Food is always political. Food is resistance.
Food is never just something that we shove into our gullets for sustenance. Each dish we consume, every morsel we crave, has a distinct history and a precious connection to people. Food is always political, and many see its celebration and preservation as a form of resistance.
In Hong Kong, food is vital to the protection of its unique culture as a former British colony and now “Special Administrative Region” of China since the 1997 Handover. Hongkongers are obsessed with their culture and cuisine. It’s a symbol of their resistance, a concept they can grasp onto and fight for incessantly in a time where many feel their freedoms are being taken away. It’s the story of both their struggles and success, with the Hong Kong diaspora helping to spread its cuisine all over the globe.
Beautiful Hong Kong, 2016 (Pic: Kevin Cheng)
Hongkongers are a proud people. I lived in Hong Kong for two years: firstly in a tiny apartment where you could walk from one end to another in about five paces, then in a slightly bigger flat (think about seven paces wide) in one of the busiest shopping districts in the world at Causeway Bay. I have never been more galvanised by the immense pride I felt in Hongkongers. But I still felt like an outsider the entire time. That included being a foreigner with its cuisine. For two years I pounded the pavement, seeking out recommended local eats, and rubbing shoulders and sweat with locals in greenhouse-level heat. Being scolded by aunties and uncles because I couldn’t speak Cantonese; imagine their confusion of a Chinese-looking bloke who couldn’t speak a word of their local tongue.
Hong Kong is often regarded as one of the great food cities of the world. But at the time, I just didn’t get what the fuss was about. I scoffed at what I thought was an abomination of macaroni and spam swimming in a chicken “broth”, served for breakfast. A scrambled egg sandwich? Isn’t that just a scrambled egg sandwich? Processed fish balls in a curry sauce and siu mai that doesn’t even closely resemble the luscious parcels from a dim sum restaurant. Instant noodles with spam and egg? Was I missing something here?
A typical Hong Kong-style breakfast at Australian Dairy Company in Jordan (Pic: Kevin Cheng)
As an outsider in Hong Kong, the mood that pulsed through the city at that time (and still does) was one of nostalgia. Aunties and uncles would lament the glory days. The famous “Lion Rock Spirit”, which is the innate force of the Hong Kong people that propelled it into Asia’s financial centre. My friends would tell me stories of their parents’ generation during Hong Kong’s colonial days, before the dreaded handover back to China in 1997. The people were “free” to think and say what they liked. Street food hawkers would still be on the streets, selling their delicious, homemade recipes. Much of that has disappeared, from the iconic neon signs that dotted the cityscape, the decades-old eateries that have been forced out by greedy landlords, to the beautifully ugly tong lau buildings that are being swallowed up by developers.
Dr Siu Yan-ho is an expert in Hong Kong food history and culture at Lingnan University, and he said Hongkongers are becoming more and more proud of their food and unique culture.
“Many restaurants have closed due to various reasons…Everyone begins to realize that some of the restaurants they have patronized since their childhood will close one day, and even the familiar taste and culture in it will disappear completely in Hong Kong, and there will be no way to find it again,” he said.
What Hongkongers do have, and are clinging on to dear life, is their food.
And the same can be said for Hongkongers living overseas who are searching for that taste of home, even in Sydney. The newly opened Kwan Noodle Bar in Sydney’s Chinatown is one of only a handful of restaurants serving traditional Hong Kong “cart” noodles. Born in Hong Kong around the 1950s, the dish gets its name from the wooden carts it used to be served from. Diners can choose their own adventure with their own selection of noodle type (yau mein oil noodles for me), broth spice level and three to four toppings, usually consisting of pork and beef offal, exactly as it was served all those decades ago to Hong Kong’s poorer working class.
Kwan Noodle Bar’s Hong Kong cart noodles (Pic: Kevin Cheng)
For owner Gary Chow, a first-generation Hong Kong-Australian, it's the nostalgia that keeps Hongkongers coming back.
“When we get Hong Kong students coming to try our cart noodles, they say to us that it tastes like their hometown's comfort food,” he tells me.
“A lot of people want to recapture that nostalgic feeling.”
Gary Chow with his (shy) mother at Kwan Noodle Bar in Sydney, Australia (Pic: Kevin Cheng)
Claudia* is a member of the pro-democracy group Australia-Hong Kong Link and has lived in Australia for six years. She says Hong Kong’s food culture is one of the most important things that Hongkongers can hold onto and carry with them wherever they go in the world.
“This food culture is part of our identity to represent all Hongkongers, and not to see us as ‘Chinese’ only,” she explains to me.
