{"id":366,"date":"2007-12-28T15:29:26","date_gmt":"2007-12-28T20:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/12\/26\/sea-cucumbers-one-of-the-most-misleadingly-named-creatures-on-the-chinese-menu\/"},"modified":"2007-12-29T12:45:22","modified_gmt":"2007-12-29T17:45:22","slug":"sea-cucumbers-one-of-the-most-misleadingly-named-creatures-on-the-chinese-menu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/28\/sea-cucumbers-one-of-the-most-misleadingly-named-creatures-on-the-chinese-menu\/","title":{"rendered":"Sea Cucumbers? One of the most misleadingly named creatures on the Chinese menu?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/12\/28\/sea-cucumbers-one-of-the-most-misleadingly-named-creatures-on-the-chinese-menu\/sea-cucumber\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-367\" title=\"Sea cucumber\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/12\/28\/sea-cucumbers-one-of-the-most-misleadingly-named-creatures-on-the-chinese-menu\/sea-cucumber\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-367\" title=\"Sea cucumber\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/seacucumber.jpg\" alt=\"Sea cucumber\" width=\"350\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was out with my friend Robin the other day for lunch in Chinatown when she started talking about her experience with sea cucumbers. Sea cucumbers have this soft chewy jelly-like consistency. Robin had eaten them in Chinese restaurants and had never know they were moving creatures like the one above until her brother sent her a picture and she was then horrified at what she was putting in her mouth. &#8220;It never crossed my mind it was anything but a cucumber,&#8221; said Robin. &#8220;I think it&#8217;s a flagrantly misnamed Asian delicacy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>To be fair, sea cucumbers are not called &#8220;sea cucumbers&#8221; in Chinese. They are called haisheng (\u00e6\u00b5\u00b7\u00e5\u008f\u0192), which is kinda like &#8220;ginseng (\u00e4\u00ba\u00ba\u00e5\u008f\u0192) from the sea.&#8221; It is only in English that these creatures are named after a garden vegetable. That wouldn&#8217;t have been a problem except that the Chinese like to cook the little suckers. That is where the misleading name comes into play.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.itmonline.org\/\">Institute for Traditional Medicine<\/a> has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.itmonline.org\/arts\/seacuke.htm\">a good summary<\/a> on the perception of sea cucumbers in Chinese cuisine and medicine &#8212; specifically how, like shark fin and bird\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nest soup, sea cucumber is seen as being a disease preventive and longevity tonic.<span><\/span> For reasons that are pretty obvious, sea cucumbers are seen as having, um, natural Viagra properties.<\/p>\n<p>My mom said at dinner last night, that among Chinese American parents, it&#8217;s a mark of pride to have kids that eat sea cucumbers. Because other parents think it&#8217;s a sign of having been &#8220;raised well&#8221; (\u00e5\u00ae\u00b6\u00e6\u2022\u2122\u00e5\u00be\u02c6\u00e5\u00a5\u00bd, jiajianhenhao) by their parents. In other words, if you are willing to eat the squishy things, you are sufficiently &#8220;Chinese.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was out with my friend Robin the other day for lunch in Chinatown when she started talking about her experience with sea cucumbers. Sea cucumbers have this soft chewy jelly-like consistency. Robin had eaten them in Chinese restaurants and had never know they were moving creatures like the one above until her brother sent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese-food","category-immigration"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2pydS-5U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}