“Hitting wife” vege (Food)

 from 松青食材百科事典

This is the vege you often see in the hot pot, 火鍋(huo3 guo), or in 湯圓(tang yuan2), dumplings made of glutinous rice flour served in soup in Taiwan. We call it 茼蒿(tong2 hao) in Mandarin but jokingly we’ll call it “hitting wife vege” 打某菜 in South Min Dialect.

It is rich in carotene, iron and calcium, which help you with your blood and bone. But what does it have to do with the act of hitting wife?

Try cooking it yourself and you’ll know. You labor yourself in the kitchen washing off the attached sand and cook it. You open the pot. Is that all the big bunches of vege you have just put in?

It is said that once a farmer brought back a big basket of茼蒿for his wife to cook. When it was served, he was unsatisfied with the small dish of vege and thought his wife had eaten part of it while cooking it. The poor wife got a good beating by her husband, who didn’t know that this vege shrank a lot from cooking.

This is a hearsay about the origin of this special name. From the story I get two points. First of all, food was very precious in my grandfather’s days and getting full was a big deal. Second, the status of this wife at home was nothing more than that of a servant. She was supposed to cook the food that didn’t “belong to” her and shouldn’t be enjoyed by her before her husband or any other members of the family. In addition, her husband would beat her whenever he gets an excuse.

To write this article, I googled a little bit about hitting wife. A report in 2009 claimed that one-fifth of British men hit their wives according to a study by the government of UK. The top reason for them to hit their wives is that they dress themselves too revealingly. Another report says that in the U.S., a wife is beaten by her husband every some ten seconds.

The famous author魯迅, Lu Xun (1881-1936) once said that in Chinese society, people oppressed and abused those who are under their class. The lowest-class men could, at least, let off their steam by beating their wives.

In Taiwan, we have a saying in South Min Dialect that goes as “those who hit their wives are animals like pigs, dogs, and bulls.” 打某豬狗牛. My interpretation for this saying is that it’s advisory for those who take hitting wife for granted, which might be nothing unprevalent back in the old days before women’s liberation. Only when hitting wife is so common do you need to degrade it into beast level to talk people out of it.

Back to my grandma’s days, women couldn’t sit at the dinning table and eat until the other family members had finished their meal. Those were days when food was rare and precious and most people were starved. How much food would be left for women, who actually cooked it? No wonder some women would resort to “stealing” it. No wonder the husband in the story would be alert and hit his wife only for a dish of vege.

I’ve heard a lot about how Shanghai men are such “good husbands” that they “go home from work with a fish in one hand to prepare dinner for the whole family.” In my recent Internet surf I found a saying which is said to have been passed around Shanghai women, “The first-class men are afraid of their wives, 怕老婆(pa4 lao3 po2); The second-class men scold their wives罵老婆(ma4 lao3 po2); The third class men hit their wives打老婆(da3 lao3 po2). Shanghai men seem to have been depicted as “small husbands” that is a “mutation.”

Taiwanese writer 龍應台(long2 Ying4 tai2) has written an article praising the Shanghai men she has discovered as extremely “good husbands,” who will cook for their wives when there are guests at home, when all their wives have to do is dress up and make themselves look good.

I have to say I’m very cautious and conserved about classifying people only because where they are from. A non-wife-hitter will never hit his wife even though every neighbor of his is doing it or whatever his wife has done. And in today’s society, when gender equality has been emphasized and practiced, there are still men, regardless of their educational background or social status, hitting wives as they want.

Does it make a good husband or good wife only because he/she cooks for you? Should we label a husband or a wife as incompetent only because he/she seldom goes into kitchen and cook? I want to say “equality” shouldn’t be interpreted that way.

Of course as a woman and wife, I’m glad I can eat whatever I want when I’m cooking. And I can sit at the table with my family to enjoy the meal. Next time when you enjoy a dish of 茼蒿on the table, show some gratitude to the one who has prepared it, be it your husband or wife, who has endured the heat in the kitchen and labored for a while to serve it.

火鍋=火锅

湯圓=汤圆

魯迅=鲁迅

罵老婆=骂老婆

龍應台=龙应台