The China Thread

[Sheilbh]

It certainly has a pretty solid place in China also. I can't speak to how it compares, though.

Yes - although even there I wonder if there's an American legacy? Whether from missionaries, or the American troops sent to protect them at various point, or the American support and huge number of supplies for Chiang, which must have included vittles like spam.

[HisMajestyBOB]

One of my favorite stews from my time in Korea was budaejjigae, or "army stew", which consists of spzm, hot dogs, ramen, and various other things.

[Jacob]

Yes - although even there I wonder if there's an American legacy? Whether from missionaries, or the American troops sent to protect them at various point, or the American support and huge number of supplies for Chiang, which must have included vittles like spam.

I was about to state my theory - that I think it's because it's affordable and easy to export / import / store for long periods of time which made it more accessible in various ways.

Then I went to the wikipedia page for Spam and it said this:

China
In mainland China, Hormel decided to adopt a different strategy to market Spam (Chinese: 世棒; pinyin: Shìbàng), promoting it as a foreign, premium food product and changing the Spam formula to be meatier to accommodate local Chinese tastes. Spam-like canned pork products are also produced by other food companies in China as "Luncheon Meat" (Chinese: 午餐肉; pinyin: Wǔcānròu; Jyutping: Ng5 caan1 juk6; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄨˇ ㄘㄢ ㄖㄡˋ).

Hong Kong
After World War II, meat was scarce and expensive in Hong Kong, so Spam was an accessible, affordable alternative. The luncheon meat has been incorporated into dishes such as macaroni with fried egg and spam in chicken soup, as well as ramen.

[Sheilbh]

I love that and I'm totally wrong for Mainland China at least.

Two entirely different explanations for two immediately adjacent regions.

Hong Kong sounds like the British experience too when Spam was big post-WW2 - just (to the surprise of no-one) Hong Kongers were significantly more culinarily experimental and turned it into something great, while we just tried various ways of frying it.

Don't know if Ive mentioned it before but my history teacher in Scotland (when we were doing 19th century social life - Highland clearances, tenements, industrial slums, John Snow etc) told the story of his time in university during Britain's last typhoid outbreak. According to his story, it was caused by the Fray Bentos corned beef factory in Uruguay (so not quite spam but tinned meats). Basically he said part of the manufacturing process has the tins packed with meat and really hot and need to be cooled very quickly, so they get dumped into cold, flowing water. At that point the Fray Bentos factory, which was on the Uruguay River, basically just pumped in river water for that process. There was a batch of tins which were defective and had tiny punctures so the waste and pollution from the river got into the cans, which then ended up in Aberdeen where they wreaked havoc through the student community.

[HVC]

Mmm yum, poop water flavoured

[Josquius]

Yes - although even there I wonder if there's an American legacy? Whether from missionaries, or the American troops sent to protect them at various point, or the American support and huge number of supplies for Chiang, which must have included vittles like spam.

I was about to state my theory - that I think it's because it's affordable and easy to export / import / store for long periods of time which made it more accessible in various ways.

Then I went to the wikipedia page for Spam and it said this:

China
In mainland China, Hormel decided to adopt a different strategy to market Spam (Chinese: 世棒; pinyin: Shìbàng), promoting it as a foreign, premium food product and changing the Spam formula to be meatier to accommodate local Chinese tastes. Spam-like canned pork products are also produced by other food companies in China as "Luncheon Meat" (Chinese: 午餐肉; pinyin: Wǔcānròu; Jyutping: Ng5 caan1 juk6; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄨˇ ㄘㄢ ㄖㄡˋ).

Hong Kong
After World War II, meat was scarce and expensive in Hong Kong, so Spam was an accessible, affordable alternative. The luncheon meat has been incorporated into dishes such as macaroni with fried egg and spam in chicken soup, as well as ramen.

Changed the spam formula to be 'meatier'....
This is China...
They added bones didn't they?

[Sheilbh]

Listened to China-focused podcast episode on Ukraine.

Really striking detail that China was very surprised and quite angry about Russia's initial invasion. Apparently (according to second hand, well-connected sources in Beijing) there was a round of demotions and transfers of Russianists in the Chinese Foreign Ministry because they'd clearly got it wrong. I assume because it happened and they were saying it wouldn't and also they didn't have advance notice from Russia.

At the same time Europeanists and Americanists were re-shuffled closer to the centre presumably because China thought they'd need to understand what they'd do more.

Separately interesting idea (from former Assistant Secretary of State for Asia) that China should be the senior partner in the China-Russia relationship, but because of Russia's willingness to take risks and do unexpected things (from a Chinese perspective) means China often ends up following rather than leading. It's always having to react to Russian action, rather than Russia following or a more "orderly" relationship. Which is interesting and perhaps a little counter-intuitive but I can see the argument - not sure.