April 30, 2016

Sibu Food : Steamed Egg



Steamed egg is one of the mainstays of many families meals for as long as I remember. It is an all time favourite and is a recommended food for patients in the hospital too.

My mother makes it very well, soft and fluffy with only three eggs.No photo description available.

My cousin hides some minced pork at the bottom to give it a nice base and a better flavour.

My mother sometimes would make steamed minced pork for lunch. What is left is used as a base for her steamed egg. Nothing is left to waste.

I would always remember her saying that if we know how to plan our meals, we could save a lot of money. And food would be ever so tasty too.

Steamed egg is one dish which tied us over for many many years.

Cost of three eggs in those days? 45 cents.

April 28, 2016

sIBU tALES : sERATI

Chuong wang, or huang ark is a special breed of ducks with red face. Their feathers can be all white or green and black. Most of them can grow up to 5 or 6 kg.
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Photo of braised duck by M.H Ting.
They make good soups and are also used to make the famous Soy sauce braised duck or Pah Lo duck by the Hakkas and Cantonese.

The Foochows love Duck Soup, Duck Essence or 8 Treasure Duck Soup.
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Google Photo - 8 treasure duck.
It is a very nutritious protein.

April 25, 2016

China Series : Wun Chieh's Dried Bamboo Shoots

Rehydrated Bamboo shoots from China, sold in Sibu.











Dried bamboo shoots are very important food items of Fujian. The fresh bamboo shoots are collected and dried so that every one could have food on the table during the winter months. They are also very importnat ingredients for all the 4 importan festivals.

Bamboo shoots means productivity, eternity and long and healthy life.

There are many good dishes which use bamboo shoots and they are given very auspicious names in Chinese.

there is one Chinese new dish which is made up of rehydrated bamboo shoots, pork leg, belly pork, mushrooms and many other ingredients. The whole pot is cooked over and over again. And grandmothers would say, " Siak Meh Liu or cannot finish eating". This are the auspicious words uttered throughout the `15 days of the Lunar New Year!!


April 23, 2016

Sibu Food : Soft or Silk Tofu



There are many ways of cooking silk or soft tofu.
......clay pot tofu with miso sauce.
.......steamed tofu ..photo from Ivy Ngui

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April 16, 2016

China Series : How to "fix" tea keaves (in China)

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The process of preparing tea leaves for sale is very tedious and long.

Wilting tea leaves in a warm pan is called Kill-green or fixation, a step which will stop oxidation of the tea leaves.


Family : 24 Acres

24 acres is a special name of a village in Sibu.Image may contain: 17 people

It was started by my grand uncle, Tiong Kung Eng who was given the land title when he applied through Rev James Hoover for a piece of land from the Rajah in 1920's. Later he sold the land to 6 farmers who started to develop the land , establish a primary school (Boi Ing) and a church. 30 years later Ling Chu Ming donated more funds to the church and help improve the conditions of the area.

My grand uncle, having lost his wife and son in 24 acres decided to pack his bags and move in with my grandfather to work as supervisor of his rice farm and pepper garden in Bintangor. He soon died (people said of a broken heart).
Today if you mention 24 acres, you would be referring to a village with several families, including my friend, Wong Meng Lei's family and many others. It was interesting how one land title, belong to one land owner would eventually be sub divided into to many pieces of land over the years. Hope my grand uncle is smiling from heaven. (Photo by wong Meng Lei)
Today there are still many people with the surname Sii from 24 acres. My Grand Aunt was a Sii.

Sibu Tales : "Orange Chicken" with sesame seeds


In the United States, a very popular chicken dish is "General Tso' Sesame Chicken.

When a West Bank Sibu restaurant Tang Kee started serving sesame chicken, people came in droves to order it for their lunch guests.

Sesame and chicken is a good marriage but is not Foochow in origin. The Tang Kee recipe is a whole chicken coated with a lot of sesame chicken.
Tang Kee's Sesame Chicken (PHoto by Sarawakiana)


Soon many other restaurants start to serve chicken nugget coated with sesame seeds.

In other parts of Malaysia, there is also a fairly popular dish called Orange Chicken with sesame seeds.

In the age of the Internet, chefs today are more adventurous. It is now easy to find so many different kinds of chicken recipes, both new and traditional. And some are even "invented" for political reasons.

In fact the idea of chicken coated with sesame seeds might have come from the famous American Chinese dish called General Tso's Chicken. General Tso was a Hunanese but when researched, the Hunanese do not have this recipe.

There is a documentary film that premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. It was directed by Ian Cheny and produced by Amanda Murray and Jennifer B. Lee.

