TO CHEW! A primal action: so universal, so mechanical, so gauche, so necessary. And let’s not forget to suck. The two exist as a unit, a human engine—complete, marvelous, and self-sufficient. Forget about the gustatory tract, disregard the esophagus, leave out teeth picking (for now). To chew and to suck. Think of the clicking and munching and slurping: a glorious chorus. Conjure, if you will, a chewing and sucking orchestra, a sound lubricated by saliva the way violins lubricate a symphony. The molars provide brass and the tongue acts as a conductor, stirring the moist, cavernous hall into a galloping crescendo, or coaxing errant soundwaves up and over the tonsils. (Backstage: a muted timpani of gas, ominous but ignored.)

Then think of today: the day after Halloween. Candy day. Today is the day that conductors, or tongues if you prefer, work overtime. Particularly if they’re feeding on Asian candy. You see, these little-known pleasures involve more chewing and sucking—and nuance—than their counterparts in the West: comparably clumsy, limp, oversweetened, underflavored, one-dimensional pellets of disappointment. Take gummies. Ours come in litchi nut; theirs, in blue and yellow. Some of them even foretell riches, and long life. Call me a candy chauvinist, but Asian candy is downright yummy, and any day now, the world will discover it. A few of TMM’s picks:

White Rabbit Candy ($1.99 for 8 oz.)

For every thumbsucker is another kind of sucker—the kind that won’t be weaned. But what if you could coat your thumb in milk… and carry on without pain? You’d do it too, right?

On the wrapper: a line drawing of a bunny in the woods. Inside: a chewy cylinder carrying the creamy taste of milkshakes. As a kid, I squealed the squeal of another dying Rabbit every time I popped one while my dad, oddly unmoved, continued cracking his watermelon seeds all over the living room carpet. I was a glutton for these glutinous nuggets, and could chew them endlessly (my brother Jeff and I would have contests). For variety, I removed the rice-paper stuck to the candy first and ate only this colorless, tasteless peel, letting it dissolve on my tongue. “Squeal/suck/chew/dissolve,” went my orchestra, and only sometimes did it spoil dinner.

Haw Flakes

Before Sour Patch Kids came haw flakes: tart, sugary coins made from the extract of a real berry bush called haw. They taste of real berry, too, and it was fun to put them on your tongue and let them seep in, like a fruity Chinese communion wafer. The classic I grew up with came out of a paper cylinder, like a short roll of quarters or Necco—that pastel candy from New England with all the charisma of concrete. Haw comes in other shapes and sizes, too: sugary haw sticks, thick haw bars with nuts, haw chips. “Hawww,” Jeff and I used to drawl, until we collapsed in giggles. Today, it’s still funny, and every bit as tasty.

Pocky Sticks ($1.69 for 3.35 oz.)

Having grown up in a household in which Japanese foodstuffs were verboten (by now the ban is long gone), I did not learn about Pocky Sticks until I took some from a Shangri-La mini-bar. For those of you who haven’t been indoctrinated, they’re buttery stick biscuits dipped lightly in milk chocolate, and they’re delicate and addictive. Thank goodness the bag is a modest, Japanese two-ounces.

Ginger Chews ($2.69 for 7 oz.)

“Sheng Jiang” is Mandarin for “ginger,” which makes for a nifty homonym, as “Sheng” also means life (it also means “God,” but let’s not get carried away). Judging from the ubiquity of ginger as an ingredient, a health food, and a remedy, the ginger marketers have done their job convincing people that ginger is life, and this chewy candy has benefited accordingly. The spicy punch from one chew could ignite your head like Drew Barrymore in Firestarter, but you’ll need that head to chew, and chew, and chew. These days, a couple of California makers—Reed the ginger brewer, the Ginger People of Royal Pacific Foods—are pumping out ginger chews in holiday-happy flavors like spicy apple ginger and peanut ginger. But I stand by the original Ting Ting’s sharper, sassier original. Kaboom.

Chinese Good Luck Candy ($4.99)

“What do you mean fresh?” my mom asked, when I asked her to pick up the red foil-wrapped hard candies with the gold lettering from the Chinese supermarket. “It’s corn syrup.”

Fair enough. Lovely, caramel-tinged pouches of corn syrup filled with chewy, strawberry-flavored corn syrup centers, and as if this wasn’t tantalizing enough to the kid in all of us, the characters on the wrapper impart good fortune. And when they’re not fresh, well, the dive into the pink center is just a tad more brittle.

I was recently handed one in a tiny paper bag at my 99-year-old grandmother’s funeral. “Well, why not?” I thought, taking it out of the foil. She had a lucky life, and they—i.e. the funeral home—want me to have a lucky day. I sucked, then I chewed, and I was one happy 12-year-old again.

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Between work trips to Asia and beyond, New York-based travel writer Jean Tang hosts the Internet cooking show “Real Meals.tv.”