A "Deep-Fried Ghost" for October
« previous post |
[This is a guest post from Mok LIng*. Asterisked notes by VHM are given below.]
Since October is the month of Halloween**, I figured I'd share an appropriately macabre folk etymology.
I had a conversation with a friend from Hong Kong the other day about breakfast — Hong Kong is, of course, famous for its culture of 飲茶 (Yale: yámchàh)***.
We both expressed our distaste for hāgáau 蝦餃 (translucent prawn dumplings) and argued a little about what fillings belong in a siūmáai 燒賣**** (Hong Kongers, as I found out, fill them with fish paste; Southeast Asian siūmáai are filled with either ground pork or chicken and chopped prawn).
We agreed, though, that the best item on a 點心 dímsām table was fried dough sticks, what my Hong Konger friend called 油炸鬼***** — "deep-fried ghosts". Have the Cantonese so mastered the art of dimensional travel that they regularly feast upon the denizens of the shadow realm?
I was disappointed to be told this was not the case. Her explanation was that the name apparently refers to a Southern Song-era official named 秦檜 Qīn Kuài, who falsified evidence in the trial of the hallowed General 岳飛 Yuè Fēi, a hero of the many wars between the Song and the Jurchens. After the innocent General Yue was executed, Qin Kuai's plot was discovered, and he was put to death alongside his wife. As news of Qin's execution reached the people, they paired up little dough sticks as effigies of the couple and slowly deep-fried them in oil so as to punish their eternal souls for their treachery. What a story!
Before you let the idea of breakfasting on Qin Kuai's soul turn you off 油炸鬼, though, let me be the first to reassure you that this story is most likely untrue. The likelier story is that the name (or more accurately, the spelling) 油炸鬼 is simply a phonetic rendering of the Hokkien 油炸粿 iû-tsā-kué, "deep-fried kué" — 粿 kué are a category of flour-based foods (see also 菜頭粿 tshài-thâu-kué, "radish cake omelette", which is savoury, and 紅龜粿 âng-ku-kué, "red tortoise cake", which is sweet).
Some articles from a few websites that repeat the Qin Kuai story — it is no doubt a very interesting one — may be found here, here, and here.
For attestations of 油炸粿 throughout written history, I found this very interesting article from 1935 (in Chinese).
finis
Notes
*Wanting to know the linguistic background and context of Mok Ling, I rattled off all these questions:
Please remind me of where you are writing to me from: Hong Kong? Guangzhou? Some place in Guangdong Province?
Is Cantonese still the main language spoken on the street, in stores, in schools, in courts, in government offices, etc. where you're writing to me from? At home? Mostly Cantonese? More and more Mandarin?
Name of your town?
How do you get together with your Hong Kong friend?
Mok Ling replied:
I suppose an introduction is overdue! I'm writing from Indonesia. I live in a city called Tangerang (that's /taŋ.ə.rang/) west of Jakarta. My mother's side is Hainanese and we speak that at home. If you remember, I sent in a few submissions last month about Hainanese.
As for my Hong Konger friend, I met her online a few years back because we were active in the same spheres on Twitter. I'd been trying to learn a little Korean, and it turned out she's a speaker since her mother was from Seoul. I must admit I am no better at Korean than I was when we first started talking.
**The word Halloween or Hallowe'en ("Saints' evening" is of Christian origin; a term equivalent to "All Hallows Eve" is attested in Old English. The word hallowe[']en comes from the Scottish form of All Hallows' Eve (the evening before All Hallows' Day): even is the Scots term for "eve" or "evening", and is contracted to e'en or een; (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en became Hallowe'en.
—–
A Scottish shortening of Allhalloweven, from Allhallowmas (the obsolete earlier name of All Saints' Day) + even (an archaic/poetic cognate of eve).
Allhallowmas can be superficially analysed as a combination of all + hallow ("saint, holy person") + -mas ("mass, church festival, holiday" as in Christmas), but it's actually a direct descendant of the Middle English and Old English terms for All Saints' Day, whose parts mean the same as in the modern expression: (Middle English Alhalwemesse) and Old English ealra hālgena mæsse (literally "the mass of all the saints", from eall, halga, and mæsse).
***"Yum cha" is a Cantonese phrase that means "drink tea" and refers to a meal that includes dim sum and Chinese tea. It's a common breakfast activity in Cantonese culture and is similar to coffee and toast in Western culture. (AI Overview [at the top of a Google search])
—-
Yum cha in the Cantonese language, both literary and vernacular, literally means "drink tea". "飲" means "to drink", and "茶" means "tea". The term is also used interchangeably with tan cha (嘆茶) in the Cantonese language, which colloquially translates to "enjoy tea". (Wikipedia)
****See the third item under "Selected readings" below.
*****油炸鬼 Cant. u4 zaa3 gwai2 MSM yóuzhá guǐ ("fried fritter; Chinese donut; Chinese cruller)
Appendix (VHM)
Yóutiáo 油條 (lit., "oil sticks", "fried dough sticks", often loosely translated as "cruller") are so much a part of Shandong language and culture, and so deeply embedded in my consciousness as something quintessentially Shandongese (my in-laws are from Shandong and I'm partially Shandongized) that I never imagined they also existed in the south, although I did once — much to my surprise — have a shāobǐng yóutiáo 燒餅油條 ("sesame seed flat cake with deep fried dough stick folded inside") in Shanghai, and it wasn't too bad. But nothing on earth is better for breakfast than a shāobǐng yóutiáo 燒餅油條 ("sesame seed flat cake with deep fried dough stick folded inside") served with steaming hot salty dòunǎi 豆奶 ("soy milk") — I'm allergic to sweet dòunǎi 豆奶 ("soy milk"), especially when drunk cold — [resuming my syntax] served by a tuìyì jūnrén 退役軍人 ("retired soldier") from Shandong in a stall on the streets of Taipei. Divine!!!
Selected reading
- "Dimsum: dot your heart" (9/26/24)
- "No word in any European language for 'a vice common in Asia'" (11/25/13) — cruller is discussed in the comments
- "Of shumai and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (7/19/16)