Guazi (; id, kuaci), also called kwasi ( my, ) refers to roasted plant seeds. It is a popular snack in China, Malaysia and overseas Chinese communities, especially in Indonesia. While directly translated as "melon seeds" it usually refers to baked seeds of the sunflower, pumpkin, or watermelon seeds. It is often served as an appetizer during banquets.

History

The oldest documentation of the consumption of ''guazi'' is recorded in the ''

Taiping Huanyu Ji The ''Taiping Huanyu Ji'' (), or "Universal Geography of the Taiping Era 76-983" is a 10th-century AD geographical treatise by Chinese scholar Yue Shi 樂史 (930-1007), written during the reign of Emperor Taizong of Song in the Northern Song Dy ...

'' though it is unclear what specific variety of seed was eaten. Watermelon seeds were the earliest to be consumed in China during the

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdom ...

and only became widespread during the

Ming The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han peop ...

and

Qing dynasties The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...

. The

Wanli Emperor The Wanli Emperor (; 4 September 1563 – 18 August 1620), personal name Zhu Yijun (), was the 14th Emperor of the Ming dynasty, reigned from 1572 to 1620. "Wanli", the era name of his reign, literally means "ten thousand calendars". He was th ...

was described by Liu Ruoyu in the ''Zhuo Zhong Zhi'' to have “loved eating fresh watermelon seeds baked with salt.” There is a folk song from the late Ming that described a girl gifting a bag of shelled seeds to her lover. Consumption of pumpkin and sunflower seeds was only commonplace after the Qing.

Feng Zikai Feng Zikai (; November 9, 1898 – September 15, 1975) was an influential Chinese painter, pioneering '' manhua'' () artist, essayist, and lay Buddhist of 20th-century China. Born just after the First Sino-Japanese War and dying just before the e ...

observed the popularity of eating seeds during his life writing his book, ''Eating Guazi'', on the matter.'''' Quan Yanchi wrote in his book, ''Leaders Around the Dining Table'', how

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...

and Liu Shaoqi enjoyed eating ''guazi.''

Idiom

The process of shelling each seed in order to eat the food is time-consuming for a relatively minimal amount of substance. The task was viewed as wasteful and became a phrase that symbolized killing or wasting time. It would often be used in context of wasting taxpayer money.

Varieties

* Sunflower seed *

Pumpkin seed A pumpkin seed, also known in North America as a pepita (from the Mexican es, pepita de calabaza, "little seed of squash"), is the edible seed of a pumpkin or certain other cultivars of squash. The seeds are typically flat and asymmetrically ...

* Watermelon seed

References

Snack foods Chinese cuisine Indonesian cuisine Malaysian cuisine {{Indonesia-cuisine-stub

History

Idiom

Varieties

See also

References