There's soy sauce ... And then there's real soy sauce.
Tsang Heh Kwan, 74, makes real soy sauce, the dark, viscous kind the great Chinese chefs used thousands of years ago, known as "black gold" when Dutch merchants brought it to the kitchens of Sun King Louis XIV in late 17th century Versailles.
In a small factory in Hong Kong's rural outskirts, she is one of the last people preparing the sauce to the ancient formula. When she dies, she says, perhaps it will die with her. She is unwilling to see it simply commercialized without respect.
A biochemist from China, Tsang learnt the secret art from one of the last soy sauce masters in the 1950s, before Mao Zedong's (
"When I die, this will get lost," she said at her company factory, I-Ho-Yuan Food Product Ltd. "There is nobody interested enough in soy sauce with the necessary scientific knowledge."
Her thick sweetish sauce is known to bring out the best tastes from food, particularly when used for boiling meat. It has been served at banquets for Chinese Communist leaders and found favor among gourmets in places as far away as Japan, and France.
The best soy sauce is used in moderation. It has similar culinary pedigrees to such ancient condiments as the famed fish sauce of the Roman Mediterranean world, the detailed recipes for which were lost.
Outside her office, the ground is lined with round ceramic jugs and square concrete boxes in which soybeans, the base ingredient, ferment for up to a year and more.
Tsang says the secret lies in the fine chemical balance of the fermentation and in spotting selected beans with the right micro-organisms in a room where humidity and temperature are under strict control.
Dipping her fingers to test the sticky mixture of soybeans, salt and wheat, the tall old woman said: "I am good at technology, though I am not strong in business development."
With the help of two assistants, Tsang produces about 20 tonnes of sauce each month. After fermentation, it is cooked on a slow wood fire before being funnelled manually into bottles.
Historians believe the Chinese invented soy sauce some 2,500 years ago, making the liquid seasoning from the salty paste of fermented grain. It was developed by Buddhists, who were vegetarians and shunned meat-based sauces.
But Tsang said that during the Cultural Revolution, China lost most of the recipes which soy masters had passed down through the generations. Some recipes were recovered afterwards from Japan, which had taken them from China in the 13th century, but they had been modified to suit Japanese tastes.
Even the best Japanese soy sauce is not as thick, being more suited to raw fish than meats.
Born the fourth of seven children to a chemistry professor, Tsang studied biology, chemistry and physiology in Xiamen, a coastal city in the southern province of Fujian.
In the 1950s, she joined Amoy Corp in Hong Kong, a food giant specializing in Chinese products.
She said she acquired the soy formula from Yung Da San, the soy master at Amoy whom the company had brought from Xiamen.
As a young woman, she became friends with Yung, a proud man in his 80s who turned away other high-paid scientists or apprentices.
"He let me stay with him and watch him making the sauce because I respected him, treated him with good tea and listened to his stories," she said. "I treated him with my true heart."
Each evening, she said, she went back to the laboratory and experimented until she deciphered the formula.
With support from a wealthy family friend, Tsang launched her own soy sauce business in 1974. Her husband fell ill, and she had to support her two boys. "It would have been quite expensive to start a canning factory," she said.
Soon her business took off and she was asked to advise various companies on setting up soy sauce factories in countries as far afield as Australia, the US and the Philippines.
Once, she turned down an invitation to head a project in Houston, Texas. Her sick husband preferred to stay in Hong Kong.
Tsang may not pass on the recipe, and seems more concerned these days in spending her evenings in the kitchen, extracting Chinese medicines from plants, fungus or insects as a hobby.
Tsang said that, although several companies wanted to learn the soy sauce method, they had no sincerity. "I am a researcher more than a businesswoman, and money is not everything."
"Thanks to the Chinese medicine, I have no health problems. I do not even need reading glasses at my age," she said, running about her spacious workshop, surrounded by Hong Kong's steep mountains.
Asked what she cooks with her soy sauce, Tsang smiled and said: "I have had no time for cooking ... [But] I am very happy."
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
RSS