Peru Travel Notes [Lima Chinatown and CHIFA]

Chinatown

The full name of Lima's Central Market, which has a history of 170 years, is Mercado Municipal Gran Mariscal Ramón Castilla. It is the busiest commercial center in Lima's old city. It was built during the administration of Ramón Castilla, who served as the president of Peru four times. Was the abolitionist of slavery in Peru.

Lima Chinatown (Barrio Chino) is right next to the Central Market. It is also one of the earliest Chinatowns in the Western Hemisphere. The distinctive symbol is the large archway with "China Square" written on it. On the back of the archway is written "The World is Common". On the left and right of the archway On both sides are a pair of stone lions sent from Guangdong.

There is a nameplate on the ground in Chinatown, which was established in 1999 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Chinese arrival in Peru.

In the decades since 1849, about 100,000 Chinese workers came to Peru from Macau, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and other places. They were engaged in very hard work, either working in plantations and mining areas, or digging guano on remote islands. , or building railways, many of them died in foreign lands. After escaping from the fate of slavery, the vast majority of the remaining Chinese chose to stay in Peru, start some small businesses, and intermarry with local women. Their descendants are called Tusán (Peranakan Chinese).

About one in 10 Peruvians now have Chinese ancestry, and Peru is also the country with the largest number of Chinese in Latin America. In addition to Spanish and Quechua, most of the Chinese spoken by Chinese in Peru is Cantonese, with a small amount of Hakka, Hokkien or Mandarin.

On the streets of Lima, you sometimes see a row of unintelligible Chinese characters plastered on cars.

The shop signs in Chinatown are also written in Chinese.

The middle of the street is paved with large floor tiles representing the twelve zodiac signs, and there are also some small floor tiles with various names and dates printed on the roadside.

There are always crowds of people outside the small shop selling Dim Sum (snacks), whose main products are steamed buns, siomai, spring rolls and fried chicken wings.

The Peru China General Administration of Tonghui was established in 1886 under the imperial edict of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty, with the purpose of "trading trade and benefiting industry." It is still the largest national social organization of overseas Chinese in Peru.

Of course, Chinatown is also where Chinese restaurants are concentrated. It is said that there are more than 8,000 in Lima.

We walked into one of the restaurants for morning tea, and it looked not much different from the one in Guangzhou.

Even the local waiters are as quick as those in Guangzhou, and even ordering in Cantonese will not be a big obstacle.

In addition to Chinatown, another place in Lima with a relatively high concentration of Chinese restaurants is in the San Borja district. In the middle of the last century, the social status of Peruvian native Chinese increased day by day. Many people left Chinatown and moved to new residential areas. Later, some new immigrants from Hong Kong, Macau, Southeast Asia and other places came to Peru. The restaurants in San Borja area also More diverse than the Cantonese restaurants in Chinatown.

CHIFA

Speaking of food, I have to mention a Chinese restaurant called CHIFA, which can often be seen on the roadside.

CHIFA is a fusion of Chinese and Peruvian cuisine. The name comes from the Cantonese word for "eating rice". The first Chinese workers who came to Peru brought here the Chinese food style of seasoning with ginger, green onions, and soy sauce. CHIFA was loved by the people at the bottom because of its low price and high quality. Walking into a small CHIFA on the roadside, the tableware includes both knives and forks as well as spoons and chopsticks, and the seasonings include lemon and soy sauce.

If you go to CHIFA with expectations of traditional Chinese food, you may be a little disappointed, but if the traveling Chinese stomach is tired of burgers, fries, pizza and pasta, it is still a good choice.

Although everyone calls it CHIFA, it is not a chain store. They are basically family-run small restaurants. Therefore, the products of each restaurant are different depending on the background of the restaurant owner. The clerks at this CHIFA have a big word "Soup" written on the back of their uniforms. My first reaction was to go in and have some soup. When I opened the menu, I realized that the chef's surname was "Tong". What’s even more interesting is that the chef’s name also has the names of both my child and me.

