Nang Chong : Padi Cultivation and Small Crab Sauce

 The Foochows since they migrated to Sibu have always made their special crab sauce called Pangi Cheong.

My uncle Lau Yung Chiong and his family lived in this house and all around this house was a large field which was used to grow rice for years I remember. Both uncle and his wife were very hardworking and they grew their own rice every year with the help of their children.

My aunt, wife of Lau Yung Cheong, was the best Pangi Cheong maker in the whole of Nang Chong because she had three big sons who could help her. she had quite big plot of padi field and her sons would cut the grass to line up the field . But putting the dried grass all along the edges of the padi field, the boys actually trapped the small crabs under the dried grass. They would breed very quickly.

when they started to grow bigger (after the first day of the 8th month) the boys would start collecting the pangi. the small crabs were just like miracles for they came out in full force. Cousins used to tell us that there were tons of them, crawling around and even crossing foot paths.

They would chase the crabs into the dried grass and then pull the grass up. There would be buckets and buckets of them to collect.

My three cousins used to tell us that their arms were bitten by the small crabs. But it was all worth their efforts.

Aunty Yung Cheong would clean the buckets of pangi, and salt them over night. The next day, while the older boys had to go to work, the youngest boy Ah Meu, would be tasked to push the stone grinder to make the pangi paste.

The paste with some red wine added would become fermented after a few days. And the resultant crab

sauce would be enjoyed by every one.

Today a 750 ml bottle of this delicacy or pangi cheong costs around RM50.00 And it is very very difficult to find. The original recipe called for pure grounded crab paste, mixed with only a bit of rice wine lees and some RED rice wine.

During the planting season and harvesting season, the farmers would be very busy and would have no time to prepare proper food. The crab sauce would be just the right kind of rice pusher and whet up a good appetite.

Wasn't it a good way to start the planting season? Farmers got their buckets of small crabs to make a good sauce, and soon the dried up grass would be burnt to act as fertilizer for the new crop of padi. Life was such a good cycle of different seasonal activities.

But most important of all, we kids just marvelled at God's nature. Why did the small crabs appear only in the month of August? And to mate? 

Today many new generation youth would not understand the value of this special sauce.