hum bao and humbao (1990)

[victor steinbok]

I don't know if anyone cares, since this doesn't go the the heart of the
matter in English, but "bao" is an extremely popular Dutch "snack" (see "dim
sum"--I'll post on that later). Every Dutch supermarket carries at least two
(beef and pork) and up to six varieties of "bao" in the freezer--they are
meant to be microwaved briefly before consumption. The problem is, there is
virtually no food in supermarkets that could be described as "Chinese". The
Dutch equivalent is Indonesian fast food--what with noodle and rice mixes
all meant to resemble Indonesian creations. AFAICT "bao" is also considered
Indonesian (although most Asian restaurants are tagged with
"Chinese-Indonesian" label). This does not mean it's not Chinese in origin,
but the distribution is very wide.

Just to be clear--these are the standard, white-dough steamed buns with some
meat or vegetarian filling, ranging between 2" and 4" in diameter. Unlike
the US varieties, they are always packaged as singles (makes it easier to
microwave two--right in the pack). They are never baked. When I've seen the
baked varieties in bakeries, they were also occasionally labeled as "bao",
but this was not the rule (on the other hand, a split roll baked/toasted
with ham, cheese and pineapple was /always/ labeled "Hawaiian"). If anything
was labeled Han Bao, I haven't seen it.

I hope this helps in some small way.

VS-)



On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 7:41 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>wrote:

>
> Nice find! I can't read Chinese, but can at least identify characters.
>
> On the page for 餡 (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A4%A1), it says under
> the Mandarin section "filling (for dumplings etc.)" Since 包 means wrap (
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8C%85. but not defined), that makes
> sense. "餡包" gets 938,000 Googits.
>
> I wonder if 鹹包 is word play or nonce usage. I've never understood how
> Cantonese writing works very well, but I think they have some freedom of
> character use, something along the lines of jukujikun as you mentioned the
> other day. Still, "鹹包" gets 49,900 Googits, pale in comparison, but still a
> large number...
>
> BB
>

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