CHIA PANG BO - HAVE YOU EATEN YET?

Serve it with rice, and some pickled vegetables for variety. If you are from the former East Indies (Batavia), you will prepare it with much more vegetable matter in the mix, whereas people who still remember a distant home town somewhere south of Amoy (廈門 'haa mun') make it cleaner. Serve it simply glopped on a pile of rice, or dumped over noodles or dumplings, or even cooked asparagus.

Someone I had not seen for a few years recognized me on the street last week, and greeted me with a phrase that instantly recalled previous places and times. He's Dutch, born in Jakarta, but American for over five decades.
I used to know his parents and an uncle.

"Ei, lu chia-pang bo?"

Have you eaten (rice) or not yet? Sometimes 'Dutch' does not mean racially Dutch. Sometimes it means legally Dutch, but nicely mixed with other ethnicities and cultures. Such as Batavia Chinese. He speaks Dutch, Hokkien, and English. Almost no Malay. Some Spanish.
Only a little bit of Canto.

His familiarity with windmills is that building out by the beach.
He's never worn wooden shoes in his life.


Lu chia pang bo (汝食飯無) is pure Jakarta (Batavia) Hokkien (福建話).
The same meaning as 'lei sik jo faan mei' (你食咗飯未) in Cantonese, 'Nǐ chīfànle ma' (你吃飯了嗎) in Mandarin. It's friendlier than Dutch "heb je al gegeten?" which sometimes implies "don't mind us if we finish our meal", rather than a warm invitation to pull up a chair and have a bite (that's very Northern, in the Protestant part of the Netherlands). The correct answer is "chia pang" (Southern Min: 'chiak png') or, if it's been a fractured day and you haven't yet, "bo chia"('boh chiak').

We used English and Dutch for the rest of the conversation. He's well. His children all have good jobs and are married. Everyone is in good health.
He has five grandchildren, three girls.
And he has eaten.


肉燥/魯肉/滷肉/豆油肉/爐汁肉
['bah soh'/'lo bah'/'lo bah'/'tau yiu bah'/'lo chap bah']

Naturally food was discussed. Mostly Indonesian, some Chinese, erwten soep and kroketten, plus pizza. But he did mention something so simple as to almost be non-existent: Lo chap bah. Plain pork cooked with soy sauce.

Fry ground leanish pork or small chunks of fatty meat with a big spoonful of sambal, and minced shallots or small onions plus ginger till flavoured, then simmer with soy sauce, sherry, stock, and a hefty pinch of sugar, till dark.

I always add some chopped ja choi (榨菜) for crunch.


Very camp after the war. Very poor urban kampong. And something the Fujianese Philippinos I knew in Southern California also knew. In English, they called it "Chinese spaghetti sauce". And if you throw in a couple of chopped tomatoes, you can see why.

You can also dump it over your French fries, precisely like melted zult.

Years ago, living in a residential hotel, I ate it often.

Communal kitchen cookery.




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