Originally Posted by
purplestraw
My American friend is a vegan and when she came to visit me in Singapore and we travelled throughout Asia, I was surprised at how limited her choices were. There seemed to be difficulty in understanding vegan requests. Especially with a lot of cuisines that have Chinese influence, it seemed that to them as long as meat was not the star of the dish, it was "meat free" to them. But a lot of times the food uses a meat base broth or sauce (fish sauce! shrimp paste!).
So true! In Japan, everything has dashi (katsuo no dashi - fish broth). In China/HK etc, there's oyster sauce, chicken/meat broth, fish sauce, shrimp paste, lard. In Thailand and other SE Asia countries, there's fish sauce, shrimp paste, etc. And then there's gelatin in a lot of western dessert (to hold the shape of the cake longer or to glaze the tart, etc, especially for buffet and display cases). Chinese bakeries use lard in and on many baked goods. Fried veggies or tofu could have been fried in oil that had been used for frying meat/seafood.
In Asia, I've found Taiwan to be a vegetarian/vegan paradise. Due to Buddhism influence, there have traditionally been a lot of veggie/vegan restaurants over the years on the island nation, and nowadays, it's gotten better and better, with really interesting and international cuisine and buffet on offer.