When I first visited rural Ilan 宜蘭, Taiwan, in the mid 1980s, it was the East Asian lunar New Year. Ilan people ate soy sauce-stewed hard-boiled eggs (lớ-nuī 滷蛋), “gall-treated pork liver” (tám-koaⁿ 膽肝), a lot of meat dishes, mustard greens in the guise of “longevity vegetables” (tnĝ-nî-chhài 長年菜), and the inevitable fish. Inevitable why? Because there is a Chinese saying, niánnián yǒu yú 年年有餘 ‘[may there be] abundance every year’, and “fish” (yú 魚) is identical in sound to “abundance”. The foreign visitor to a Chinese-speaking household at New Year’s may get to hear this, and its explanation, with every fish served.
But not in rural Ilan in those days. The local Taiwanese colloquial word for “fish” is hî-á, while the character readings are gû and gî; all are etymologically the same word as Mandarin yú. “Abundance” is î both colloquially and in reading. So “fish” and “abundance” are definitely not homophones in the local language of Ilan. But the people there of all ages still ate fish in abundance at New Year’s, even though the saying that explains it was only in use among the younger family members, educated in Mandarin. The saying is not really local to traditional Ilan. But eating fish at New Year’s certainly is.
A happy New Year to all. (Come to think of it, it wasn’t usual to say kiong-hí, Mandarin gōngxǐ fācái 恭喜發財 ‘I wish you happiness and may wealth descend upon you’, then either.)
