If I tell you that the third character in the name S: 沙丁鱼; T: 沙丁魚 (shā dīng yú), 鱼or 魚means fish, then you might be able to guess which fish I’m talking about from the pronunciation of the two preceding characters - 沙丁 (shā dīng). Think phonetically.
OK. It means ‘sardine’, for which Chinese has adopted this as a loanword from the English using the characters they consider closest in Chinese phonology.
But that doesn’t help much; sardine isn’t a species of fish as such, but a group of different species in the herring family, Clupeidae. What you think of as sardines may be a very different species from what I think. For me, sardines are Sardina or Clupea pilchardus, the European sardine found in the waters illustrated in the map below.
Public Domain Map
My main, usually reliable Chinese-English dictionary claims that 沙丁鱼 means Clupea pilchardus. However, the size and shape of these is different and it’s unlikely that China would be importing sardines from Europe when the waters off the coast of southern China is home to Sardina hualiensis, a Pacific sardine also known as Taiwan sardinella.
Distribution of Sardina hualiensis, Taiwan sardinella. AquaMaps (2019, October). Computer generated distribution maps for Sardinella hualiensis (Taiwan sardinella), with modelled year 2050 native range map based on IPCC RCP8.5 emissions scenario. Retrieved from https://www.aquamaps.org.
So, I’m betting these are those or another of the Pacific varieties such as S. brachysoma. Their descriptions more closely fit.
Chinese sardines
Interestingly, I’ve never encountered China processed canned sardines. Although canned sardines are available in some stores, they are never Chinese. We get ‘555’ brand from the Philippines
and ‘Smiling Fish’ brand from Thailand.
Few supermarkets carry canned sardines; almost unthinkable in the west.
I buy Portuguese canned sardines in boxes of 20 cans from an expensive import store.
Happiness is sardines on toast.
