Transcript

Jay

Food is so much a part of our lives. But we don’t often think that much about how we eat. Well today’s episode is not a cooking show. Rather, I want to look at what is different with the way Chinese cultures in particular eat.

Yvonne C Lam

So you have lots of what are now known as dishes essentially. And what we were eating was a banquet style meal.

Jay

Where has this emphasis on dinnertime come from?

Ying Jie Guo

even if you had money, that doesn't mean you could buy enough food, because food was rationed.

Jay

And what can we learn from how we eat?

Wan

So it teaches you to be considerate.

Jay

Hello and welcome to Shoes Off, stories about Asian Australian culture. I’m Jay Ooi.

What does food mean to you? I know a lot of Asians that are real foodies - they want to go to the best rated restaurants, try as many places as possible, and will even plan their holidays off where they want to eat each day. And I don’t think a love for food is uniquely Asian, but there are definitely elements of the culture around food, and the way we eat that are pretty unique. Now I’ve mainly looked at Chinese food culture today, but stay tuned, I promise it’s still super fascinating. 

So this emphasis on food has some interesting roots. Did your parents ever force you to finish your food? Or get incredibly agitated at the thought of wasting food? This is partly because our parents or maybe grandparents grew up in a time where food wasn’t as plentiful as it is now. If we get hungry and need something to eat, we can always head to the shops and pick something up, or we can be even lazier and order Uber Eats. Food is always at our fingertips when we need it. But this hasn’t always been the case, even just a couple of generations back.

Ying Jie Guo

Even today, if somebody wastes food, I get a bit upset. The reason is that, when I was growing up, one of the things I remember all the time, one of the things that never goes away is hunger. 

Jay

That’s Ying Jie Guo, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney who you may recognise from some previous episodes.

Ying Jie Guo

Even though my parents were not poor, they had very good salaries, but starting from the 1950s all the way to the 1980s in China, even if you had money, that doesn't mean you could buy enough food, because food was rationed. So it was difficult to get enough food.

Jay

When we think about how we use the term ‘hungry’ today, it’s usually, hey I haven’t eaten in a few hours and my tummy is grumbling and telling me I should eat. But I remember hearing stories about my grandmother’s childhood in China, that they would boil a few grains of rice in lots of water to make it expand to try and fill them up, or grinding up eggshells to eat, because that’s how little food they had, and by our modern standards, very malnourished. So their concept of hunger is completely different to ours.

Ying Jie Guo

So the importance of food to me is different. When I tell them my Australian friends, nobody seems to understand that, because here in Australia, we have an affluent society, we have enough of everything, basically, so you don't really lack food, and it's hard for people to imagine what it's like to be hungry most of the time.

Jay

So when food is scarce, the importance of being able to feed your family is far greater. So when you come from this mentality and you couple this with migration to a foreign country, food becomes really important for families as something familiar.

Victor Liong

Well, I think in a Chinese migrant context, I'm pretty sure you all can relate to this, your parents come over here, and they're stuck in a headspace of, they're a bit homesick. You know what I mean? They’re stuck in a conservative mindset of whatever that is.

Jay

That’s Victor Liong, the person behind the Melbourne restaurant Lee Ho Fook.

Victor Liong

But I think the biggest thing they keep drawing on is food. 

Victor Liong

So you can imagine 29 years ago, moving from Malaysia to ... It's the dead of winter right now. It's a big shock, My mom and dad had four kids at the time, and we were all under the age of eight. So you can imagine being in suburban Sydney. It's freezing. The kids got no toys, so you've got to, they're still waiting for their stuff, at least cook something that's familiar. I guess that's always been one of the things that has been a constant, I guess, in a lot of family gatherings and times of adversity. Not so much there were that many hard times, it was just I think trying to keep family morale.

