A relearning of Hong Kong Cuisine
words by Hiu Yan Chelsia
for Bia! Zine Issue 02
This is the second time that my family has settled onto European soil. My dad’s side of the family, including my grandparents and six of their kids, moved to England in the 80s for a better future. My grandparents owned a Chinese takeaway and my dad worked at a restaurant called The Golden Dragon - your typical Hong Kong immigrant story. All the family ultimately decided to move back to Hong Kong once they had university degrees and enough time out, back to their village, aptly named 漵袢鵃 - “Water flowing into farmland”. My grandmother still farms, at the age of 80-something (no one is sure about her age or exact birthday). She grows the most delicious vegetables known to mankind, or at least to me and my relatives. Various dark green leafy vegetables, sweet, bitter, with a light layer of fresh soil and sometimes cabbage worms, putting “Chinese vegetables” or “Pak Choi” from Tesco to shame. Our family name is Choi, which sounds the same as “vegetable” in Cantonese.
Three decades later, my family returned, this time with me and my sister. I entered university in Belfast, studying food science and exiting with the realisation that I didn’t care about the science behind food, it was the people behind it that mattered. A few years later my parents and two of my aunts retired and moved to Basingstoke, an English town with too many roundabouts. They did this along with some 144,500 HongKongers scattered across the UK and Ireland in search of a new home. In my head I think that my move to (Northern) Ireland was a choice whereas my family’s move to England was not, but they were the ones who stayed in Hong Kong during peak COVID and political instability and I was not.
I don’t consider myself an expert in Hong Kong cuisine; in fact, I can count with maybe two hands the number of Hong Kong dishes I have set out to recreate. For my parents it’s very different - the last time I visited them, for a week I was showered with copious amounts of cultural foods: Meals out at the local Cantonese restaurant, hefty bowls of soup noodles with fish balls, steamed fish with ginger and spring onions, Hong Kong style roast duck and roast pork, soy sauce stir fry prawns, unlimited bowls of jasmine rice, mooncakes and mochi ice cream for dessert; even dim sum for breakfast on the day I left for the airport.
The first time my family migrated, they didn’t bring their cultural foods as openly and authentically to their new locale - it is common knowledge that the menu items at a Chinese takeaway barely reflect the cuisine it is trying to emulate, instead adapted to the Western palette. Time passes and although we are displaced geographically, I get to access authentic, detailed recipes of cultural dishes that I used to take for granted but are non-existent in Ireland. My parents get to purchase in England the same brand of soy sauce that we would have in Hong Kong, plus 37 different variations of Asian instant noodles - far superior to the Western ones; we all get to see pictures of celebratory feasts from relatives from home, and be there in stomach and spirit.
There is a strong sense of rebuilding cultural food practices in this new land within the Hong Kong migrant community. My parents and aunts are amongst the many migrants who watch Youtubers like Catherine Leung (@騇艣褁賵’渿福 BackpaCooking) and Stevo and Faye (@Moving Socks), who cater to an audience of HongKongers moving to the UK and Ireland. Catherine posts videos of her shopping for ingredients at her local Sainsbury’s to cook specific Hong Kong dishes, making cultural foods accessible to all migrants regardless of budget and locality. Stevo and Faye have videos on tasting Asian food products manufactured by local supermarket brands, and explaining European holiday traditions and celebrations around food. Essentially introducing the local food environment to migrants and encouraging a bridging of Western and Hong Kong food cultures, which eases their anxieties about settling down and feelings of homesickness.
For the few times that we get together per year, me and my family share food at the dining table. But most of the time when we are geographically separated, food is shared through electronic screens. Whenever new videos are launched, my parents and aunts immediately share them in the group chat; my sister in Copenhagen watches their videos and then requests my dad to try specific recipes out. We get to collectively navigate Western food environments with the unspoken understanding that settling down into new land is hard, and we need comfort through food and connection to get us through.
Food is also shared through the land - my dad has bought vegetable seeds online, the same varieties that my grandma grows, and planted them in his garden. The climate may be different but the intention remains - to nurture a home on the other side of the world while remaining connected to our roots. Food is a tangible reminder of where we come from and always belong.
