Reading Chinese Menus: Characters: 海 — hǎi — sea/ocean

[kake]

海

海 (hǎi) means "sea" or "ocean". Fittingly, its radical is 水 (shuǐ/water), manifesting here as three strokes (氵) on the left of the character.

As I mentioned in last week's post on 鮮/xiān/fresh, 海 is commonly combined with 鮮 to form the Mandarin Chinese word for seafood: 海鮮 (hǎi xiān), literally "ocean fresh". Something I forgot to mention in that post is that this in turn can be combined with the character 醬 (jiàng/sauce/paste) to make up the name of a commonly-used Chinese sauce, 海鮮醬 (hǎi xiān jiàng), or hoisin sauce, though despite the name the sauce contains no seafood.

Unsurprisingly, 海 is used in several other words associated with the sea, such as 海帶 (hǎi dài/kelp), 海參 (hǎi shēn/sea cucumber), and 海蜇 (hǎi zhé/jellyfish). It also forms part of a couple of place names that tend to turn up on menus: 上海 (Shànghǎi) and 海南 (Hǎinán). Finally, dried prawns may be referred to as 海米 (hǎi mǐ), though note that fresh ones are always 蝦 (xiā).

Here are some dishes with 海 in the name:

海鮮生菜包	hǎi xiān shēng cài bāo	lettuce-wrapped seafood
海帶排骨湯	hǎi dài pái gǔ tāng	kelp and spare rib soup
家常海帶絲	jiā cháng hǎi dài sī	home-style shredded kelp
涼拌海蜇皮	liáng bàn hǎi zhé pí	jellyfish salad
上海小籠包	Shànghǎi xiǎo lóng bāo	Shanghai xiao long bao (soup dumplings)
海南雞飯	Hǎinán jī fàn	Hainanese chicken rice
海米冬瓜	hǎi mǐ dōng guā	winter melon with dried prawns

海:	xiān	radical 85 (水/氵/氺)	Cantodict	MandarinTools	YellowBridge	Zhongwen

Related posts:

• 鮮 (xiān/fresh),
• 醬 (jiàng/sauce/paste),
• 米 (mǐ/uncooked rice/grain),
• 涼拌海蜇 (liáng bàn hǎi zhé/jellyfish salad),
• 海米冬瓜 (hǎi mǐ dōng guā/winter melon with dried prawns)

If you have any questions or corrections, please leave a comment (here's how) and let me know (or email me at kake@earth.li). See my introductory post to the Chinese menu project for what these posts are all about.

Comments

[eatlovenoodles.blogspot.com]

As well as seafood, if you ever visit Shanghai, you'll see sections of the menu marked 河鮮 (he xian) - 'river food' - consisting of freshwater fish, prawns and other goodies.

[kake]

Ooh, neat, thanks. I actually came across the term 河蝦 (hé xiā) the other day while watching Chinese cookery shows on YouTube — I guess it means "freshwater prawns" then :)