A "Deep-Fried Ghost" for October
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[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)
Frank L Chance said,
October 3, 2024 @ 3:35 pm
If you prefer to eat your spirits boiled, you might go to Osaka and order obake (お化け) in a shady bar. This may need some explanation, however.
Obake (three syllables, with the ke pronounced like the name "Kay") is composed from the honorific o (in hiragana in modern orthography but also written with 御)and the nominalized form of the verb bakeru (化ける) to change or transform. Since early modern times this term, along with its longer form bakemono (化け物), refers to ghosts which are viewed as beings transformed from their normal living forms into supernatural spirits. Okay, that explains the word, but what is the food, you ask.
The dish is rendered whale blubber, which looks like white froth and in my experience tastes much like it looks. As the cook in this video explains (https://youtu.be/yXGxUypRt-Y?si=jHJcPwakD_n_QRxW) the name obaki (written as オバキ in katakana in the description) is pronounced obake in Osaka, where I first encountered it more than forty years ago, before the over-harvesting of whales got much media attention. I agree with the cook in the video that it is best eaten with sumiso (vinegar and soybean paste) but in the current ecological conditions it may be best not to eat it at all.
Victor Mair said,
October 3, 2024 @ 5:36 pm
Splendid comment, Frank!
Anything hen 変 or ka 化 — "transformational" — is grist for the mill at this time of year.
Victor Mair said,
October 4, 2024 @ 4:23 pm
From Chau Wu:
Oh, how this post on 油條 brought back fond memories of my younger years in Taipei – sometimes I would have 燒餅油條 and 甜豆漿 (I tasted the salty one only once, that was it) for breakfast. For a midnight snack, when I was in high school and college, I would go to a food stall near our house and get a big bowl of the incomparable 山東牛肉麵, served by a 老榮民 (old veteran). That was divine for me.
About the Hokkien/Taiwanese name of 油條, I recalled that my 6-grade teacher taught us the same folk story about the origin of this popular breakfast staple, and he told us the name was written as 油炸檜 for Taiwanese. Of course, the 檜 refers to 秦檜. I thought it was a real cool story. Now after reading Mok Ling's post, I realized that my teacher probably was mistaken. 油條 is called in Taiwanese iû-chhia-kóe, with the last morphosyllable kóe in the second tone (陰上聲). But 檜 kòe is in the third tone (陰去聲), thus, the tone does not fit. All my life since the sixth grade, I did not realize I had it wrong until I read this post.
When my wife and I toured the West Lake of Hangzhou two decades ago, we came to 岳王廟 Yuè Wáng Miào, the temple dedicated to the loyal general Yuè Fēi 岳飛. In front of the temple there was a pair of bronze statues depicting a kneeling couple of Qín Kuài and his wife. I took pictures of them as a reminder that, sad to say, these people are in control of Taiwan's parliament now.
KIRINPUTRA said,
October 6, 2024 @ 11:11 pm
First, a medium-deep bow to the gods of etymology. In the long run, they only tolerate the very humble and the highly meticulous. And certain disciplines are wary of the latter.
油炸鬼 (etc.) is interesting. The 油 is straightforward, and it certainly seems plausible that the last syllable originated as Hoklo KÚE (to use the Teochew spelling). But in lieu of more data — which may be out there; I havenʻt been able to look very hard — we have to acknowledge the odd possibility that the last syllable in (Teochew) IÛ-CHA-KÚE (etc.) is also downstream of a folk etymology following some earlier borrowing.
Any conclusion involving 炸 is probably premature. Unbeknownst to most — and this too is by design — the etymon known as 炸 didnʻt spread out of Middle China till early modern times or around there; the sinograph itself was (& is) basically “Chinese heartland Nôm”. The Hokkien cognate CHÀ- (not a standalone word, AFAIK) was borrowed from Mandarin c. 1910. But the diversity of surface forms in modern Hoklo (e.g. IÛ-CHIA̍H-KÓE, or northern Taioanese IÛ-CHHIA-KÉ or IÛ-CHHIA-KÓE, as known to Victor) & other languages (e.g. Vietnamese GIÒ CHÁO QUẨY) is incongruous with such a late start for 油炸鬼. It seems clear that we still just donʻt know where 炸鬼 came from, linguistically. (Either that, or Iʻm just informationally malnourished at the moment.)
Jonathan Smith said,
October 8, 2024 @ 12:28 pm
Hm, also iû-chià-ké in Douglas's dictionary… could this reflect chià '[sugar] cane' given geometry? A stretch…
The whole compound looks kinda "Mount Taishan" / "比萨饼", "ko-phi-tê" -ish… but also whence k(o)é 'cake' to begin with? This feels like a core old culture word…
Jonathan Smith said,
October 8, 2024 @ 12:46 pm
^ I guess '[rice] cake' is probably shared with Hmong-Mien given forms at Ratliff (2010: 91). There are lots of such words.
Kinda re: that, Cantodict says "this character [粿] is occasionally pronounced gwe1 after the Chaozhou pronunciation," but there is no such thing as (Jyutping) "g/kwe." So among the dictionary entries we find caau2 gwai2 diu1 'Char kway teow', with -ai not -e but still clearly one of those increasingly rare inter-Sinitic phonetic borrowings. Unless in part also directly from HM…
Jonathan Smith said,
October 8, 2024 @ 12:51 pm
oops, 2010 p. 90 not 91
KIRINPUTRA said,
October 12, 2024 @ 8:38 am
@ Jonathan Smith
IÛ-CHIÀ-KÉ is another great form, which the Amoy & associated wordbooks worked out to be 油灸粿, again suggesting the frailty of "lite etymology."
I suspect the last two syls. are more core than the first. Just a hunch, though — maybe informed by the Indonesian form, CAKWE.
As for 粿 / 菓:
https://ji.taioan.org/gisu/?n=920
http://www.kaom.net/img.php?b=fy_xdhyfydcd&p=5762
There may be circularity in this idea. And a lot of dust has yet to settle.
Jonathan Smith said,
October 12, 2024 @ 1:55 pm
@KIRINPUTRA
Yes very interesting idea re: last two syllables. By "whence k(o)é," I meant that this item, while widespread in the southern Chinese languages, looks like it began as one of many rice cultivators' words that entered Min etc. as "Han" farmers expanded southwards.
While otherwise would be cooler, I increasingly doubt the above is circular; i.e., the conventional view that Min languages are to be understood basically as Chinese core + southern substrate seems to fit the evidence best. The populations involved could of course have skewed more indigenous-southern than their languages did/do. I remember you compared the names "Min" and "Mien" somewhere but can't remember where… I wrote as much in a paper at some point — totally offhand of course but there could well be something to it.
Vampyricon said,
October 15, 2024 @ 2:38 pm
Siumai in Hong Kong: They're typically fish paste because that's the "junk food" version. The version you get in yumcha (which is what's being discussed here!) has pork and mushrooms and is typically topped with fish roe.
油炸鬼 is jau4 zaa3 gwai2 in Cantonese.