Jay

I think this is an experience a lot of kids of migrants can relate to. Our parents are in a new country, and everything is foreign to them. But the one thing that they can keep familiar is food. They can still cook the cuisines they grew up eating, even if the location they’re eating it in is a completely different one. And this was also the case for Yvonne C Lam, the digital editor at Gourmet Traveller. Her mum worked the night shift at the postal sorting centre, so there wasn’t always that sit down dinner that other families get. Nevertheless, feeding the kids was very important.

Yvonne C Lam

But when mom would go to work, dad would... there was like a one hour window where they wouldn't cross over so they actually had to drop us off at my grandma's house. But even then, that was out dinnertime and mom would package these like really delicious home cooked meals for us in these Tupperware containers that I remember just like old school decor cylinders with like a white screw top lid, and then it would be like rice always. And then like a little stir fry like a protein, a vegetable. But it would always be very homestyle cooking, very like Cantonese, Vietnamese food. And I remember me my sister would heat it up in grandma's little microwave and we would sit in front of the TV and eat it out of our decor containers watching Tintin or whatever was on at 5:30pm because we were like little children. So we ate at like grandma nursing home times 5:30pm eating our dinner.

Yvonne C Lam

So that's one of my earliest memories of, yeah, eating food, even though mom and dad were working really hard to provide for us that they'd still, yeah, go to lengths to ensure that we were fed properly. And even though they couldn't be there for us at that time, that they still made sure that we ate good food.

Jay

So maybe because our parents and grandparents grew up in times when food wasn’t so readily available, maybe this is why dinner time is often so important because food is so important. Everyone must be together and seated.

Jay Ooi

how important is dinner time for you?

Ying Jie Guo

Dinner time is very important because it's not just about hunger as you know, it is actually about families sitting together, getting together, and that's not unique to Chinese culture

Ying Jie Guo

It's a social indication you're sitting in an important time for families to sit down and to enjoy the meal and enjoy a chat, catching up with each other, appreciating the food, appreciating the fact that we have something to eat, that's one, and we have the time to sit down together and we have this harmony in the family.

Jay Ooi

That's so interesting you say harmony, because my mom uses that term all the time.

Ying Jie Guo

Yeah. Yeah. So when I was growing up, family harmony was extremely important. So my parents would get very, very upset if anybody was unhappy at the dinner table. So no matter what happened to you, you just have to be, get over it and make sure you put on a brave face and you look happy so that you don't affect negatively the harmony at the dinner table.

Jay

And when you come from a place of not having much food, being able to provide food for others becomes such a great gesture of hospitality as well.

Ying Jie Guo

So food was a bit of a luxury. So when you have friends, when you have people you feel close to, you want to offer them some food. So that's one reason. Another reason is that, people really enjoy cooking. To be able to cook well, is a prestige. It's a prestige, and you want friends to appreciate your skills. And people feel genuinely happy when they see friends and family enjoying their food.

Ying Jie Guo

So food is important... when you don't have enough of it, when you're hungry most of the time, then offering somebody some food, especially well cooked, delicious food, it's a real treat.

Jay

And Yvonne also understands this hospitality shown through food at her family gatherings.

Yvonne C Lam

The uncles are in one room playing cards, usually sipping on Heineken, the Auntie's and grandma in another room watching usually... like they are probably gossiping and also watching Paris by Night, which is like this Vietnamese variety show, mash up festival that's filmed in LA, they watch that. And then the kids I think kids who are now 20s and 30s. Some of us have children of our own. We sit there and then we'll gossip.

Yvonne C Lam

And then every now and then an auntie will come in and just circulate like platters of peeled lychee. Like we're in our 30s and she's peeling these lychee for us to share or like a cut persimmon, or a mango that she's peeled. And de-stoned and cut into lovely pieces with the toothpicks stuck in them. And it's just like, "Here you go grown children. You may be adults with like quite good professions but I will still feed and care for you in this way," and it's really lovely. It's also quite embarrassing to tell publicly on a podcast.

Jay

So being able to cook and provide for others is something really special for a lot of Asian cultures. Even compared with other countries, Chinese spend much more time on cooking, averaging 2–3 hours every day. 

