You might have already seen plenty of horse-related puns on posters and decorations as we prepare to welcome the Year of the Horse, but it seems like the festive wordplay has also made its way onto supermarket shelves.
Taking to Instagram Threads on Wednesday (Jan 21), a netizen shared a series of photos depicting various pork products from Sheng Siong supermarket — each bearing a pun specific to its cut.
The puns combine the Mandarin names of the products and auspicious phrases often used during Chinese New Year.
These include pork kidneys (yao zi) labelled with the phrase: “Zi sun man tang“, which translates to “a house filled with children and grandchildren”, pork tendon (zhu jiao jin) with “hou jin shi zu” meaning maximum after-power, and pork tongue (zhu she tou) accompanied by “tian tian mi mi” (expressing sweetness).
“Singaporean supermarkets are quite humorous, they just had to add in auspicious sayings,” the netizen wrote.
The post quickly drew attention online, with several people replying to express their amusement.
“This is so funny, I want to visit Sheng Siong too,” read a comment.
Said another: “This is limited to Chinese New Year period only, they probably don’t do this normally.”
One netizen shared that the supermarket does this every year.
When AsiaOne visited the Sheng Siong outlet at New World Centre on Friday morning, the meat shelves were stocked full of pork products from Lebao, the supermarket’s house brand. They were all labelled with the auspicious puns.
A spokesperson at the outlet told AsiaOne that the supermarket chain labels their Lebao pork products with these well-wishes every year, and while the brand also carries other frozen products, they are only printed on fresh pork produce.
Besides the pork products, another item at Sheng Siong has been drawing attention — the Cengreat Fortune Cookie Sticks — and is already sold out at the outlet.
Inspired by the fortune lots drawn at Chinese temples, the butter cookie sticks are decorated with various quotes ranging from words of advice to nuggets of wisdom.
AsiaOne has reached out to Sheng Siong supermarket for more information.
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carol.ong@asiaone.com
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