April 15, 2016

China Series : Chai Buoh Giang


In the olden days radish was grown along the Rajang River basin in large amounts. Somehow in my memory as well as many of my contemporaries' memories our relatives did not have many problems with bugs, viruses and diseases which attacked their vegetables.

So radishes were quite easily grown and well harvested. The surplus would always be made in dried and slated radish slices, stored in jars or bottles and taken out to fry as side dishes for our porridge.

This fried ,salted and preserved radish slices (often chopped fine) has always been a comfort food for us.

Today preserved radishes can come all the way from China as few people grow their own vegetables in Sarawak. Radish is no longer easily grown because of plant diseases too.

Besides China, TAiwan, Australia and Genting Highlands can produce large quantities of fresh radishes.

China Series : Nanjing Road




My father used to tell the family about Shanghai and the Nanjing Road. During his days in Shanghai, Nanjing Road was THE place to be seen. It was a great commercial centre even then in the 1930's.

Recently I visited Shanghai and had a chance not only to walk down Nanjing Road but go to the back lanes to study the life there.

I found amazing images.


I found a barber shop under a stair case and saw the barber doing his job the traditional way. He was kind and courteous to allow me to take his photos.






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His customer must be enjoying his happy hours !

I saw other peope doing their own work. Very traditional.


There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something. Henry Ford

China Series : Lushan

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Pearl S. Buck's Villa in Lushan.
It was a cold early spring morning in April 2016 that my team mates and I visited Lushan, the  summer retreat of many early missionaries to China. One of the families who owned a summer villa was the family of Pearl S. Buck.

She was born in 1892 in the USA to her Southern Presbyterian missionary parents, Caroline Maude (Stulting) and Absolom Syndenstricker. She was brought to China when she was 5 months old. Unlike many other missionary children, Pearl was brought up bi lingual. She had a Chinese tutor and her own mother taught her English. Nanking was hyer home. However she furthered her studies in the US but she returned to help her parents and in fact was a missionary from1914 to 1932.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Her acceptance speech included these words, I am an American by birth and by ancestry", but "my earliest knowledge of story, of how to tell and write stories, came to me in China."

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Pearl S, Buck's house in Zhengjiang.
After she left China in 1934 while her husband John L. Buck  remained in China.  In 1936 they were divorced. She remained in the US and continued her work as a writer. She was not allowed back to China until she died om 1973.

Her tombstone which she designed herself had only Chinese characters.Image result for Pearl S Buck tombstone

Her books were widely read by both Asians and Americans and now the Chinese (both in the Chinese and English versions).

"The Good Earth" was a secondary school text in Malaysia when education was still in the English medium.

April 14, 2016

Alugbati or Sak Chai (Foochow)



The Chinese love this vegetable. It is malabar spinach but the Foochows call it Sak Chai (I have no idea why it is called this).

The leaves when stir fried have a slimy effect. Some people like it, some people don't. If simply fried with some garlic and a hint of salt, it is a fabulous vegetable dish.

Besides this spinach grows very easily any where in the farm. Just a bit of soil, a bit of sun and the spinach will crawl up any stick, any fence and even any shrub!

It is also a very healthy vegetable for people who require more vitamins, minerals and other trace elements.

When I was growing up, and we were not able to buy the best of food, my mother grew a lot of this vegetable. It never failed to sprout and spread up and down and everywhere!! It was so easy to grow and we ate plenty of it. We were indeed very grateful that we often a big plate of this vegetable on the dining table. Praise God.

Sarawak Plants : Nipah Nut


The nipah palm flowers just at the tide level. The flowers are fabulously beautiful. However once they turn to seed they become brown. A whole cluster of the nipah seeds may float away in the ebbing tide to another part of the Sarawak coast. Some of the seeds even germinate while still floating in the sea. This is how the palm propagate. The fruit is  seasonal.


The Nipah fruit or nut called attap chee is like a mini coconut. A strong good knife can cut it open and one can find the flesh sweet and tasty. The attap chee has been canned by many Malaysian factories. It is also a common product from Thailand.

During the Japanese Occupation, the Foochows who lived from 16 Company and below, from Binatang to Paloh, would collect attap chee during their spare time. These FREE attap chee did not come during a special season. So it was a kind of lucky draw for these Foochow foragers. While looking for fish, snails they might chance about some attap chee.

The fruits would be taken home and the children would enjoy something sweet for a change.

 Alas they had a lot of competition for the scarce item.

Soh Mien on First Day of Lunar New Year

 Today 10.2.2024 is the first day of the New Lunar Year of the Dragon. Yes I have cooked the chicken and made the soh mien. Happy New Year!!...