And one other big difference when it comes to particularly Chinese food but a lot of Asian food, is the way we eat.

Ying Jie Guo

Everybody has a small bowl, you don't have a big bowl. It's not a polite thing to give somebody a very big bowl.

Ying Jie Guo

And it is also a natural thing for Chinese people to offer.

Ying Jie Guo

So if you come to my place, I, as the host would offer food to you all the time, "Have a bit of this, have a bit of that, please try this. Yeah, have a bit more, have a bit more. Have you tried this? Have you tried that?" I'll pick some and put it in your bowl. So that's the natural thing to do.

Ying Jie Guo

It is Chinese hospitality. It can be very, very odd, and it's not something that most foreigners will be used to. It's certainly, even in the cities now, many Chinese people are not really accustomed to that anymore, customs are changing, but I'm talking about the olden days. That was the right thing to do. That was what you used to see.

Jay Ooi

That's exactly what my dad does all the time when we have people over. Just like shovel food into their bowl, like, "You must try this."

Ying Jie Guo

Yeah. Yeah, it's Chinese hospitality, as I said. So if you're not used to it, you can get a bit annoyed.

Jay

A lot of Asian cultures see good hospitality as providing lots of food for everyone. You almost have to insist that you don’t want any more food for them to stop offering more to you. And to not have enough food is seen as quite shameful. And I’m sure you’ve picked up the importance of food being shared.

Yvonne C Lam

And it was just like a really good communal way of eating that we eat even now. And then my husband is Caucasian, and he commented when he started coming over for family dinners, that, "Wow, you guys eat really communally, like there's always passing plates over the tables and it's very sharery." Some people I guess, depending on which background you've come from, it might seem really like, abrasive of a rock that there's all these like limbs flailing and things being passed around and no one's like, "Please pass." So you just kind of lunge for it across... you don't even have [servers 00:16:18] so it's like, "Yo, pass the kikkoman, pass the nouc man."

Yvonne C Lam

that's how a lot of Asian cultures have always eaten. It's always been about communal eating. It's the best way, you get the most bang for your buck.

Jay

If you think about a typical white Australian meal, it’s your plate and everything you want on your plate. You eat everything that’s on that place in one go. A typical European restaurant is all about starters, entrees and mains. You finish one course before you move onto the next. But Chinese eating in particular? You have your rice in your bowl, and you take little bits of food to eat with your rice, but only a little bit at a time, never your entire meal all at once in your bowl. It’s a very different way of eating. 

I talked to a family friend that I grew up with, Wan, or as I call her, Aunty Wan, about this, because I actually spent a lot of my childhood at her place eating with her family.

Jay

Yeah, I was going to say, because if you get to go and like take what you want, could you be picking, like just take all the prawns and not take everything else that it was cooked with?

Wan

Exactly. No you are not allowed to do that. No. So it teaches you to be considerate and yeah. And don't be selfish and pick all that you like. You know, you have a little bit of everything and you don't over pile anything on your plate. Of course not. No. You take a little bit and then you want some more. If there's enough, then yes you can have some more. If not enough, that's it. You just finish your rice and go.

Jay

And I think that's quite a common thing when it comes to Chinese eating is that you have to learn to be considerate. Not just with your family, but in general you have all these dishes on a table and you can't just take half of one dish for yourself.

Wan

Exactly. I have seen it happen, but not in the Chinese community.

Jay

Now because of this very communal style of eating, food is prepared very differently to what you would find at, say, the pub. It’s not entire steaks, or pies, or schnitzels that you have all to yourself. A lot of Asian food is prepared in smaller bite sized pieces. Apart from maybe whole steamed fish, everything is chopped up. A whole chicken? It’s not cut into, say, quarters, but chopped up into much smaller pieces than that. A steak? You wouldn’t put a whole steak on the dinner table, because you can’t share that. The Chinese version would be all cubed in bite sized pieces that you can eat with your rice.

Jay

it's like take a little bit, eat. Take a little bit of something else, eat. Is that right?

