虱目魚Milkfish

Milkfish is farmed mostly in brackish ponds along the southwest coast. Tainan City's Agriculture Bureau, citing the 2024 Fisheries Statistical Yearbook, put Tainan's 2024 output at 23,867 tonnes, about 42% of the national total (Newtalk, November 2025). Chinese Wikipedia lists Kaohsiung (2018 figures) as the second-largest producer by output and value, centered on Mituo and Yong'an, and the Ministry of Agriculture's county-level pond data (survey year not stated) show adult-rearing milkfish ponds covering roughly 3,700 hectares in Tainan, 2,350 in Chiayi County, 2,070 in Kaohsiung and only about 120 in Pingtung. The flesh is tender but bony (the Ministry of Education's Hokkien dictionary describes the fish as having 'many fine bones'), so Tainan's markets have stalls that sell little else, cutting boneless portions on the spot and grinding the remaining meat into fish paste for fish balls. A Supertaste feature on Tainan's milkfish dishes adds that, to cut the fishy smell, the fish are not fed the day before harvest and are made to leap in the water beforehand to clear their guts, which is why the innards are clean enough to eat.

The classic bowl is congee: rice cooked in a stock simmered from fish bones and flesh, then served with fish meat, belly, skin or innards, whichever you order. According to Chinese Wikipedia, the southern style is usually cooked until the grains stay separate, somewhere between congee and soupy rice. Some shops add fried shallots and fried garlic, and a youtiao on the side is the usual companion. Milkfish soup is most often a ginger-strip broth, but Tainan also sours it with salted, fermented green mango, fermented young watermelon (西瓜綿), pickled melon or pickled mustard greens. The belly can be simmered, pan-fried, grilled or braised, and the innards (intestine, crunchy stomach and soft liver) are a local specialty: one fish has only one set, and a single bowl takes at least five, so supply is limited.

How long milkfish has been farmed in Taiwan is unsettled. The popular account says the Dutch brought it from Indonesia in the 17th century, but researchers re-reading the Dutch Zeelandia Diary (《熱蘭遮城日誌》) find a fishery tax from 1644 and a 1647 entry read as ùn-á (塭仔), a brackish pond-farming method, around Madou in Tainan and Yizhu in Chiayi, but no record of the Dutch shipping in fry. They suggest that farming may have arrived earlier with migrants from Zhangzhou, Quanzhou and Chaozhou, or through Indigenous contact with Southeast Asia, possibly 500 years ago or more, though this remains an inference. A 1717 gazetteer of Zhuluo County already mentions the fish kept in ponds.

The name is just as contested. Candidates include the Taiwanese 塞目魚, 'stuffed-eye fish', for its fatty eyelids; an Indigenous word (Lian Heng's Taiwan Tongshi records it as 麻薩末 and calls it Indigenous); and a Spanish loanword. The Ministry of Education's Taiwanese dictionary adds that in Pingtung the fish is called 海草魚 (hái-tsháu-hî). The best-known story ties it to Koxinga: as he faced the Dutch at Fort Zeelandia, supplies ran low, and the sea goddess Matsu is said to have told him in a dream not to say there were no fish. The next day his soldiers hauled in a great catch, and the dream phrase became the fish's name. In another version, local fishermen offered him fish and his question, 'what fish is this?', was taken for its name. Both are folk legends, not documented history.