Fermented bean curd is often served as part of a Chinese breakfast.

As the name suggests, it is made from bean curd and is usually available in two different varieties, the white and the red.Bean curd,as told by th previous article,first appeared as early as the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-24 A.D.), but fer-mented bean curd had to wait for several hundred years.

A story tells about a bean curd trades-man of the Tang Dynasty (608-907), whose business was rather slack at a time. His bean curd began to

become mouldy and, to prevent it from further deteriorating, he sprinkled fine salt over it and put it away in a jiar. As he opened the jar a few days later, he found to his surprise that the salted bean curd, instead of having gone bad,greeted him with an inviting smell he had never known before. Thus the first lot of fermented bean curd was born.

This food has since become very popular in China, and it is made by a rather simple process. Fresh bean curd is cut into cubes and mixed with nodule moule and left to ferment for 2-3 days until a mouldy coating appears in the surface. (Made at home, the bean curd may be left to ferment by itself,but this takes about 10days.) The bean curd is then salted, sea-soned with other condinments and sealed in jars.It is put away and kept for 4-5 months to become savoury and marketable.