Spilling beans on soy sauce

MOST Chinese dishes are cooked with sauces, particularly soy - they are crucial ingredients in traditional Chinese food. Today, with limited space for sauce production in Hong Kong, most are produced with modern machinery instead of traditional methods.

But there is a rare exception - the Tung Chun soy sauce company, one of the oldest brand names in the territory, which still uses the methods it used 75 years ago. But the pace of Hong Kong life and changing tastes mean even this company is succumbing to mechanisation.

David Jasper Wong Tai-wai, the third generation head of this family company, says such methods are the best way to make sauces with rich tastes: 'My ancestors were doing [sauce] business in Guangdong province for a long time. My grandfather took over the techniques and set up the company in Kowloon city after he moved to Hong Kong in 1919,' Mr Wong said.

The company grew and moved to new factories in Kwai Chung and Fanling in the 50s. The production process remained the same, but these days stressful urban life means fewer people think about cooking their food with top brands of sauce - especially if they require cooking before use, Mr Wong says.

'Although the Chinese diet still uses soy and other sauces, most Chinese may not know how these popular items in their Chinese food are produced.' Inside the company's Fanling factory, row upon row of ceramic barrels contain soya beans which have been mixed with salt water and exposed to the sun after being fermented in a warm room for about a month.

'We have to mix salt water with the fermented soya bean in these traditional ceramic barrels for three to four months until it becomes soy,' said Mr Wong, adding that each barrel could produce 500 bottles of soy.

The fermented soya beans then make three batches of soy, each of slightly less quality, before they have to be replaced. These different soys are mixed during final production to keep the quality consistent. Even the final cooking and distilling of the soy before bottling are still done by hand with gas stoves.