Wan

Yes, that's right. Yes, that's right. And in a way that also cuts down on the fact that, oh, I had too much, I can't finish it. The, whatever, it sits on the plate. Oh, well, when the kids were growing up, the parents are the one that finishes it off and then we put on weight and then we blame the kids, yeah. Because you shouldn't waste food, see. So, well.

Jay

And how important is rice?

Wan

Oh, super duper. Yeah. I mean, I personally love noodles. Okay. And Victor is just a rice pot. 

Jay

Victor is her husband.

Wan

When we were in Europe on a tour, when we went for 21 days, by day 18 he was really, really suffering from rice withdrawal I think. We had a place and they had risotto. He said, "Oh gosh, rice, rice." Yes. He had so much of it. It's so funny. So I mean, to our family, rice is a staple and I would say majority of the times it's versatile. You can just cook the rice and then you have something to go with it. It's easy to feed a lot of people.

Yvonne C Lam

I definitely did have that experience of rice as a central component of your meal, and then you'd have, it's funny when I was growing up I didn't know the English word for it. But now I know but in Cantonese we call it soong[?]. So you have lots of what are now known as dishes essentially. And what we were eating was a banquet style meal. I didn't know the name for it at the time, I was like this is just how I eat. But it was so fun and thinking back in it they were always so balanced. There was a meat and if there wasn't a meat dad would be like, "Where is the meat." Which I think is like a very Asian dad thing to say.

Yvonne C Lam

There'd be tofu, would make a regular appearance on the menu, you'd pick up that. There was always like a little soup or brothy thing on the side to sip on to clear your palate. And it was just like a really good communal way of eating that we eat even now.

Jay

So rice is very central to a lot of Asian eating as the base to your meal that you eat other dishes with. And you can have all dishes on the table at once - it’s not a degustation where you finish one before you move onto the next. But for special occasions where one might go to a degustation, in a lot of Asian cultures, special food looks a bit different.

Ying Jie Guo

Let's say at the Spring Festival, so in North China, every family would have turnovers or dumplings, and there's a long story about that. In South China, not so much, but then in South China, you have this rice balls or tangyuan. So the balls are round, and round are a good thing, they bring you good luck and nothing is more perfect than something round. So in South China, you have the rice balls. In North China you would have dumplings. 

Jay Ooi

And these foods have meanings, which I find really interesting.

Ying Jie Guo

They do have meaning. Look at the dumplings, dumplings is, in Chinese they're called jiaozi, in Japanese very similar, jiaozi is probably the hanzi is jiaozi. Jiao is actually the intersection of the new year and an old year. And this is really the joint, a critical point of transition. So eating that, that sound, reminds people of this transition from the old year to the new year. And you want to make sure everything will go smoothly and nothing is to go wrong. And that food has that sort of meaning. 

Jay

Yes food, especially in Chinese culture, has a lot of meaning behind them. Mooncakes mean 'family unity', because they're round like a full moon. Seeds represent bearing many children. And long noodles mean longevity of life.

Wan

I still remember once my grandma's birthday. Yes. You have noodles. You always has the fukien meen, the hokkien noodles and they cook it and they have to make sure it stays really, really long so that when you lift it up, it means longevity. Long life. So grandma did have long life.

Jay

And a lot of these food meanings fall on special occasions like Mid Autumn festival and the Lunar New Year. And aunty Wan also remembers these occasions with her family growing up, who weren’t very well off, so having lots of food was a big deal.

Wan

In Malaysia, always during those times they are an absolute feast. So before Chinese New Year, they have another one called arrival of winter or, yeah arrival of winter, which is the 22nd of December. That's a big one for paying respects to the ancestors. So you had to cook a lot of things to offer them. So of course we offer them, we eat them. But it's lots of dish being prepared and they usually wake up, my mum would wake up say about three o'clock in the morning and starts chopping. My older sisters, they'll probably wake up about four. And I'm being the youngest, I get to sleep and sleep and sleep to maybe about six o'clock. I pop my head in, everything is done.

