born, my paternal grandfather, my maternal grandfather, and my wài má (maternal grandmother) had all passed away; only Ah Ma remained. I often heard my father exclaim with undisguised pride: “I still have my dear old mother – a living mother still with me – how wonderful! My dear old mother, still so hale and hearty – how wonderful!” (The word lǎo āi, a Chaoshan dialect term for one’s aged mother, carries a particular warmth.) At the time I did not fully understand, but even I felt that having Ah Ma there was something to be proud of, something to be happy about. To my young eyes, Ah Ma was an ancient banyan tree that would stand forever – just like our village’s own four-hundred-year-old banyan, which the villagers revere as a “spirit tree” and have even raised a little shrine beneath to honour.
V. Guǒ Pǐn Offered on Chaoshan Altars and Want Want Snow Biscuits
When the guǒ finally came out, I would hover at her side, hoping Mum would spot one with a cracked skin, or one that wasn’t quite as pretty, and slip it to me to eat. The fine-looking ones were held back – they were meant for the Lǎoyé (the Chaoshan term for local deity spirits) and for ancestral worship.
The cài guǒ stuffed with Chinese chives, carrying a faint, green, herbal fragrance, vivid and raw, sets your mouth watering before you even realise it;
the táo guǒ (peach-shaped rice cakes) stuffed with glutinous rice, shiitake mushrooms, and prawns – its soft, chewy rice fragrance mingled with the delicate savouriness of mushroom and prawn, gently rousing the taste buds, leaving you on edge with anticipation;
the Dragon Boat Festival zòngzi (rice dumplings) – the fragrance of bamboo leaves, pork belly soaked for several nights in a marinade of wine and sugar, glutinous rice heavy with the scent of five-spice powder – stirring appetite even in the early-summer heat …
All these freshly steamed, painstakingly crafted foods – the cài guǒ, táo guǒ, and zòngzi, brought to life by my mother’s industrious, skilled hands – went straight onto the altar first, offered to the ancestors and the Lǎoyé. At the great festivals, the Three Sacrifices were indispensable too: chicken (or duck, or goose), fish, and pork – at least three kinds. The word for “fish” (yú) is a homophone of “surplus” (yú), so the offering carries the wish of “abundance every year,” a life that grows ever better.
If you let your gaze sweep across the altar, you would also spot bottles of fizzy drink, caps off, fizzing and bubbling. To my child’s eyes, that hissing, frothing water held the same magic as the popping candy and Ji Gong Pills of those days.
On television back then, Eric Tsang once dressed up as the God of Wealth to promote Hsu Fu Chi. Want Want, meanwhile, would cry “Wàng-wàng-wàng!” all day long – “May fortune flourish, the family line flourish – flourish, flourish, flourish!” – as though it were kin to the God of Wealth himself. These were words Chaoshan people loved to hear. And so Hsu Fu Chi and Want Want joined the fizzy drinks on the altar, set out alongside the guǒ pǐn made by Chaoshan women at festival time.
VI. Emotional Eating and Obesity in Our Generation
If the industrially produced snacks and food of our childhood were but a small stream, they have since swelled into an ocean. Endless varieties of production styles and packaging, the spread of online livestream recommendations, and the proliferation of snack chains such as Zhao Yiming across the country – commercial advertising seeps into every crack, drawing more and more people into this vast sea.
Here in a corner of the Guangzhou suburbs where I now live, a Zhao Yiming snack shop sits right by the main road at the village entrance. Customers flow in and out every day; it is probably the busiest spot in the area apart from the kindergarten. Across the road, the wet market sees fewer and fewer footfalls. My neighbour – a child of no more than four or five – whenever throwing a tantrum, insists on going to Zhao Yiming’s for snacks; come home with a bag of wùshí, and the smile is back on the little face again.
In the end, these changes show up in body shapes and ailments. Some of my old classmates, once tall and thin as “bamboo poles”, have only just crossed thirty yet look as though they have been pumped up into “round balls”.
In the old days, when my mum saw the large-bodied people of Europe and America on television, she would always gasp in wonder: Goodness – what on earth do they eat! Now more than half of Chinese adults are overweight or obese. A few years ago, I knew a young man who was preparing for the IELTS exam for study abroad. Under the pressure of revision, he ate delivery meals three times a day, often chicken wings and other high-fat foods, and always insisted on one or two bottles of cola after meals to soothe his nerves. In a month or two he put on nearly ten kilograms. He had grown into the very figure my mum used to gawk at in the West.
