Red Beans

[Bob Dylan Thomas]

Can anyone please tell me: are "hong2dou4" Kidney Beans or Aduki Beans? (aka Adzuki). Or neither?

This is critical to my forthcoming publication, "An Insight into the Lyrics of Wang Fei".

(If anyone replies with a definition in Chinese, please could you write in pinyin with tones too, i can't read characters on this computer, thanks).

[hzrt8w]

Can anyone please tell me: are "hong2dou4" Kidney Beans or Aduki Beans? (aka Adzuki). Or neither?

Hong2 Dou4 are definitely not Kidney Beans. I believe they are Azuki Beans. I found a picture here:

http://chinesefood.miningco.com/library/blphotoadzuki.htm

What's shown in the picture are Chinese Hong2 Dou4.

[Gary Soup]

These are the beans that are used in many Chinese sweet pastries and dim sum items. Definitely not kidney beans.

Here's a website that lists 15(!) different names (including "hong dou") for Vigna Angularis-Angularis in Chinese:

Those red beans

[ananda]

The 'red bean' in "An Insight into the Lyrics of Wang Fei" should be jequirity bean, it's not used for food, but a love token. Wang wei, Tang's poet, wrote a poem:

相思

王维

红豆生南国，

春来发几枝？

愿君多采撷，

此物最相思。

[chicvege]

Adzuki bean is the Japanese way of calling bean, and in Chinese it is Hong Dou, which literally means red bean. I work in a health food store in UK, and the Adzuki bean we sell is definitely the red bean I have at home (I'm a Chinese).

At the mention of the red bean poem, there is also another poem featured in a Chinese classic novel. Found an adzuki bean website that has both the Chinese and English version (well won't say it's extremely well translated, but close enough), and quite a bit of info on the bean too:

http://www.knowingfood.com/lovebean.html