Visit to Minqing : Fish Display

 

Fish is plentiful in the Min River, which flows into the East China Sea, after passing Fuzhou City. Today in order to meet the demand of the growing population of the Min valley, fish farms (fish reared in cages can be found in many parts of the Min River).

However, this post is mainly about fish from the Mui keh/ Creek/Brooke which runs through Minqing, where my ancestors came from. It is a small river which waters the farms and also as a source of food. It is a tributary of the Min River.

I cannot find a map to show where the Mui joins the Min, as it would probably show how our Foochow ancestors walked from their villages to Fuzhou city to meet Wong nai siong at the beginning of the 20th century.

When I last visited, I sat by a small restaurant, next to the creek and enjoyed a rain soaked afternoon. I thought about my grandfather and his brother paddling a small boat down the creek, or walking on a footpath on the bank. It must have been a simple rustic life for them who had big dreams to go to Nanyang.

The  Fujian coast is the source for Foochow shrimp sauce and also oil (har yiu),which has long been an essential ingredient of Min Cuisine.

My maternal grandmother , sitting by the balcony, never failed to talk about having a bit of har yiu whenever she did not have an appetite. She would sit there, fanning herself and talked about the old days. Her stories were our main source of entertainment in those days. And we never had enough of her stories.

She told us that prawns and fish were plentiful when she was a child in Minqing. And so did many cousins who later became part of our lives in Sibu, when they left China in the 1950's to be reunited with their families and to escape from the Communist Regime.

When I had the opportunities to visit Fujian in the 21st century, I did not hesitate to go and to see for myself what my grandmother and relatives saw.

Indeed some of the nicest dishes are fresh water fish.

A few banquets were had when we went to Minqing and I had the opportunity to eat a sweet and sour fish called Squirrel Mandarin Fish. ( Every one I was told in Minqing knows how to cut the flesh of a fish with a pair of sharp scissors and deep fry the fish to make it look like a squirrel. Hence the ame of the dish Squirrel Mandarin Fish.松鼠鳜鱼.

When I first tasted sweet and sour fish at a banquet in Nang Chong, I was rather dismayed because I had not acquired the taste of the sweet sour tomato. It was much later that I learned to like the Huan Giah (foreign berry).

Every Chinese New Year when we were young, my mother would buy tomatoes to cook sweet and sour fish . How I miss the dish.

(Photo of the beautiful dish is from Google)