Har Chien : Appetizer

 My mother used to relate a lot of stories about the Foochows and the Melanaus doing trade along the Rajang River, during the Japanese Occupation when there was little for the Foochows to barter trade with the Melanaus.

The coastal peopl paddled their boats to their village , Nang Chong, offering salted fish, fermented fish, cincalok, belacan, and nipah products.

As my mother's family badly needed the salt, she had to part with some white rice she harvested for the nipah salt, sugar and cincalok.

My grandmother returned to Sarawak after her stay in China during the Japanese war in 1945. She experienced the very difficult post war years of want and lack as she had spent all her money in China. She literally spent a small fortune educating her second son, eldest and third daughters. Because of the invasion of the Japanese she could not build the house she dreamed of. So she had to return to Sarawak to recoup without realizing that it would be her last trip to China.

Cincalok or Har Chien was so precious to my grandmother that she would only poke a chopstick into the bottle to get a taste the the salty appetizer.

The bik story of her just smacking her lips with a chopstick of cincalok always amused us when we were kids. Was it hard for her to remember her days in China and to face reality in Sarawak?

But her daughters eventually married well and her sons also did well. Only her youngest son went back to China to live his dream of a good education.

Later I would rather think that she was like a deer needing some salt, looking for a salt lick. That was the kind of association I had with her desire for salt. My grandmother was to live a fairly long life, with no issues related to salty diets. She was able to eat a lot of salted vegetables, cincalok, fish sauce till the end of her days.

Indeed after the war, when peace came and a neigbhour started making bean curd (soy beans were imported again), my grandmother liked to steam her bean curd with some cincalok and ginger.

To this day, I will do the same when I get fresh cincalok in Miri.