Visited the aquarium at the basement of the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center during lunch break. Of course it is smaller than the theme park in Hong Kong, but still worth a look.
I suddenly realize there is a whole lot of coral fish which are considered not edible by local people but favorites for southern Chinese: grouper, Cheilinus undulatus (蘇眉), and so forth. Of course, the more amazing bit is the consumption of parts of fish that any naive ancient fisherman could never imagine eating: shark fins, gas bladder (花膠) ... what not. It seems most possible that early Chinese immigrants - maybe in the Song or Ming dynasty - found it a waste to do away with these "dispensable" parts of their catch. The traditional practice was, not unexpectedly, to preserve by sunlight and keep them for their own consumption.
I suddenly realize there is a whole lot of coral fish which are considered not edible by local people but favorites for southern Chinese: grouper, Cheilinus undulatus (蘇眉), and so forth. Of course, the more amazing bit is the consumption of parts of fish that any naive ancient fisherman could never imagine eating: shark fins, gas bladder (花膠) ... what not. It seems most possible that early Chinese immigrants - maybe in the Song or Ming dynasty - found it a waste to do away with these "dispensable" parts of their catch. The traditional practice was, not unexpectedly, to preserve by sunlight and keep them for their own consumption.
That also explains why these dried seafood are largely used in soup - the major method for Chinese to extract nutritional ingredients (mostly amino acids) from left-overs. (In comparison, abalone and sea cucumber are often cooked as a whole - they are obviously suitable for human consumption; the catch is sun-dried for preservation and transportation.)
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