Grandma from Penghu Tells Stories: When the North Wind Blows, It's Time to Cure Salmon

"This is smoked salmon imported from Norway. It's delicious, Grandma, come and try it."

On a silk napkin lay gleaming silver cutlery and a spoon. On the delicate china plate in the center rested slices of orange-red, glistening fish, evenly marbled with white fat, garnished with pale purple onion and dark green capers - a classic food photograph.

"What did you say this is called?"

"Smoked salmon."

"Gui?"

"Yeah, you take the salmon and... put it in sauce, then roast it over fire." "How do you say 'put it in sauce' in Taiwanese? Pickle! Pickled gui!" "That fire is tiny... you just use the smoke to cure it..."

For our generation of young people, our poverty of Taiwanese vocabulary often spurs our literary talents, as we learn to use every possible method to describe the things we take for granted, bridging the vast linguistic gulf between ourselves and our elders.

"Oh, I know." Grandma's face lit up with sudden understanding: "Pickled gui. When we were little we made it ourselves too, we made it often. We made it when the wind started blowing in winter, and we made a lot of it!"

"What? Penghu is just like Norway - you have smoked salmon too?" Everyone was startled.

"Of course, and the color is the same as this, red and very pretty." Grandma wore a look of deep contentment: "When you peel it open, the flesh is soft and separates from the bones, and the bones are crisp too, the whole fish can be eaten. Then cook a bowl of misua soup, add a little loofah, and at noon when there's hardly anyone home, that's what we'd eat."

"...So smoked salmon is pickled together with the bones?" "Penghu has salmon?" "Smoked salmon goes with loofah and misua?"

"Yes, we have pickled gui. In the old days there were no refrigerators, and the boats were smaller too, so you couldn't go out to sea in winter. What did you do when there was no fish to eat? You ate pickled gui! Pickled gui is made from rabbitfish. This one is tasty too, but that one was even tastier."

At this point, the vast linguistic gulf between grandparent and grandchild could no longer be bridged by literary talent and creativity alone. But there was Grandma, happily taking the chopsticks she had asked the waiter for, picking up the Norwegian salmon and popping it into her mouth, leaving the whole table's questions unanswered but everyone's curiosity thoroughly fed.

According to research in a master's thesis from the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Culture at National Taiwan Normal University, in the Minnan vocabulary of Penghu, the word "gui," pronounced "kuî," refers to a method of preserving fish and shellfish by pickling them in heavy salt. The "pickled gui" made from rabbitfish that Grandma mentioned in the story is one type of "gui"; there are also pickled products made from anchovies or other shellfish, all called "gui."

In earlier times, Penghu was just as described in the story: shipbuilding technology could not withstand the treacherous sea conditions brought by the northeast monsoon, limiting the number of days one could go out to sea each year; even if a household owned the luxury of a refrigerator, it was impossible to keep the catch fresh for long. When the first northeast monsoon winds blew, many women across the Penghu archipelago would choose to place their catch into jars, heavily salted and pickled, to get through the long winter.

The rabbitfish, commonly known as "stinky belly fish," was easy to catch and cheap, making it the first choice for many households making pickled gui. The caught rabbitfish were cleaned, rubbed with salt, and sealed in jars. During the pickling process the flesh fermented, becoming soft and separating from the skeleton, allowing the rabbitfish's rich subcutaneous fat to combine with the air-dried meat, giving off a distinctive flavor even better than eating it fresh.

"It was also because we cherished it. If the fish we caught weren't properly preserved, they would spoil. And for a single fish to spoil was such a waste." In an era without refrigerators, the virtue of thrift forged by material scarcity still travels through time, uncorrupted.

"Grandma, if this is so delicious, why don't you make it for us to eat?"

"Oh heavens, silly grandchild, that was what we ate back when we were poor. If you all come back, of course Grandma has to treat you to chicken legs, steak, good food..."

To this day, as Penghu's shipbuilding technology and freezing equipment have gradually improved, fewer people put rabbitfish in jars to pickle; most simply use the blazing summer sun to dry the rabbitfish into jerky, then store it in the freezer, still bringing it out in winter to go with rice.

And these fisherwomen, so skilled at using their ingenuity to pickle fish into gui, have themselves become grandmothers. The way these grandmothers show their love for their precious grandchildren is to put away the "home cooking" they usually eat with rice, solemnly put on their good clothes, and take the children into town to eat fried chicken, steak, hot pot, or at the newly opened "from Taipei" fast-food restaurant - where so many young students crowd in, chatting and laughing. It must be a flavor that kids like, right?

And so, when it comes to pickled gui, we know only of "Norwegian wild smoked salmon" and "Swedish specialty pickled herring," never knowing that there is such a thing as "Penghu rabbitfish pickled gui."