“We can be proud to say that we are from Hong Kong and we have a different culture such as food, language and currency. As an overseas Hongkonger, food culture can help us explain what is the difference between Chinese and Hongkongers.”
THE significance of Hong Kong cuisine to its people didn’t hit me until the infamous Mong Kok Fishball Revolution in early 2016. Hong Kong had already ridden the wave of the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests that brought the city to a standstill, but failed to achieve the intended goal of democracy for its people.
The first day of Chinese New Year celebrations in Hong Kong traditionally sees street hawkers selling food and snacks in the working class neighbourhoods of Mong Kok and Sham Shui Po. But in 2016, government officials began cracking down on hawkers, who often operated without a licence, by forcibly removing them (many of them elderly) from the streets. For many Hongkongers, this wasn’t just an attack on fishballs. This was an attack on their freedoms once again, a scar from 2014 that never healed and one that stretches back decades in its history. From the 1997 handover, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Clashes between protestors and police ensued as groups advocating for Hong Kong independence mobilised to shield the hawkers. What followed was a night of unrest, with scores jailed and injured amid accusations of police brutality.
The 2016 “Fishball Revolution” (Pic: AP)
Fuck, these people went to jail for their food, I remember thinking to myself. This is what fishballs mean to them. One of the protest leaders from that day, Edward Leung, is still in jail. Many Hongkongers see him as a iconic figure in the city’s democracy movement. The power of fishballs.
“It is a way for the Hong Kong government to kill our food culture,” says Claudia. “The Fishball Revolution was trying to protect the rights [of Hongkongers] and to preserve this kind of tradition to allow Hong Kong people to enjoy the food as well as the festival.”
Hong Kong-born restaurateur Alan Yau, founder of the UK’s popular Hakkasan and the Wagamama chain, summed it up to The Guardian perfectly at the time: “It is the quintessential Hong Kong street food and – culturally – it represents the Hong Kong working class like no other institutions can. Street food, and the fishball represent the values of entrepreneurship. Of capitalism. Of liberal democracy. Anthropologically, they mean more than a $5 skewer with curry satay sauce.”
Dr Siu said fish balls hold a special place in the hearts of Hong Kong people.
“The Fishball Revolution linked up food and culture with politics, it is an obvious example of how Hong Kong people are trying to protect their culture and cuisine. It can be treated as a precedent case of Hong Kong people connecting food and culture with identity. This situation is increasingly common in Hong Kong now,” he said.
“Due to social unrest and changing times, Hong Kong's culture and the identity of Hong Kong people have become increasingly blurred. Food connects with life, it is the most direct and the easiest way for Hong Kong people to discover the changes in it.”
Claudia says the removal of small restaurants in Hong Kong can be an emotional topic for Hongkongers, as it is so deeply linked to the political struggle and gradual erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong.
The Lion Rock Spirit lives on and Hongkongers want to protect it by any means necessary.
THE struggle of Hongkongers’ fight for self-determination, freedom and democracy is one that has become close to me. As a person with Taiwanese heritage, and a Hongkonger fiance I convinced to move with me back to Australia, I now identify with many of the same values and fears as millions of other Hongkongers. Taiwan’s legitimacy as a sovereign nation is always questioned, and although Hong Kong is now a part of China, the majority of Hongkongers do not see themselves in that way. Taiwan and Hong Kong both face constant bullying and threats from China, with its people bearing the brunt of the consequences.
I have heard it since I was a kid growing up in Australia, where you’d think that Taiwan’s global positioning would not be in everyday conversation.
“Taiwan is not even a real country.”
“Isn’t Taiwanese food just the same as Chinese food?”
“Din Tai Fung is just Shanghainese food. They’re only good at xiao long bao. It’s not Taiwanese.”
For Taiwan-born chef Jowett Yu, who now plies his trade at Hong Kong’s Black Sheep Restaurants group after working in some of Sydney’s top restaurants such as Tetsuya’s, Ms G’s and Mr Wong, cooking Taiwanese food is a form of activism and an empowering move at that.
“Cooking lu rou fan is resistance,” he wrote on Instagram recently. “Cooking it feeds my soul.”
Lu rou fan in Taipei, Taiwan (Pic: Kevin Cheng)
It’s for these precise reasons why I hold onto a dish like lu rou fan - braised pork belly served over rice - so closely to my chest. When I cook lu rou fan, it’s a nod to my own Taiwanese ancestors, but also of the self-determination that I seek for all Taiwanese people around the world. That we deserve to be heard, with our culture and food celebrated as its own separate entity.
“Hongkongers and Taiwanese people share a common solidarity, in the preservation of our unique food and culture,” says Claudia.
*name has been changed due to safety reasons.
