菜尾 (Food)

Once upon a time, there had been a Taiwanese course that had no fixed ingredients, but has been a shared childhood memory of my peers. I’ve been told by many of them about how they have been missing the course and how it has made them drool at the thought of it.

This course is called菜尾(cai4 wei3) in South Min Dialect, literally meaning the “tail,” or the “end” of courses. As I said, it doesn’t have fixed ingredients. But mostly it is a mixture of thick soup stock with various kinds of meats, such as pork or chicken, and different veges. To be brief, it’s a combination of leftovers from a banquet.

Yuck! You might think it’s unhygienic 不衛生(bu2 wei4 sheng) and gross. Indeed it might be. That’s why we don’t have this course any longer. I mean the “real” 菜尾, the reheated mixture of leftovers.

In 1961, Taiwan had a GDP per capita of $153. (And in 2011 it is  $20,629.) Food was not as abundant as it is now. It would be lucky for a parent not to have to worry about feeding his kids. And most kids were constantly in a state of hunger, yearning for anything to eat. In the movie Dust in the Wind, 戀戀風塵(lian4 lian4 feng chen2), a kid was scolded by his mom because he was so hungry that he ate all the toothpaste and powder for upset stomach. The scene did remind many people of their hungry childhood and adolescence.

For some poor family, they couldn’t even afford rice every day, not to mention meats. Most people had to wait until festivals such as the Chinese New Year to have meats like pork, chicken or fish. That was what festivals were about, especially for the growing and always-hungry kids—food.

Apart from festivals, it would be occasions such as wedding banquets for people to have a feast, 打牙祭(da3 ya2 ji4), literally meaning worshiping your teeth. Very often all family members, young or old, dressed up and headed for the banquet excited. They had to give their 紅包(hong2 ba), the red envelope as a gift. Getting a full and merry meal was to be expected.

It was the host’s responsibility to feed the guests well. It stood to reason for people to abandon their usual thrift for a while for such occasions like a wedding or a worship to God. Rich and yummy dishes were served one by one until people ate and drank to their heart’s content.

More often than not, there was too much food. People just looked at the later dishes and sighed, “I’m too full for these.” They put down their chalk sticks and gave up.

What about the leftovers? Throw them away? It was considered a sin that would be condemned by God. People of that time never threw anything edible away; thus came this dish菜尾.

The leftovers were gathered in buckets and given to the relatives, good friends or helping neighbors besides the hosting family. They had to be re-boiled so that they wouldn’t rot away. The ingredients all depended on what were served and left.

Frankly speaking, I myself don’t have much memory about this course, even though I’ve read and heard people telling me how delicious it is. I was lucky and was never that “hungry” as many of my peers. I was not born to a rich family, but I’ve never starved as a kid. Perhaps that’s because my parents only had three kids, not 6 or 8 as most of the families had back then. Or perhaps my father, a teacher, thought the course was unhygienic and never brought it back.

I once saw a notice outside a diner in my neighborhood that they served菜尾. Too bad I didn’t have the chance to taste it before it was closed. No matter how it is cooked today, I think, it would never taste the same as it did, the real leftovers.

In the course of my writing this, my 15-year-old daughter approached my computer. “What is 菜尾?” she asked. I explained to her. “Gross!” she exclaimed and left. Same response as I have imaged you would have.

Did it really taste that good? Or is it just that we were too hungry?

不衛生=不卫生

戀戀風塵=恋恋风尘