"Chinese" sausage

Last Sunday, at the grocery store, my eye was caught in the meat section by a package of what purported to be fresh "Chinese sausages" (of the store brand).  The picture on the front featured an attractive stir fry, and I thought to myself, "Sure, why not."  So I did.  And they were mighty tasty, too.

But I was left wondering; besides the horrible red coloring, what about them was really "Chinese?"  The ingredients list was something unhelpful, something along the lines of "pork, pork products, red dye no. 45.3, flavorings, spices, sodium benzoate, irradiated haggis (as a preservative), salt."  To the Internet!

After some research, I have learned that (as one might suspect), there isn't really any single "Chinese sausage" any more than there's a single "Polish sausage" or "German sausage."  However, there is something called (depending on your transliteration) "lap cheung," which is a very common sausage type found all over Asia ("cheung" apparently means "sausage" in Cantonese.  Not sure what "lap" means.).  Lap cheung is usually a pork sausage, with a fair amount of fat, that has been sweetened (important part of the flavor profile) and flavored with rice wine and light soy sauce (possibly the source of the original reddish color?).  It's usually dried, but fresh versions do exist.