In recent years, having studied psychological counselling, I learned this is called “emotional eating”. Through practice and observation, I have come to realise that people carrying labels or diagnoses such as emotional eating, anorexia, or binge-eating disorder are growing ever more numerous. We grow ever more distant from the land, from nature, from whole foods; fractures run through relationships between people too. We are alienated by capital, fed by the food industry, and these problems finally manifest in our relationship with food – yet it remains a social affliction rarely seen or acknowledged by the public eye. Food, at this point, is no longer love and comfort but tangible harm.
Before, my mum was never tired of lecturing us, patiently and earnestly: eating rice meals is still best. Wùshí eaten in excess do no good. Back then I thought she was terribly old-fashioned, someone left behind by the times. Looking back now, I owe her thanks – she taught me, in my earliest years, that there is a difference between one food and another.
VII. Local Traditional Foods: Extending from the Past into the Future
Once my body began flashing red lights, I grew an intense interest in home-made food – especially the traditional food of my hometown. I resolved to eat properly, and came to treasure all the more the meals I cooked myself. Looking back, I see that I was using traditional food to mend myself, to mend my life, and to rebuild a healthy relationship with food.
Last Mid-Autumn Festival, I went back home, bought sweet potato-starch tofu from the wet market, and took it with me. In the evening, my mum deep-fried the cubes for me. I dipped one in salt water, let it melt on my tongue – crisp yet soft, salty yet fragrant, a fullness that crept slowly back into memory – and then I recalled that I had not tasted this flavour in at least a decade. My dad, munching away, said, Uncle – my father’s eldest brother – after joining the army in his youth had worked and settled in Guangzhou for decades, yet still loved sweet potato-starch tofu most of all, and every time he returned home he made a point of seeking it out. Uncle has long since passed away; it was the first time I had ever heard this said of him. It was also during that visit that my deepening desire to explore hometown food urged me to start making some local delicacies myself.
Through this process, I truly grasped the old saying – the land nourishes its people. I understood how deeply we love rice, just as the people of the north love wheat. How much the ancestors of Chaoshan loved life and loved good food! From rice alone, through the labour of two hands, they conjured up – as if by magic – kway teow, gāo guǒ, rice noodle rolls, guǒ zhī, red táo guǒ, fermented guǒ, bǎn guǒ, and all manner of delightful variations, honouring the true flavour of each ingredient yet coaxing out an altogether different taste in every dish.
Local traditional foods have a flourishing, enduring life! They weave thousands upon thousands of threads between people; they let us see the stories of a family, the history of a place, the deities and ancestors upon the altar.
When learning to make noodles, my mum told me that during the Commune era grain was scarce and there was never enough to eat. My eldest aunt, who had married into the city and become a townswoman, received a flour ration there, and would bring some back to her parents’ home. With that precious, limited flour, they would make noodles.
While shaping the siu mai, I said the pleats were meant to look like a “beer-bottle mouth”. My mum took a look and said, “That’s a pomegranate blossom.” Her words jogged my memory: the pomegranate flower kueh I remembered from my Coming-of-Garden ceremony (the Chaoshan coming-of-age rite, usually held at the nominal age of fifteen) – that plate set upon the altar. Only our pomegranate flower kueh had a red-dyed skin, filled inside with sweet glutinous rice – all about sweetness and auspicious celebration.
While making gāo guǒ, I was reminded of my mum’s birthing stories. On the night of the ninth day of the first lunar month, she and my Ēr mǔ (my father’s second elder brother’s wife) were bustling at the stove, steaming kway teow for the next morning’s offering to the Lǎoyé, when the pains began. By the small hours of the night, my second elder brother was born.
In festival times, Ah Ma would sometimes come round to help us wrap guǒ and tie zòngzi. She has passed away now, but I think she would surely have loved those red táo guǒ and zòngzi on the altar.
From Ah Ma to my mother and father, and now to me, life keeps flowing onward. From past to present, and into the future, each of us still has choices to make, and the answers lie in the inheritance of wisdom our forebears left us and in the life experiences we have lived through. We can begin by making food with our own hands, by tracing the roots of local food, to rebuild a better relationship with our bodies and our lives, and to open up new possibilities of closeness to the land and to one another.
Editors: Yu Yang, Wang Hao