Keeping the authentic taste of China alive in India

On a recent visit home to Kolkata in eastern India, I made it a point to keep one afternoon free to explore Tangra, one of the two Chinatowns in the city. Once famous for its tanneries and its labyrinth lanes and bylanes, Tangra is where the locals head today for authentic Chinese food that does not cost the earth. And where else but in Tangra would one find industrial quantities of the sauces that are so vital to Chinese cuisine being made?

Having moved from Guangdong to what was then known as Calcutta after World War II, F.S.Young realized that the nearly 30,000-strong Chinese community in the city had no access to a regular supply of soy sauce. So in 1954, he set up the Sing Cheung Sauce Factory, churning out soy sauce made in the traditional manner, which much like whiskey, includes a long aging process to get the right flavor.

The ingredients were, and still are, sourced from Sikkim, North Bengal, and northeastern India. The clientele then was the local Chinese community, while today, Chinese restaurants across India use sauces made by Sing Cheung or Pou Chong, another sauce maker from Kolkata that opened shop in 1958.