Eating Sweet and Sour Pork Downriver

Down river, upriver.

When I was young, going to see Grandma meant that we had to travel downriver. It was a normal term in Sibu. It meant we had to take a motor launch which would take an hour or more to reach Nang Chong, a village further down the river, towards the South China Sea.

Upriver would mean places like Kanowit, Song and Kapit.

The Malay word for upriver is Hulu and downriver is Hilir.

In the olden days, wedding feasts and birthday celebratios were usually catered by village groups.

The home catering service of wedding or birthday feasts down river was well appreciated.

This  Litchi Pork was served  the welcome banquet in Fuzhou when I visited in 2018.

One of the dishes every one enjoyed was the sweet and sour pork which was a derivative of the Litchi Pork of Fuzhou.

I remember as a child how an uncle prepared for the dish for my cousin's wedding in Nang Chong.

There were a few cooks to help out and there were only three or four stoves for them to do all the cooking from scratch!!

This included slaughtering the pigs,chickens and ducks too.



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With everything already ordered, he made sure that there were tins of pineapple cubes for his particular dish for the feast. I never did realise  then how hard it was to prepare sweet and sour pork for 15 tables .

Most downriver guests loved this dish because of the special taste and not every one then could buy tinned pineapples just to cook this dish as most farming families had very simple food at home. Moreover, many of the children never even had the chance of attending a wedding banquet in Sibu town!!

First the right amount of good flour coated seasoned lean pork cubes would be deep fried. It looked as if there was a huge basin of fried pork cubes!!

Then some slices of chillies, cubed cucumber, sliced onions and garlic and some sugar would be stir fried in heated oil.  When done, the whole basim of pork cubes would be poured into the enormous  kuali.To thicken the sauce, using the syrup from the tinned pineapples, the cook added some tapioca starch.

It really took a huge chef like a TARZAN to do this kind of food preparation.

Food catering was amazing in those days when facilities were minimal, without refrigeration and electrical appliances.

And at the end of the feast many would even have extras (Chai Deh) to take away!!

Let us always remember the cooks who helped made our downriver feasts so memorable.