No one likes to be called “old.” In the past, you called someone 老先生(lao3 xian sheng) or 老太太(lao3 tai4 tai) as a respectful title to the elderly. These days we delete the word old, 老. But we call a teacher 老師(lao3 shi) in Mandarin. Sometimes I’ll joke with my students by claiming that the reason I can’t stay young is because I am “cursed” by them, who call me 老師 every day.
But don’t get mad when someone praises you by saying that薑是老的辣, only old gingers are spicy enough. He’s giving a compliment after you succeed in something due to your abundant experience. For example, when an experienced technician fixes a machine after three young ones have tried in vain, you may as well say this to him with your thumbs up.
Gingers are divided into 老薑(lao3 jiang), old ginger, and 嫩薑(nen4 jiang), young, or tender ginger based on the time span they stay in the ground. When cropped in the fourth month, the gingers are still tender and juicy, with their skin thin and slightly –colored. These are嫩薑. Like their color, they are mild in flavor and often finely shredded to add to a soup. They are easy to shrink and cannot be stored for long.
嫩薑 ttmeishi.com 老薑, however, stays longer. They are not cropped until the tenth month, when they are harder and dryer, with their skin thicker and darker, their flavor much spicier, which is why we have such an expression as 薑是老的辣. With their strong flavor, they are used to rid of the fishy smell of food.
老薑 tech.sina.com.According to本草綱目(ben
It’s the same with people’s body. Some people are easily excited or nervous. They’re always thirsty and found of cold food. Their urine is yellower and lesser in amount. Many of them suffer from constipation. They are called to have 熱性體質(re4 xing4 ti3 zhi2), a “hot body.” On the contrary, if they’re always exhausted and listless, but not so thirsty. They are found of hot food. Their urine is lighter in color and more in amount. it’s 寒性體質(han2 xing4 ti3 hi2), a “cold body.”
If you have a "cold body," gingers are your friends. In winter when it’s freezing cold, people like to have gingers cooked with brown sugar and drink it to warm themselves up, because gingers belong to the溫熱 group. Eating “hot food” helps a “cold body” balance itself. This is a general principle of eating in terms of溫熱 or寒涼
Traditionally a woman after labor will have a so-called Post-labor confinement month 坐月子(zuo4 yue4 zi3), when she eats a lot of 麻油雞酒(ma2 you2 ji jiu3), chicken cooked with rice wine, sesame oil and gingers. Here I’d like omit the other regulations and focus on the gingers.
The reason for a post-labor woman to have麻油雞酒is that Chinese people think in the process of the labor, her pores and bones are “open,” which makes ready accesses for 風寒(feng han3), the chills to enter her body and make her sick. With a different makeup from the westerners, she has to eat what helps her get rid of those “chills,” which is what the 麻油雞酒for. If you keep smelling the wonderful aroma of sesame oil with ginger in your neighborhood, probably you have a newborn baby from the eastern Asia .
But this love for麻油雞酒 or food of such kind is not limited to post-labor women. In winter, especially when a cold front hits, you’ll see people getting together to eat tonics to get warmer or healthier, which we call 進補(jin4 bu3). 薑母鴨(jiang mu3 ya), old gingers with duck, is one of the most favored tonics.
薑母(jiang mu3) is the expression for old gingers in the southern Min dialect. One day my son Steve told me that for a long while he had considered the course as “gingers with she-duck,” as he saw it as薑●母鴨, which actually should be薑母●鴨. This is not some uncommon error when reading Chinese. My foreign friends in Taiwan, when you see on the street the boards with the three words, have you ever had the same wonder as my son Steve had, Why the she-ducks?
薑是老的辣=姜是老的辣
本草綱目=本草纲目
溫熱=温热
寒涼=寒凉
熱性體質=热性体质
寒性體質=寒性体质
麻油雞酒=麻油鸡酒
進補=进补
薑母鴨=姜母鸭
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