Gong chai (Fujian Salted Vegetables)

Gong in Foochow means a big bowl or urn. The Foochows in Minqing and Kutien districts of Fujian Provinces have been making pickled mustards or Gong Chai, since time immemorial. Today it is popularly called Suan Chai which goes well with beef noodles.

Mustard cabbage is used to prepare this sourish and salty pickled vegetable. And in the olden days, folks would have something to eat throughout the colder months or winter when they could get no greens. Usually the pickled vegetable then would be chopped finely so that the family could pick a little bit each time, to go with a mouthful of porridge or rice.

During the early days of the Foochow pioneers in Sibu, many of the elderly felt homesick for Tang Hills or Dongnan and a bit of porridge with some gongnai, with tears streaming down the face would be how they passed the evening hours. The next day the hard work of having to make money out of rubber tapping would douse the longing for their ancestral home of Minqing or Kutien.

My Ngie mah used to tell me that a little bit of gongnai would make her feel better about herself and her surroundings.

I must have inherited some of her taste buds for whenever I eat certain foods I could over come my emotional problems.

Sibu is about 3,000 km or 1,800 miles from Minqing, specifically, Buang Dong, or Buangnong, the Lau Clan's ancestral home, or her own village of Keh tou buoh (Creek Head Village) . It would later take her 1 month to sail back to China by a modern steam ship (at that time) for a first time visit to China in 1937. She had intended to build a mansion for the Lau Kah Jiu family with the cash she obtained from selling her rubber garden. Her dream house did not materialize because after a few months the Japanese attacked China. She stayed on in Minqing until she could board the first available boat for Sibu in 1944. Meanwhile my Ngie Gong or maternal grandfather passed away in Sibu.

She had brought her second son to study in Fuzhou. Aunt Hee then already in Shanghai had qualified as a certified midwife and married a doctor (Dr. Hsiung) hut they returned to Sibu before the war broke out in South East Asia.

Uncle Pang Kui graduated from high school and became a teacher, married a very educated Fuzhou city girl. All came back to Sibu after the war on the first steam ship out of Ma Wei. According to my grandmother they had very little money left so for the second time, she left China for Nanyang with hopes that life would be much better than the rubble they left behind.

The Japanese War was a huge emotional trauma for her. Grandma was small in frame, at less than 5 foot, and her shoe size was 3 as her father unbound her small feet at the age of 3 so that she could be sold to any one.  And that's another Foochow story.

For years later in life, she was very envious of her sister in law who accompanied the Foochow entourage led by her brother in law Lau Kah Tii to visit Lin Sen in Fuzhou.


Each time she had gong chai she would mention that particular trip and how she missed eating the real gong chai in Minqing. Listening to her, when we were young, we realized even then that roots were important and that good memories last.