Whenever I’m in Taipei, I see various brands of the spicy shacha sauce in the city’s supermarkets. A paste made from peanuts, sesame seeds, dried prawns, garlic, chilli and many other herbs and spices, it is used for cooking, or as a dip, among speakers of the Minnan languages in Taiwan, Fujian province and the Chaozhou-Shantou region of Guangdong.
Given its popularity in this area, many assume the condiment originated in Fujian or even Taiwan. But shacha is a foreign import and its name gives a clue as to its source. Shacha, literally “sand tea”, is the Putonghua pronunciation; in the southern Fujian dialect it’s pronounced “satay” – the same satay as the barbecued skewers of meat ubiquitous in the Malay archipelago. Although today’s shacha and satay sauces are very different, they offer one link in the centuries-old connection between Southeast Asia and southern Fujian.
During the Song and Yuan dynasties (960-1368), the Fujian city of Quanzhou was one of the world’s largest seaports and a melting pot of peoples, languages and religions. It’s also from this port, as well as from nearby Xiamen and Zhangzhou, that many Fujianese emigrated. Almost all of them settled in Southeast Asia, and shacha, or satay, sauce was one of the things their descendants brought back to China.