Hi all,
Highly appreciate for information on Teochew people/group/restaurants in Taiwan.
I’ve never heard of any. There used to be a presence but it became absorbed over the years (sorry but no English wiki for this)
/Don’t they call them Chaozho or something here?
Yep, the city is Chaozhou in Mandarin.
Teochew is one of the largest Holo region in the Guangdong province. Another large Holo region in Guangdong was Macao (the English and Portuguese name came from the Holo word for 媽閣 (the Mazu Temple Port). Holo from Quanzhou (泉州) who had experience with foreign trade since Song dynasty moved to Teochew and Macao after the port at Quanzhou became unusable. Koxinga’s father worked with his relatives in Macao before becoming a translator for the Spanish and eventually moved to Japan to become one of the biggest pirates at the time.
Back to Teochew, it was romanized this way because in Holo 潮州 is pronounced as Tiau-tsiu. Since Teochew Holo has but minor differences from Quanzhou Holo and Zhangzhou Holo used by most Taiwanese, during the Japanese era they were largely absorbed into the Holo identity.
Prior to the Japanese era, it was free for all when it came to colonial and aboriginal ethnicities. Even Quanzhou and Zhangzhou Holo used to have large armed conflicts with each other. Teochew Holo were forced to cooperate with the Hakka, as they were both classified as Guangdong immigrants under the Qing administration.
It was an ironic classification, because plenty of Hakka in Taiwan were from the Fujian province, and Teochew Holo was closer to other Holo ethnicity in language and customs.
There is a town in Pingdong named Chaozhou, which is located next to several Hakka towns, and stands as proof to Teochew Hakka alliance during the Qing colonial era.
You can still find Teochew food in Taiwan, there are a lot of them in Kaohsiung. Although, I really can’t tell the difference between most of their dishes from what other restaurant serves.
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I was told by the owner a traditional seafood restaurant in Hsinchu that oyster omelets we find in night markets these days is a new invention less than 30 years ago, and look nothing like the traditional oyster omelet.
The oyster omelet served at that seafood restaurant looks like this:
It has a lot more oysters, less goopy, and definitely a better dish.
Compare that to the traditional Teochew dish 蚵烙 (o lua)
The similarity reveals a lot about just how similar early Teochew dishes and Taiwanese dishes were.
It would be nice if they left out that gross phlegm stuff.
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They have those in Thailand as well, where Chinese people are largely Teochew
Oyster omelettes in Singapore and Malaysia are much better without the ugly gravy on top.
I used to date a Teochew girl in Singapore. A lot of the Teochew women migrated to Singapore years ago, were known as being construction workers, and even has entire construction crews that were female only. I don’t know much about Teochew history in Taiwan.
I found this staring in my face during a Google map excursion today. It’s the “Taipei Chaozhou Ancestry Association”–no idea if still active
Thank all you for the information. Have a nice weekend!
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