25-02-20
Chinese call snacks ‘small bites’(小食). Snacks bring about powerful emotions. They mean sentimentality and memories, the recollections of buying small bites from the street stands and wheelbarrows, down-at-heel snack shops which are called ‘stores’(士多) in Hong Kong, from vendors doing business under the stairs of an old building and from school tuck shops which sell confectionery and soft drinks.
We feel hungry at certain times, like between a long afternoon of classes and football plays. Snacks are our saviour. Snacking might have acquired a ‘bad image’ but the diet can make us happy and often happier. It provides us with energy and can decrease our hunger, helping us from overeating at mealtime.
Food, on a larger scale, is our national and racial culture, if not pride. Traditional snacks are passed down from one generation to the next. It is a shame in Hong Kong that we look down upon Chinese snacks. Western potato chips and Japanese ‘oyatsu’ dominate the snack market. They are expensive too. For the past century, immigrants from the different parts of China brought the snacks of their own provinces to Hong Kong. It was a way of preserving their culture and family unity. Northerners like ‘jiaozi’(餃子) and southerners prefer ‘wonton’(雲吞). The Europeans, Koreans, Thai, Indians, Nepalese and Malaysians in Hong Kong lead us to having more snacks. Hong Kong becomes an international melting pot of food choices. Street food has become a gastronomy which attracts tourists to Hong Kong. My friend from San Jose said, “It is amazing! When I walked around in Causeway Bay, I, within 5 minutes, discovered more than 20 kinds of food from different places in the world!”
Let me try to remember the snacks that I ate as a boy. Not every snack fits easily into my memories of classification. The world of snacks, old and new, as it turns out, is too large for us to recap.
- for better health
Do you remember ‘Watson’s Flower Pagoda Cakes(屈臣氏花塔餅) in the 1960s? They were colourful candies in a pyramid shape. Parents told us that it contains mebendazole which could treat threadworms for children. Some snacks are not sugarless but ‘sugar-less’ such as bubble biscuits(水泡餅) and moon biscuits(月光餅). The only time that we were willing to eat such tasteless healthy snacks is when we were ill at home.
- for fun
Chocolate is supposedly made from cocoa beans. In the 1960s, there was however a chocolate gun(朱古力槍) and the chocolate bullets were in fact hard candies. Such candies were not palatable and the whole thing was just for fun. Remember the old fashioned game of glass marbles? They were pretty and colourful. Some were actually marble candies(波子糖) and the idea was that you could eat the candies after play. Unfortunately, fake food was bad food. The marble candies were appalling.
- just to fill the belly
Shanghai glutinous rice roll(上海粢飯) was an example. The larger ones could be the same size of a bowl of rice. The other kind was Teochew dumpling(潮洲粉果). The ingredients of filling were very rich: minced pork, dried shrimps, shiitake mushrooms, fresh radish, yam beans and roast peanuts. A full stomach might make a dull brain. But, who cares when such dumplings are super yummy!
- to follow fashion
Some snacks are like hit melodies—once they are no longer fashionable, they disappear. In the 80s & 90s, we loved ‘Chupa Chups’(珍寶珠). Now, you ask any kid in the street and nobody can tell you what is such a candy. The same fate applies to ‘Tic Tac’(啲嗒糖). These snacks are not friends, not enemies, just strangers with some memories.
- natural choice
Chinese have a huge variety of preserved dry fruits. They are such as ‘Ka Ying Chi’(嘉應子) 、kumquat(柑桔) and ‘Wangmu Pantao’(王母蟠桃). Other natural ones include dry melon seeds(瓜子) and sugar cane(甘蔗).
- alternative
There is a herbal plant called Chinese Fevervine(雞屎藤) which smell like chicken droppings. Yet, we use it to make sticky rice cakes. Deep-fried stinky tofu(油炸臭豆腐) is one of the popular street food in Hong Kong but its notorious smell will make our memories of old snacks complete.
- freak you out
We ate an water insect called dytiscidae(水曱甴). It was surprisingly tasty. We also have pig blood congee(豬紅粥) and salt baked quail egg (鹽焗鵪鶉蛋). When I was 6 years old, my mother gave me ‘balut eggs’ (duck embryo) (鴨仔蛋) to try as I was too thin.
When we were small, we did not have much money to buy the snacks that we wanted to eat. Every cent came from parents. Now, we are grown-ups and can afford. Parents are gone. Doctors keep on telling us, “You are too fat and don’t eat snacks as much as you want to!” Whenever I walk in supermarket, I turn round and around. I want to buy my favourite snacks but the reasoning process soon interferes with my decision—I think of my life more and more as only between health and illness. Poor me!
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