This article examines soybean curd and kindred byproducts in Hong Kong, where an ethnographic survey revealed that traditional forms of soy products have been supplemented with new consumption practices. Soyfoods have been part of Asian food systems for millennia. But century ago, soybeans entered the world market, taking on new nutritional and economic roles. Swiftly changing technology and unexpected market opportunities have since transformed the place of soybeans in the panorama of global food. Hong Kong is now place where novel soyfood-eating styles are becoming fashionable, and these are diffusing to other, more Western societies. (Asia, anthropology of food, globalization) This essay introduces the role of bean curd (Mandarin doufou, Cantonese dauh-fuh)(1) and other soyfoods in the cultural and culinary life of Hong Kong people, and reports on ethnographic research there that includes retailing stores and markets, bean-curd factory, and brief consumer survey. The article also seeks to situate that survey in the larger context of world food history, particularly as related to the soybean (Glycine max). Soybeans are domesticated legume of enormous nutritional, economic, and culinary importance in Asia. During the last century, soybeans and many soy byproducts have entered massively into world commerce on scale that could scarcely have been imagined 100 or even 50 years ago (Mintz and Du Bois n.d.).(2) The history of soybeans and soyfoods stretches back over three millennia. Huang (2000:18, 27) assigns the domestication of soybeans to the beginning of the Chou (Zhou) dynasty. Its cultivation spread widely on the Asian mainland and Japan. Huang (2000) believes that soybeans may have been eaten in place of cereals in China after its domestication. That legume should be eaten like complex carbohydrate and as the core of meal is very unusual. But while soybeans are edible and can be prepared and consumed like other beans, they eventually proved to be most useful as human food when processed into bean curd or related products. The undesirable gastrointestinal effects of eating unprocessed soybeans might help to explain why more skill must have been invested in producing diversified, digestible, and delicious byproducts from the soybean than from any other legume so early in history. In his breathtaking survey of the subject, Huang (2000:293) writes: [I]n spite of its admirable nutrient content, the soybean is far from being an ideal food. Apart from the immature beans which can be eaten directly as vegetable, the raw mature beans as harvested and stored suffer from several serious defects when used as food. Firstly, the soy proteins are difficult to digest. The beans contain proteins, such as trypsin inhibitor, which suppress the action of proteases in the human digestive system. Unless they are thoroughly cooked to inactivate the inhibitors, the proteins would be poorly digested resulting in growth inhibitions, pancreatic hypertrophy and hyperplasia. Secondly, the carbohydrate component contains raffinose and staehyose, two [Alpha]-galaetosides which are not degraded by human digestive enzymes. They pass into the colon where they are metabolised by anaerobic bacteria, leading to the generation of gas and flatulence. be sure, both defects are shared by other legumes, but the undesirable effects may be more pronounced in soybeans--in ancient China these were eaten as grains in much larger amounts than other legumes, which were consumed as vegetables. Finally, soybean contains so-called unpleasant beany flavour which was one of the major obstacles that had to be overcome before soybean oil could be commercialised on large scale. To circumvent these problems ... the Chinese developed ways of processing soybeans to produce foods that are wholesome, attractive and nutritious (Huang 2000:295, 299). Though Huang calls the exact origins of doufu a major unsolved problem in the history of food science and nutrition of China, he concludes that the process may have been developed sometime around the end of the Han dynasty (Huang 2000:216). …