Author: Priya Krishna / Source: Atlas Obscura
One of the most unassuming landmarks in New York’s Chinatown is a 23-year-old grocery shop with a bright green awning. Its frozen aisles are filled with chicken wings, pork belly, and spot prawns.
But these are no run-of-the-mill meats. In fact, they’re not meats at all—but rather mushrooms, soybeans, and cognac (a Japanese yam flower), all shaped and flavored to behave exactly like animal protein. In this world of Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meat, plant-based meat may seem like a new phenomenon. But it’s actually a centuries-old tradition, popularized by Buddhism and Taoism, and this shop, May Wah Vegetarian Market, has long been a prime destination for those seeking impressively analogous meat substitutes.
Many Buddhists and Taoists believe in doing no harm to living things, and correspondingly follow a vegetarian diet. In several parts of East Asia, meat-based cuisines have long dominated. So, several centuries ago, many temple kitchens, whose cooks were skilled in pastries and noodles, started coming up with creative substitutions. They would mold soybeans into exact replicas of cooked duck breasts (complete with the scored skin), meld mushrooms into plump pieces of mutton, and sculpt cognac into a whole fish that flaked just like the real thing.
In Taiwan, where Buddhism and Taoism are the most commonly practiced religions, many restaurants that serve meat will automatically sell a mock meat version of every dish. “Even if you go to a 7-Eleven, the fake meat will be available, next to any meat,” says Lily Ng, the operating manager of May Wah Vegetarian Market. Her mother, Lee Mee Ng, started the market in 1995. Lee Mee and Lily immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan in 1979, and are both Taoists. Frustrated by the lack of vegetarian options in New York, Lee Mee decided to open a shop dedicated entirely to the mock meats that she felt homesick for.
At the time, according to Lily, only one vegetarian restaurant existed in Chinatown; plant-based eating had yet to hit the cultural zeitgeist. Business was rough in the first few years. “People didn’t believe in our stuff, and thought it was weird,” says Lily. “We were giving things out for free just to convince people.” Even the local Taoist and Buddhist populations were hesitant about mock meat. “They had gotten so used to eating just vegetables in the U.S.,” explains Lily, “So they were iffy about our stuff.”
Then, as the new millennium hit, vegetarianism suddenly became trendy. PETA and other animal activist groups started reaching out to May Wah about partnerships. Around then, May Wah also launched an e-commerce store—becoming one of the first Chinese grocers in the area to do so. “We just kind of blew up,” says Lily. Soon, the shop was packed with not just Buddhists and Taoists looking to stock up on mock duck, but vegetarians of all stripes.
The Ngs work with a Taiwan-based manufacturing company called Chin Hsin Foods, which ensures that the mock meat they are getting is as good as…
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