Marrow Soup

A long time ago I did not know that the ugly brown cucumber was an entirely different vegetable from the green ones. I thought it took the green ones a year to grow and ripen, or mature into the old looking ones. For after all the Foochow call them Old Cucumbers, lou chier gua.

Nowadays I  have a good chuckle whenever I buy an Old cucumber to make soup.

In China, cucumbers are called yellow melon. Here in Sarawak the Foochows call them chier gua, or thorny melon.

From the ancient days, we Chinese have regarded the old cucumber, the ugly brown skinned marrow as a good vegetable which have cleansing and purifying properties.

Thus the highly valued ugly yellow melon fetches a high price in the market.

It is always good to have this soup when we eat out at the Economy Fast Food stalls. And some stalls even serve the soup as a free gift to their customers!

In restaurants, we can order this soup, if it is available. OId cucumbers are not year round vegetables.

My maternal grandmother was very humorous about this soup. Although it was common knowledge  that the old yellow cucumbers were good for old people (keeping the old people healthy) she would always say that the young good for nothing would leave the old vegetables for the elders to eat while they themselves would eat the young green cucumbers.

The OLD yellow melon soup is a soup that evokes a lot of good memories.