Reading Chinese Menus: Characters: 球 and 丸 — qiú and wán — balls and more balls

[kake]

球 and 丸

Earlier this week, I posted about less-common menu characters that are still worth learning. One of these characters is 球 (qiú), which literally means ball/sphere/globe.

I first came across 球 in the name of a dish I ate at Dragon Inn in South London — 南乳脆鱔球 (nán rǔ cuì shàn qiú), or crispy eel with red fermented beancurd. 南乳 (literally "southern milk") is the red fermented beancurd, 脆 means "crispy", 鱔 is eel, and 球 is... ball?

However, there are no balls, globes, or spheres in this dish. 球 actually refers to the way that the eel pieces curl up as they're cooked (see photo). It's also sometimes used in the names of prawn (蝦/xiā) dishes, since prawns have a similar tendency to curl. Below are some examples from the menu of Red & Hot near Euston Station in London. The English translations are theirs, not mine — the Chinese names don't specify that king prawns are used in the dish. Note that the dish names would still be intelligible without the 球:

宮保蝦球	gōng bǎo xiā qiú	gong bao king prawn
魚香蝦球	yú xiāng xiā qiú	fish-fragrant king prawn
西芹蝦球	xī qín xiā qiú	sauteed king prawns with celery

While 球 is also used on dim sum menus to mean balls-as-in-meatballs, the character I've most commonly seen used for this on other menus is 丸 (wán). 丸 primarily appears in two contexts: soup (湯/tāng) and ingredients for hotpot (火鍋/huǒ guō). Here are some examples:

魚丸湯	yú wán tāng	fishball soup
冬瓜丸子湯	dōng guā wán zi tāng	winter melon and meatball soup (note the 子/zi here — john sheds some light on this in comments — and also note that the type of ball is not explicitly specified)
牛肉丸	niú ròu wán	beef balls
豬肉丸	zhū ròu wán	pork balls
蟹味丸	xiè wèi wán	crab-flavour balls

The last three of these are common ingredients in Chinese hotpot, which is this week's dish post.

球:	qiú	radical 96 (玉/王)	Cantodict	MandarinTools	YellowBridge	Zhongwen
丸:	wán	radical 3 (丶)	Cantodict	MandarinTools	YellowBridge	Zhongwen

Related posts:

• 湯 (tāng/soup),
• 火鍋 (huǒ guō/hotpot)

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

Re: 丸子!

[john]

I hope you enjoyed your huo guo! (Or was it sha guo?)

I used the magic of the Internets to find some pictures! Do a Ctrl/Cmd-F for the word "wan" and you'll find 大丸子 at http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=759334&page=4

And I found tangcu xiaowanzi at http://www.foodeats.cn/group_thread/view/cps-8/id-3896 -- though I hope your character-reading is better than mine.

Re: 丸子!

[kake]

I hope you enjoyed your huo guo! (Or was it sha guo?)

I had to look up what sha guo is :) 沙鍋, or claypot, right? Last night's dinner was 火鍋, at the place where the photo on this post was taken. There were 18 of us, and it was really really brilliant.

The meatballs (牛肉丸 on the menu) were not as homogeneous as the fish/prawn balls — I'd been wondering if perhaps 丸 without the 子 meant that the protein component was really finely pulverised, but apparently not.

I used the magic of the Internets to find some pictures! Do a Ctrl/Cmd-F for the word "wan" and you'll find 大丸子 at http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=759334&page=4

I used the magic of Flickr to find the host pages of your pictures :) 東北川大丸子 and 東北煎丸子, yes? They totally look like faggots, you're right! Particularly the pan-fried ones.

And I found tangcu xiaowanzi at http://www.foodeats.cn/group_thread/view/cps-8/id-3896 -- though I hope your character-reading is better than mine.

Sadly, I cannot read actual prose, just menus. I may do something about this in the future.