We ordered a set meal, which included typical CHIFA food.

The first is Chaufa (fried rice). As you can see from the name, it comes directly from Chinese. In addition to fried rice such as chicken and seafood, you may also see Chaufa Aeropuerto (airport fried rice) on the menu in some places. It is said that the workers who used to work at the airport got off work late and many ingredients were gone when they went to the restaurant to eat, so the boss used the remaining ingredients of the day to make fried rice. Unexpectedly, it was very popular and became popular.

The bowl next to it that is piled so full that you can barely see the noodles is actually Tallarín saltado (fried noodles), with a lot of side dishes. What was soaked in the sauce in the other bowl was probably Chijaukay (Zhuhou Chicken) or Tipakay (Pipa Chicken).

However, generally CHIFA is served on a plate, the portion is very large, and the taste is salty.

In addition, the most popular Chinese food among Peruvians is Wantan (wonton), especially fried wonton (Wantan Frito). If you want to cook it, you have to order wonton soup (Sopa Wantan), but this bowl The big meatballs in the wontons were a bit too overwhelming, but the fried beef river was served in this kind of stainless steel plate, which was really kind. However, not every CHIFA can order such food. Most of the time we can only guess by looking at the menu. However, the owner of this store can speak Chinese, so we can directly tell the owner the food we want.

Later, when I watched Chen Xiaoqing's food documentary "The World of Flavor", I suddenly realized that it looked familiar. It turned out that the humble CHIFA we randomly found on the roadside on the day we returned to Lima from Cusco was actually one of the filming locations. In China, it is estimated that it can also become an Internet celebrity store. This small shop is located in the Miraflores district, and its literal translation means "watching flowers." When I saw the signboard of this shop, I realized that the local Chinese call Miraflores "Guanhua Port."

MR. SHAO (Mr. Shao) is a brand owned by a large local catering group and has chain stores in several shopping malls. Compared with the simple and crude fried noodles and meat covered in sticky sauce, this dish of steamed fish fillet with ginger and scallion is so refreshing.

Even though there are so many CHIFAs in Lima, it’s not that easy to find a bowl of pho. We only found this one.

This is a CHIFA with more Chinese local characteristics in the San Borja area, but it is obviously difficult to gain a foothold. We were excited to try some Hunan cuisine, but the boss regretfully told us that business was not going well, so we still cooked the food to the taste that the locals liked.

In ordinary supermarkets in Lima where green plants are sold, there are also lucky bamboos decorated with copper coins.

When talking about supermarkets, we have to mention WONG. Most overseas Chinese started their business by opening restaurants and supermarkets, so Chinese supermarkets are very common, but like many CHIFA, they are generally small supermarkets run by families. However, a Mr. Huang from Guangdong turned his small supermarket into the largest supermarket chain group in Peru.

Since WONG sponsors the Peruvian National Day parade every year, "Corso de Wong" has become a traditional project of Peruvian National Day, carrying some symbolic meaning of the country and the nation. So when it was later acquired by the Chilean Cencosud Group, many Peruvians Expressing that hurt national feelings, the food culture that Peruvians are proud of will also be threatened.

WONG Supermarket was also a place we frequently visited when we were in Peru, and we would go there every three days.

Especially during the back-to-school season, several rows of shelves are filled with homework books. Peruvian homework books have a completely different style from Chinese ones. They are really so beautiful .

Each book comes with several coloring pages for crafting, including stickers, coloring, origami or posters of various themes, etc. We chose a book with an alpaca pattern as a souvenir of our trip. In addition to stickers, there is also a page of tutorials on making homemade bookmarks.

The most impressive thing is that, whether it is a simple or fancy exercise book, the last page of all the notebooks is the same. The full text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948 is printed at the top, and at the bottom is Peruvian flag, anthem and emblem.