Wan

So I was really spoiled. So I didn't actually learn to do a lot of things, but there were lots and lots of preparation. You kill your own chicken, you cook yourself, you prepare all the vegetables. And a lot, can you imagine, you were talking about how you chop things up. This is phenomenal chopping. Carrots, cabbage, leek, meat.

Wan

So there will be at least nine dishes on the table. The praying table. To offer it to the ancestors. Yeah. So it's lots of food and of course you eat leftovers for the next couple of days too. But we don't mind because it's good food.

Jay

So food in some Asian cultures, can act as an offering to ancestors, which you then of course get to feast upon afterwards. But now that Aunty Wan is in Australia, these celebrations look a little different.

Wan

All right, 99% of times Chinese New Year is, or it's New Year's Eve is the day that you are supposed to have a big feast for the family. And nine out of 10 times it doesn't fall on a weekend. And so what happens is we usually do it on a Sunday and so we have the whole family together and then, like you guys come over and bring some food like potluck. And whoever that's ... have lots of people. So you have lots of fun, lots of noise. And it's good to be noisy in those times. Okay. You want to be noisy.

Jay

Can you explain that a bit? This lau juat?

Wan

Lau juat. That's exactly, I'm trying to think of word. What do you say in English? I don't think there's an English word for it.

Jay

Lively? Or...

Wan

It's something like lively, but it's a noisy lively.

Jay

Yeah. Yeah, it's a noisy lively.

Wan

Yeah. So that's what you want. And it's supposed to bring prosperity and it signifies happiness What else? I mean it's, I don't know. I mean, nobody wants a peaceful New Year. No. You don't.

Jay

Not for Chinese people I guess.

Wan

Yeah that's right.

Jay

There's this concept of a lively, loud gathering and that’s a good gathering-

Wan

Yes, exactly.

Jay

Whereas, a quiet sit down where you're cutting your food with a knife and going, oh this is tasty Jill. Like that's not a Chinese thing.

Wan

No, no, we are not doing those type of dining, no.

Jay

I think this is important to note. Whilst we might enjoy a quiet sit down dinner where people wait on us and fill up our wine glasses, for a lot of Asians, particularly first generation migrants, the idea of a good meal is definitely not this. It’s a loud gathering with lots of food. So fine dining doesn’t really appeal to them.

Jay

And how are you now if you go out to like a fine dining restaurant, what do you think? How do you feel?

Wan

Sometimes a little bit uncomfortable because everything was so quiet. And the servings are real tiny. Asian food is like, oh you want everything messy, isn’t it? Yeah. So it is tricky. It is tricky. It's not too bad nowadays because we have gone past the time we can actually eat, we need a lot. We are getting older now so everything slows down so you eat less. So it is better. But I still remember in the beginning when we first tasted some fine dining and I thought, oh goodness the plate is massive and that food is only a tiny little bit in the middle. What am I going to eat, I was thinking, what am I going to eat when I get home?

Jay

We’ll talk more about Asian food in fine dining in the next episode, but I think it’s worth noting the way our parents enjoy food can be very different to us. As Aunty Wan says, it’s messy, it’s loud - that’s a good meal.

And there is a simple pleasure in enjoying food, which is something I think we, or definitely I, take for granted, because of how well off we are here in Australia. Here’s Victor Liong talking about his dad’s love for food.

Victor Liong

He's quite a strict person, holds a lot of discipline with himself. His dad was a school principal. He's an engineer, bit of a boring dude, but he really likes and enjoys food. But he wouldn't obsess about it in the capacity that I would say would be passionate about it. You know what I mean? I think that if it stemmed into the most boring person I know that still enjoys food, then imagine the guy that really loves life, how is he going to consume it? So I think it comes from a deep, ingrained understanding and enjoyment of food in all levels. He’ll enjoy a bowl of noodles to suckling pig to soup dumplings but then he’ll also have a way of how he wants his coffee. And this is the most boring dude I know, and even the he kind of saw the value of the simple pleasures of food and the generosity it could provide. 

