https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3016361/su...
> Sushi is not from Japan
Some people will stop reading and share it on Facebook here
> Sushi reached China, then Japan from its origins along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia, and was later exported to the US and the rest of the world
Actually, it's from China!
Now even more people will stop reading and share it on Facebook
> The dish started out as fermented whole fish preserved with inedible salted rice
Wait, that doesn't sound like sushi to me
> However, the sushi we know today tastes and looks very different to how it did centuries ago. First of all, the rice in the original “sushi” was not intended to be eaten. Mixed with salt, it was used to preserve the fish and then thrown out.
Three paragraphs in and below the fold, the article itself admits that the dish being discussed isn't sushi. We're talking about "sushi" here!
> And sushi’s origins aren’t even Japanese, says Nobu Hong Kong executive sushi chef Kazunari Araki, who has more than 20 years of sushi-making experience.
"origins". Also, it's a Japanese guy saying it. Even Japanese ADMIT sushi is not Japanese!
> The combination of rice and fish, he explains, originated in the third century along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia, where countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are now situated.
1,700 years ago people preserved fish in rice!
> By the 12th century, this method of fermenting fish had travelled from the Mekong to China, and then on to Japan, where it was called narezushi. However, in the 16th century, in the Edo period, Araki says, vinegar replaced salt in the preservation process, which was a major step forward in the development of sushi. It also gave birth to the name sushi – which translates to “vinegared rice”.
I'm pretty sure this means the dish that we call sushi now is Japanese. Do you think most people will have read this far down into the article?
The rest of the article is about how sushi is actually American. According to this article, sushi is from South East Asia, Chinese, and America! Does that sound like a reasonable conclusion to you?
> The rest of the article is about how sushi is actually American. According to this article, sushi is from South East Asia, Chinese, and America! Does that sound like a reasonable conclusion to you?
No, it sounds like an absurd misrepresentation of an interesting article on the history and origins of sushi from a veteran Japanese chef that, unless you're genuinely as ignorant as you're making yourself look with this post, you can't possibly be serious about.
> By the 12th century, this method of fermenting fish had travelled from the Mekong to China, and then on to Japan, where it was called narezushi.
It's a substantial claim that fermented fish and rice travelled through China to Japan. Food travels very slowly. If it travelled by land, it'll morphed with local ingredients. South China has more rice based dish. North China has less rice and more wheat in their cuisines. If fermented fish and rice travelled that far through land. It'll leave lots of traces in Chinese cuisines.
It's likely that Japanese got fermented fish and rice directly from South East Asia, without going through China. Japan has been trading with SE Asia region for centuries. Hội An is a city port in Vietnam with Japanese remnants.
Fish sauce travelled from Rome to Vietnam, through China.
Sushi travelled from SE Asia to Japan, through China.
This book (https://books.google.com/books?id=iyQps4i41JoC&pg=PA344&redi...) mentions Southern China as one of the origins of narezushi.
This one (https://www.businessinsider.com/the-complete-history-of-sush...) goes even further by specifically talking of Southern China as the origin and suggests that the influence of northern invaders explains why you won't find much signs of it in modern China.
This documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31jXkTLbYFE&feature=youtu.be...) links sushi to the introduction of rice cultivation to Japan. Through China.
And apparently (https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/17154/...) when it comes to the arrival of rice to Japan, it's not a question of whether or not it came through China, but which of the three possible routes it took.
Rice arrived to Japan thousands of years ago. At the time, Southern China is not part of present day China. The Baiyue people were good naval navigators. They probably traded with Japan and South East Asia. Saying sushi got to Japan through China is misleading. People would think that sushi travelled through China land to Japan.