Wet Markets, Buddhism, and Good Plant Food
Chinese Buddhism prospers in the south, especially in Guangdong and Fujian provinces. Yet despite this, these two regions have the least plant-forward cuisines of China. Fujianese people eat everything, from the more mundane oyster omelets to cold worm jelly and chicken fetus, from fancy sit-down restaurants down to the undifferentiated street carts. Youthful dapaidang eateries outside our old Air BNB would roar to life at sundown, serving beer, drinking games, and plates and plates of every type of little shellfish and seafood under the sun.
As you might imagine, wet markets in Xiamen reflected this inter-special diversity. They were on a whole other level. Traversing swamps like Bashi, your feet trudged besides puddles of swimming and dying fish, tubs of oysters and clams spitting salty water in all directions, full-scaled alligators, frozen in contorted mid-step just beside your toes, on ice… Rubber band-bound live crabs, sold next to illegally harvested sharks. Fugitive shrimp, flapping so hard they would occasionally fly out of their crates. Whole slabs of still bloody cow and lamb, sitting un-air-conditioned with little paper fans spinning above to ward off the colonies of flies.
Butchery happened live here, and you saw all of it. One stone-face man, who would somehow be present every time I visited, even years later, would sit next to a tiny bird cage, perennially packed with little quails. Gazing with dead eyes towards some far off spot on the ground, his hands and metal shears had become a machine. A bird would come out of the cage, one cut to the neck, head flies off. One cut to the feet, and then reaching in, to what one second ago was a live creature, he would salvage out a full-tissued hunk of baby meat. Blood spilled into the bucket at his feet, or onto the nearby pavement.
This was the best market in all of Xiamen. They had the freshest produce, the best and widest varieties of dried fungi, were the only purveyors of Fujian wheat gluten, and even had two vegetarian specific retail shops. But most of what Master Chen and I liked to buy was inside the market. You had to wade through the swamp to get your beans and tofu.
My friends Abei and Ali didn’t mind any of this, as did most people in Xiamen. “You’d rather have your meat killed weeks ahead, wrapped in plastic, and frozen until you’re ready to eat it? Sure, go ahead.” Despite the complete lack of cold chain technology, food was, in some senses of the word, fresher. Now, for someone eating plants, this was little consolation.
After months of living in Xiamen, I believed that Fujian people ate everything. But it said that Guangdong people ate even more.
Guangdong people even ate Fujian people.
(Obviously not!! But Fujian people like to make the joke.)
In recent history, live monkey brains were still being eaten in Guangdong. Reportedly tied to harnesses under special monkey brain tables, which featured a gaping hole down the middle to fit the live creature’s skull. Diners would saw a small window into the cranium and enjoy spooning out the raw entrails as the creature shrieked and howled. The practice doesn’t happen anymore. At least to public knowledge. But you get the idea. Guangdong people will literally eat everything.
That’s the south of China for you.
Why then, to study vegetarian cooking, did I end up here of all places? The answer is one of the main conundrums of China’s vegan food.
Simply put, to outsiders, Buddhism seems to drive plant-based cuisine in China. It aggregates, systematizes, and evangelizes temple food, because Buddhists believe the world would be better off if more people ate plants. Monks and businesspeople open restaurants and cafes in China’s major cities, offering $3–4 all-you-can-eat buffet meals of every cheap and easy vegetable under the sun. Increasingly, Buddhist restauranteurs are also opening up higher-end concepts, catering to the growing health-conscious upper class. Today, if you search up vegetarian or vegan on Chinese yelp (dazhongdianping), you will find scores of these restaurants, especially in the southern provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, where Buddhism abounds. It only makes sense, with all this energy, that these provinces would be the first to open cooking programs tailored to the vegetarian culinary arts.
Yet, I’d argue that these Buddhist-derived foods represent only a small piece of vegan Chinese food, and quite possibly the lesser portion. The most exciting, diverse, and arguably tastiest plant-based foods exist as far away from the insular Buddhist communities as you can run. They’re the time-tested plant foods that meat-eaters love. Here are three reasons why:
- Chinese meat-eaters vastly outnumber vegetarians and constitute far more religiously, ethnically, and regionally diverse populations. Similarly, the vegetables they prepare (in spite of mostly preferring meat!!) are far more varied.
- Meat-eaters, by eating meat, can better identify plant foods palatable to other meat eaters (i.e., the consumers that plant-based restauranteurs long to target.)
- Buddhist cuisine has stringent limits (for religious reasons) on how you can season or flavor foods, downright outlawing all use of garlic, onion, chive, and other alliums. Most non-Buddhist cuisines of China (and indeed most cuisines of the world) are built upon these and similar spices, suggesting that they do hold culinary value.
Contrary to what most people believe, the bulk of vegan Chinese food exists outside of Buddhist enclaves. In fact, people across China love vegetables, and fungus, and fruits, and tofu, and all sorts of other non-meat items. They eat some of the most distinctive species on the planet, that you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. I’m talking 10+ types of fresh bamboo (plus as many dried, stewed, and smoked varieties), in existence uniquely because of China’s vast terrain and varied climate systems. I’m talking mountain greens, with all kinds of sweet, peppery, spicy, bitter flavors. I’m talking all kinds of seaweed, wild ferns, fungi… Every region has its own unique contribution to the tapestry of Chinese plant foods. Unfortunately, temple food captures only a fraction of the picture.
It’s a lesson for those selling plant foods in U.S.
Working and reworking the same small arsenal of entrees — falafel, grain bowls, veggie burgers, humus — and just assuming that more meat eaters will catch on… it’s a waste of time!
Americans need more options, not more marketing. And they need options that meat-eaters also love.
Luckily, the world has so much to offer. We just need to open our doors and see what’s out there.
