Christmas dinner is always a bit of a challenge in our house. In the period before we moved to Hong Kong I would always cook a whole salmon. The first year we lived in Hong Kong, I ventured to the wet market to purchase a fish. Salmon are not widely available in Hong Kong, certainly not in the markets, so I got some other fish. I’ve still no idea what it was, but I do know we all got really ill. For the next two years I ordered the whole meal from a restaurant in Sai Kung, which arrived hot and tasted lovely, but was mostly turkey imported from the US. This year I am cooking venison purchased locally. What strikes me about this tale of food feasts is what we understand about what comprises fresh food and how that is so linked up with cultural differences.
Category Archives: Hong Kong
Driers of fish and hewers of place
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While the word hue refers to colour, to be a hewer is to be someone who carves out. When I was in graduate school, one of the more influential papers I read was written by geographer Kathy Gibson. The paper, titled “Hewers of cake and drawers of tea”, was an analysis of class struggle and gender in the face of miners strikes in Queensland, Australia. The point of the paper was to illustrate the importance of domestic activity and women’s work in the reproduction of conditions under which strike action is made possible. Indeed, strike times, as well as times of employment and plenty, are sustained by the graft of women and the community in which and through which they forge their domestic craft. It is often through ordinary activities, such as cooking, from which social life is hewn. Continue reading
Carefree in Stanley
Belgian Beer and a view of Murray House
One of the things I like best to do on a sunny day in Hong Kong is go to Stanley. This small and rather upscale village on the far side of Hong Kong Island takes some energy and effort to get to, but here you can sit behind a Belgian beer and watch the ships on the horizon go by on their way to distant ports. The combination of journey, beer, and view provide a sense of holiday for the few hours one spends in this place. But Stanley was not always such a carefree place, and indeed for some it is a place where although cared for, the circumstance is not free.
Hong Kong Coffee Culture
I like coffee. In fact, I like coffee much more than tea. This preference was easy to indulge when I lived in Seattle, where getting a cup of coffee is not a difficult task. It became much more difficult in England, where quite often what is passed off as coffee is actually some sort of instant coffee drink with lots of milk and sugar (to my mind instant coffee is not really coffee). I didn’t know what to expect when I moved to Hong Kong. I worried that the cultural residue of being a British colony, combined with the modern relationship with China would mean that in Hong Kong a good cup of coffee would be hard to find. Tea? Easy. Coffee, well what to expect? Continue reading
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