At one time I lived in Hong Kong, and there was a strong demand for salt. It was a much sought after commodity, so we set up a distribution network. This was fairly simple, like today's courier services, however there was one problem, the delivery people kept showing up dead.
It was the triads, three gangs who were competing with us for our business, and didn't like the fact that we were cheaper, and had bigger sales and bigger profits. They could not persuade our customers to pay more, so they simply tried to wipe out our distribution network by killing our couriers.
There was a simple solution. Although the demand was for rock salt, and this is what people obviously wanted to buy, the sea was full of salt, and we lived by the sea. We needed to come up with a salty solution which people could add to their food. The answer was soy sauce, in branded bottles.
The sauce was called Superior Soy sauce, now sold under the High Mark brand as well as other brands...
For example, the Emperor of China defined the borders of the Chinese nation, and registered Sun brand, or SUN Corporation (the Chinese Army) Galaxy brand, Mainland brand, Universal brand as international trade marks. This was accepted by India.
Soy sauce originated in China 2,800 years ago and its use later spread to East and Southeast Asia.[5] Like many salty condiments, soy sauce was probably originally a way to stretch salt, historically an expensive commodity. In Ancient China, fermented fish with salt was used as a condiment in which soybeans was included during the fermentation process. Eventually, this was replaced and the recipe for soy sauce, jiangyou (酱油), was created with soybeans as principal ingredient.[6]
Records of the Dutch East India Company list soy sauce as a commodity in 1737, when seventy-five large barrels were shipped from Dejima, Japan, to Batavia (present-day Jakarta) on the island of Java. Thirty-five barrels from that shipment were then shipped to the Netherlands.[7] In the 18th century, Isaac Titsingh published accounts of brewing soy sauce. Although earlier descriptions of soy sauce had been disseminated in the West, this was among the earliest to focus specifically on the brewing of the Japanese version.[8] By the mid-19th century, the Japanese soy sauce gradually disappeared from the European market, and soy sauce became synonymous with the Chinese product.[9] Europeans were unable to make soy sauce because they did not understand the function of Aspergillus oryzae, the fungus used in its brewing.[9]
One 19th century writer records that in China, the best soy sauce is "made by boiling beans soft, adding an equal quantity of wheat or barley, and leaving the mass to ferment; a portion of salt and three times as much water are afterwards put in, and the whole compound left for two or three months when the liquid is pressed and strained".[10]
Salt's ability to preserve food was a foundation of civilization. It eliminated the dependence on the seasonal availability of food and it allowed travel over long distances. However, salt was difficult to obtain, and so it was a highly valued trade item. Many salt roads, such as the via Salaria in Italy, had been established by the Bronze age.
Today, salt is almost universally accessible, relatively cheap and often iodized.
Type Logographic
Languages Chinese
Time period Since 1956
Parent systems Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese
More about Triads
Triad (simplified Chinese: 三合会; traditional Chinese: 三合會; pinyin: Sānhéhuì; literally "Triad Society") is a term used to describe many branches of Chinese criminal organizations based in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Macau, Taiwan, China, and also in countries with significant Chinese populations, such as Malaysia, Singapore, the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. The Chinese triads are one of the world's largest criminal organizations, encompassing other criminal organizations with a steady membership of around 1.5 million in mainland China alone and 2.5 million members worldwide.[citation needed]