Table Soy Sauce Pot

Jongji, or a small table sauce pot, is a piece of tableware mainly used to serve a dipping sauce or paste, such as soy sauce or pepper paste, rather than for side dishes. It is also called jongja or jongju. As a small bowl of a similar size to a liquor cup, this porcelain vessel holds around 20 to 30 cc. Most are accompanied by a lid, although some do not. These pots are generally made of brass or porcelain. Porcelain pots made using white clay and a firing process became as hard as stone and non-absorbent, which made them ideal for containing food. During the firing process, the bowls were often piled up together, and therefore each bowl is marked with around ten kiln supports at the bottom of the inside in many cases. Naturally, the kiln support marks can be seen on the foot as well. When preparing a meal, a three-cheop (unit of side dish) table was laid with a soy sauce pot; a five-cheop table with a soy sauce pot and a pot of soy sauce mixed with vinegar as a dipping sauce for pancake side dishes; and a seven-cheop table with a soy sauce pot, a pot of soy sauce mixed with vinegar, and a pot of pepper paste mixed with vinegar for raw fish. In everyday life, jongji served as a metaphor to refer to something trivial, as evident in the proverb, “Like a soy sauce jongji on the governor’s table,” which refers to someone who always follows and kowtows to someone else, just as a soy sauce pot always accompanies a meal.