Wan

Okay mum being mum. Okay. We are always offering food to everybody. Okay.

Jay

Why is that?

Wan

I don't know. I guess you trying to, how do you say, why do we try and feed everybody? To tell the truth, I don't know. I just feel good when I feed people. That's all I feel. Yeah. And that's why now we have lots of gatherings and we get together and we eat together and you feel good. So why not? If your stomach is full, I think you are more likely to be happy, isn't it?

Jay

And one other place we see food being used is to kind of say what we can’t actually say out loud.

Ying Jie Guo

But there are different ways of expressing that apology. They would do something to say, have a bit of food, or here's a drink, you need a drink. That's a way of saying sorry, you don't have to say I'm sorry, I apologize. I suppose we say thanks and we say sorry in different ways. It just so happens the food is there, probably what is used as a way of saying sorry, or as a way of saying thank you.

Jay

I’m sure you’ve seen those memes of Asian mums cutting fruit as a way of apologising to their kids. And that’s because it’s not really in their culture to say it with words. 

So what happens then, when you grow up in Australia with parents who migrated here, and your perceptions of good food and what food means to you is a little different? Maybe we want to eat more western food, or we enjoy our fine dining, and we don’t want to eat Asian food all the time when we go out with our parents. Well the way we approach food actually has something to do with our identity. Here’s Yvonne from Gourmet Traveller again reflecting on her childhood.

Yvonne C Lam

Because I don't know if you guys ever had this, but did you ever wish that you could just have white people's food? That the concept of having your own plate, your own territory right in front of you. Like how civilized, wow, a plate divided into sections with like potato mash and then a minute steak and then coleslaw. In my mind that's what white people were and it was like the Holy Grail.

Yvonne C Lam

for me it was very exotic, the concept of having potato mash and your steak and Three Veg, it was for me something to aspire to.

Jay

I don’t know if you had the same experience as Yvonne growing up, that eating like white people eat was the pinnacle of eating. But this does come with some warnings as well.

Ying Jie Guo

And I have a problem when my daughter says, when she was little, "I don't like Chinese food because my friends don't eat Chinese food." To me, there are two different things, if she really doesn't like Chinese food, okay, you can't force her to love Chinese food, but it is her way of distancing herself from us and from Chinese culture, just so that she will be the same, like her friends, and she will be accepted by her Australian friends.

Jay

Yes, the way we approach our Asian food can actually be a reflection on how we view our heritage and culture as well.

Ying Jie Guo

If you think, okay, sharing food is natural, it's good, it's a value judgment. And to other people from different cultures who don't think it is the right thing to do, they might think, oh, it's not just about the way you share food, is not actually hygienic, is actually not appropriate, I don't like it. Then your whole behavior becomes a question. And that touches on a broad range of issues, what you do, what you are, is probably not appropriate. And people begin to judge you on the basis of one single cultural practice, or probably a range of cultural practices.

Ying Jie Guo

And when it comes to evaluation, identity becomes a really issue. Okay, you can simply say, I don't like this practice, it's not a huge problem. But if people say, "Oh, that person is not really polite because of the things he or she does." And then that becomes a value judgment. A lot of the stereotypes are related to that, I think. And if you are at the receiving end of that kind of value judgment, that affects how you feel about yourself, your self confidence, your self esteem, and other things. 

Jay

Did you ever receive any comments about your weird Asian food growing up? This can and does affect us - especially as kids, we don’t want to stand out, and part of that can be to reject the food our parents eat because it’s different. I want to bring a boring ass sandwich to lunch because that’s what everyone else had, and not this weird rice dish. And this is the power of food in our lives.

Ying Jie Guo

We have this at home, at the dinner table, when my daughter was growing up, she was born in Australia, she grew up in Australia. She does everything basically the Australian way. To give you one example, when I eat noodles at home, I would make a bit of noise. I would slip the noodles because that's one way of enjoying the noodles.

