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Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

The Chinese food culture is substantially different than the Western food culture, and I don't just mean the items on the menu.

Things I've noticed about the particular Chinese food culture of my girlfriend: Ginger goes in Chicken soup. Garlic does not. Broccoli is only cooked until bright green. Black pepper is used, basically never. All vegetables are to be rinsed, even the things in Trader Joe's packages that say "Triple Washed, Ready to Use." Almost no claim on the package should be trusted, ever.

Meat is always well cooked. (And there are plenty of ways to make meat very tasty without having it be super-rare.)

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These are pretty good general rules of thumb. Interestingly the Vietnamese, by contrast, are very much in to rare meats.

Broccoli and other vegetables are cooked only slightly because it is considered wasteful of the natural qualities of the food to overcook it (and probably because it wastes fuel also, which is also the reason for everything being cut small before cooking).

> Interestingly the Vietnamese, by contrast, are very much in to rare meats.

I blame the French.

Indochina happened.

The biggest evidence for this is Vietnamese word for beef is Bo. Which is a borrowed French word.

http://www.asian-central.com/stuffasianpeoplelike/2010/05/21...

It does seem likely that bo is French boeuf-derived, but according to Wiktionary[0] the historical Vietnamese pronunciation of the Chinese character for beef (牛) was ngưu, ngọ, ngỏ, ngõ, ngâu. It is interesting that these are so similar to pan-Taic languages neua and Cantonese ngau.

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%89%9B#Vietnamese

Probably because two thousand plus years ago the area that is now called Guangdong, and the area that is now Vietnam, was inhabited by the same people; And then the Guangdong area was conquered by China. The people who lived in Guangdong inter-married with the Chinese migrating south and also had a lot of influence on Cantonese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southward_expansion_of_the_Han...

Vietnam is "Yue-nam" in Chinese, and Cantonese is "Yue-yu" in Chinese, whose literal meaning is "Language of Yue".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiyue

Vietnamese here. I don't think your explanation is correct.

First, most of the Viet-Cantonese words are likely brought by Chinese migration since the 15th century. When the Ming dynasty fell, many Chinese fled to South Vietnam and helped Viet people annex that land from the Cambodians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoa_people

Second, tt's true that we "might" have lots of connections with the ancient Yue people, but this is still in debate. Just like the Romans called everyone on the other side of the Rhine "Germans", the Chinese of 2000 years ago called everyone south of them "Yue", even though they can be different tribes or nations. Being named the same thing by the Chinese doesn't actually mean anything. Genetically we have many similarities with the people of south China, but the history of vocabularies can be more complicated than that.

You're right a lot of the loanwords and similarities between the languages could and likely happened later on.

I think there's no way Cantonese and Vietnamese don't have lots of connections with the ancient Yue people; A whole people don't just fall off the face of the Earth, unless there was a most serious kind of genocide. Almost certainly Cantonese and Vietnamese can trace some of their ancestors to the Yue one way or another. It's true Chinese at the time called everyone south of them Yue, but it didn't mean they were that much fragmented into tribes. The kingdom of Nanyue has borders pretty much exactly matching Guangdong + Vietnam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanyue. Nan = south, and so does the "nam" in Vietnam. I don't think that's a coincidence.

But your larger point is very much correct now that I think about it - the history of vocabularies can be very much complicated.

Ah this came up recently. bo in Vietnamese, bó in Gaeilge. The origin is likely from Latin. http://www.latin-dictionary.net/search/latin/Bo

Wiktionary gives the etymology of "bó" as coming straight from Proto-Celtic and Proto-Indo-European. In any case, sometimes Irish has both a word of Celtic origin and a loanword for animals. "Chicken" is "cearc" but also "sicín".

Interesting, I just had diner with a French friend and his wife currently living in Hanoi. As we were sharing a nice peace or rare beef they told me that they could never have that there, and that in their experience the locals thoroughly cook their meet. I have been to Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi before for holidays and work and don't have any specific memories on the subject but the version I know of Vietnamese food thoroughly cook the meet.

Edit: I concede that Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi are two very different cities and the proliferation of French like restaurant is more present in Ho Chi Minh City as far as I remember.

Err, bo tai means rare beef and it is easy to acquire in Vietnam.

> Broccoli is only cooked until bright green.

I mean, that's the correct way to cook it in any context, I would have thought. The whole massively overcooking vegetables thing is thankfully mostly dying out now.

> All vegetables are to be rinsed, even the things in Trader Joe's packages that say "Triple Washed, Ready to Use." Almost no claim on the package should be trusted, ever. <

This is really good advice. Food contamination happens, even in your triple washed, plastic bagged veggies.

Well, unless the meat is particularly fresh. Then you only cook to barely cooked.

See steamed chicken where often it will be served with the marrow still red. And it's blasphemy to overcook fish.

And it's blasphemy to overcook fish.

Thanks. I think I just figured another one out!

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