Yong tau foo 酿豆腐 like lei cha 擂茶 are iconic dishes of the Hakka people. The Hakka people originally from the Yellow River basin in central China, migrated south over nearly 2000 years due to invaders from the north (Xiongnu, Mongols, and later Manchus).
Today, Hakka people have migrated across the world and formed the fourth largest Chinese community in Singapore. Everywhere they went, the Hakka brought yong tau foo with them because to the Hakka, "there is no banquet without stuffed dishes" 无酿不成席. At every Hakka celebration, there is yong tau foo on the table.
Hakka 客家 is the Cantonese phrase for "guest people". It's not a compliment but an oblique way of saying "outsiders". The Hakka first left the Yellow River basin some 1,700 years ago and arrived in Guangdong and Fujian provinces about 1,000 years ago.
The arrival of the Hakka brought overpopulation and tensions over competition for land especially in Guangdong. Both the Hakka and Cantonese are non sea faring communities - they were both at land's end in Guangdong with nowhere to go unless they take to the seas (which they eventually did had to).
The Punti 本地 - Hakka 客家 ("local" vs "guest") wars broke out in Guangdong between 1855 - 1867. About 1 million people lost their lives before Qing (Manchu) armies intervened and stopped the fighting. The Punti - Hakka war was one of the reasons why millions fled Guangdong for Nanyang (southeast Asia).
Ironically, many Cantonese and Hakka fled to British Malaya (and continued their enmity, leading to the Larut Wars in Perak which lasted till 1874, even though peace was already restored in Guangdong in 1867).
Today, Cantonese and Hakka form the third and fourth largest Chinese communities in Singapore (Hokkien and Teochew are the first and second, while the Hainanese are the fifth).
The Hakka have to be a resourceful and adaptable community in order to survive their two millennia long migrations to often unwelcoming, if not outright deadly hostile places. Yong tau foo is a manifestation of the community's survival instincts and resilient trait.
Coming from the China's central plains, one of the Hakka staples was dumplings - pork wrapped in a thin skin of rolled wheat dough. As wheat is grown less in Guangdong and the Hakka mostly lived in the hills, they resorted to wrapping pork with various replacements for wheat flour dough.
To replace dumplings, the Hakka created a new genre of dishes known as 酿菜 which means "stuffed dishes". The fillings are usually chopped or minced pork (preferably trotter or jowl) flavoured with a bit of savoury dried salted fish. "Stuffed dishes" are most associated with 梅洲 Meizhou, the "capital" of Hakka in eastern Guangdong province of China. (The Hakka is the only major Chinese community with no territory of their own.)
To the resourceful Hakka, there is the principle of無菜不酿 which means "there are no vegetables that cannot be stuffed". Take for example this stuffed long bean - all we need is a little ingenuity which the Hakka has abundantly.
Even stuffed cabbages is not a problem.
Then, there is the principle of 万物皆可酿 which means "anything and everything can be stuffed". For example, there's even pork blood curd stuffed with pork (though not in Singapore as pork blood is banned here).
And, the stuffing needn't be pork. It can be anything that is available locally. In Guangdong, the obvious and common alternative is river fish but clam meat is also used. In the Singapore, fish like ikan parang (wolf herring) or surimi are more common stuffing than pork.
Yong Tau Foo in Singapore and Malaysia • Food Binds People
Hakka and Cantonese together with their other compatriots (Hokkien, Teochew) from Guangdong and Fujian started to arrive in Nanyang from the 1820s to feed British Malaya's hunger for manpower for their booming tin mines, rubber plantations and sea ports.
Relations between the clans were not rosy like today. The deadliest riots in Singapore's history were between the Hokkien and Teochew in 1854 where over 500 people died. The Hakka and Cantonese were still fighting in the Larut Wars in Perak till 1874, even though peace between Punti and Hakka was already restored back home in Guangdong in 1867.
Over time in Singapore and Malaysia, the animosity between Cantonese and Hakka (also Hokkien and Teochew) became watered down. Living or more accurately surviving together brought the communities closer, from tolerating to accepting each other. Old wounds heal. We can see this reflected in the evolution of Hakka yong tau foo in Singapore and Malaysia.
In Singapore and Malaysia, the entire genre of stuffed dishes 酿菜 is generically referred to as yong tau foo 酿豆腐 or stuffed tofu. This is possibly because the Hakka hawkers that first sold stuffed dishes were limited to only stuffed tofu items as they were sold from mobile push carts or carried on a bamboo pole with two baskets across their shoulders. Over time, they upgraded to permanent stationary stalls and added the full flourish of stuffed dishes like stuffed lady fingers, brinjal, chilies, etc. However, the name yong tau foo (stuffed tofu) stayed i.e. today, yong tau foo does not refer only to tofu stuffed with minced pork or fish paste but the whole range of Hakka stuffed dishes.
In Ipoh, they use the term 酿料 which means "stuffed ingredients".
Just take a look at yong tau foo stalls in Singapore and Malaysia, and you will see a whole smorgasbord of stuffed dishes as well as non stuffed items like cuttlefish, dried seaweed, century egg, quail egg, fishball, even wieners, faux "crab" sticks, i.e. anything goes.
Hakka yong tau foo is traditionally eaten as sides to accompany lei cha or Hakka noodle.
In Malaysia and Singapore, selling yong tau foo is no longer a Hakka monopoly. The folks behind Xiu Ji Ikan Bilis yong tau fu in Chinatown are Cantonese, so are the owners of fourth generation Hup Chong yong tau foo in Toa Payoh.
In Malaysia, we find Hakka yong tau foo eaten together with the quintessentially Cantonese wanton noodle, a combination incomprehensible or blasphemous to wanton noodle purists in Guangdong and Hong Kong.
Then, there is yong tau foo with spicy laksa that will surely blown the minds off folks from Guangdong - what have you done to our stuffed dishes?!
Stuffed dishes or yong tau foo is a dish that can change a lot from place to place, time to time but yet it doesn't change as its essence is in its flexibility and adaptability - 無菜不酿 there are no vegetables that cannot be stuffed; 万物皆可酿 anything and everything can be stuffed.
In Singapore and Malaysia, Hakka yong tau foo now integrates ingredients from Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew communities yet stuffed dishes remain unmistakably Hakka in essence. That is the beautiful resilience of Hakka culture and cuisines (which we also see in lei cha).
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