Ying Jie Guo

So she would have a problem with that. So even at home at the dinner table, we have a bit of cultural clash. So you can imagine what I would feel if somebody says, "Ah, this man is impolite. The way he eats is not polite. The way he eats is not appropriate." That becomes a value judgment. So if you are at the receiving end of that sort of value judgment, not on a one occasion, not on two occasions, but on a regular basis, that does affect your self esteem, self confidence.

Jay

Food is so important in our lives, and yet the way we eat is something we don’t think about a lot. Many of our parents came from different times and places, where the emphasis on food and eating was different, partly because they or maybe their parents didn’t have much food growing up, so food was very important. 

For a lot of Asian cultures, food is meant to be shared, and this is quite a different way of eating from your typical European restaurant. And for me personally, I like sharing food. I like being able to try lots of different things, and even when I go to sit down meals where you have your own plate in front of you, I still want to share. And for our parents or grandparents, a good meal is a shared meal that’s big and noisy.

But the way we approach food is a bit of reflection on our relationship with our culture. Rejecting our culture’s food because it’s foreign can show our rejection of our own culture. And similarly, embracing our culture’s food and way of eating is a way to embrace our culture. And I think that’s really key here. We can honour our heritage and the lives and migration journeys of our parents and ancestors in that small way by eating our cultures’ food, and by sitting down for a meal together with our parents or extended family and enjoying not just the flavours and the nutrition, but everything else that comes with it - the hands that made it, the culture that it came from, and the people who have passed it down to your bowl today. So the next time you sit down to a meal with your relatives, in this small way, we can show our appreciation for our parents and ancestors just by enjoying that meal with them.

Jay

This episode of Shoes Off was written, produced and edited by me, Jay Ooi.

Special thanks to all the guests in today’s episode: Professor Ying Jie Guo, Victor Liong, Yvonne C Lam and Aunty Wan.

In the show notes for this episode at shoesoff.net you can find all of the references, as well as links to Yvonne’s writing and Victor’s restaurant Lee Ho Fook - please support your local hospitality industry.

Avik Chari composed the new theme song and intro, and Alli Chang designed the episode artwork, thank you both!

How important is dinner time for you? And how connected do you feel to your culture through food? Let me know @shoesoffau on facebook and instagram.

If you liked Shoes Off please subscribe, we’re on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you’re listening to it right now, or head to shoesoff.net

Whose parents make the best food? Like a big batch of dumplings, share the love of this podcast with them.

Thanks, and catch you next episode.

Yvonne C Lam

My parents still do it now like the other day we split a custard apple because we were all around the table and they said it's too much, we can't just split a custard apple between the two of us. What are we? Indulgent heathens, that's too much. Now that you're here let's split this custard apple. They do grow their own dragon fruit so when they're in season they're like, "Yo, let's split this dragon fruit." Well we're here and we'll collectively when the hour of the unveiling of the ripe dragon fruit after weeks of mom texting us photos of the progress of the said dragon fruit.

Jay

I also want to just say thank you for having us all those years growing up, coming over to your place and eating at your place.

Wan

It's an absolute pleasure. We had lots of fun because us and your parents and then you kids have your own fun. So what I was going to say, you are literally babysitting each other.

Jay

Yes, we kind of were I guess.

Wan

Yeah, see. So that's the good thing.

Jay

Yeah. That was like, it's something that I tell friends growing up like, oh we had one family that we ate, we went to their house a lot and we ate dinner there a lot and it was really nice. Yeah. And I'm sorry I should come over more.

Wan

No. Yes you should. Yes, you should.

Jay

I will try to come over more.

Wan

It's open invitation.

Jay

Thank you.

 

Guests

Yvonne C Lam

Wan Chung

Victor Liong

Professor Ying Jie Guo

References and readings

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352618115000657

https://www.ibiblio.org/chineseculture/contents/food/p-food-c01s01.html

https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-food/chinese-food-symbolism.htm

https://www.yumofchina.com/chinese-food-culture/