I fill the gaps between “I’m sorry for your loss” and “he had a good life” with the crackle of roast pork belly, a smear of sweet chilli and the crunch of curry puffs against my lips. My makeshift mountain of pastry stands as a guard against the tremors of sadness erupting in my chest.
The community hall looms around us. The only reprieve from the oppressive grey of its concrete walls comes from the generous spread of food set out on rows of trestle tables. Red chillies, green spring onions and fried shallots form a kaleidoscope of colours on top of violet-tinged yam cake. Slabs of roast duck with crispy caramel skin glisten against the pink blush of char siu. Lines of red, green and white ang ku kueh (sweet glutinous rice flour cakes, shaped like tortoise shells) produce a rainbow at the centre of each table.
A procession of family, friends and distant acquaintances with disposable plates stream by. Their black formal wear makes them look like a flock of crows descending upon a table.
Char siu is on offer for mourners. Source: Benito Martin
If my was here, he’d be sitting right next to her. Instead, she is flanked by my mum and my aunts. The rest of the family take their seats at the table.
We eat our grief. We pass plates of pork, duck and spring rolls across the table. Relatives come to offer their condolences, smiles syrupy sweet. Like at our dinner table at home, their condolences come in a multitude of dialects, the sharpness of six tones dancing against the monotone of English.
It doesn’t matter that popo isn’t fluent in English.
Good food and the offering of a plate are dialects we’re all fluent in.
It makes the grief easier to swallow.
In the weeks after gong gong’s wake, a carousel of visitors comes to see popo, arriving with hands clasped around bouquets of flowers. As they depart, they wipe biscuit crumbs off their shirts and leave lukewarm teacups on the coffee table.
"We pass plates of pork, duck and spring rolls across the table." Source: Macau Gourmet with Justine Schofield
Unlike mourners with their practised grace, I visit my grandma with the grace of an elephant. I announce my arrival with a clang at the door, propping it open with a stack of takeaway containers under one arm and a half-open bag of prawn crackers in the other.
I’m not accompanied by the floral brightness of orchids or the soft pastel tones of daisies. I bring comfort in spiced coconut and cream, the funk of fish-head and charred beef.
“Have you eaten?” I ask, already ambling through the kitchen, pulling bowls from the cupboard and setting the table.
Popo shrugs. “I’m not hungry.”
“Just eat a little,” I say as I spoon an aggressively red broth into her bowl. “I even got fish-head curry – the one you like.”
Like at our dinner table at home, their condolences come in a multitude of dialects, the sharpness of six tones dancing against the monotone of English.
I push a container of rice noodles in translucent gravy her way. She smiles with glee.
With each takeaway container I crack open, the room fills with the smell of chilli-spiked coconut and the heady smokiness of curry and wok-charred beef . It masks the perfumed scent of the flowers in the room.
The food lets us fill the silence with a familiar, practised conversation. A familiar cadence fills the air: chopsticks against bowls, the clink of popo’s jade bangle as she reaches for more soup, the swish of napkins mopping up oil dribbling down the side of plastic containers. We talk about the food. Today’s hor fun isn’t great, but the fish-head curry makes up for it. We talk about where to get lunch tomorrow – a tacit agreement that we’re all still too exhausted to cook. We talk about the practical necessities of feeding ourselves to distract us from the weight of the past. We find comfort in the velvety comfort of wat tan hor, its clear gravy clinging to silky threads of hor fun noodles.
The flowers have long been cast aside from the table, replaced by the comfort of a warm meal.
In an effort to unmoor ourselves from the unrelenting currents of grief, my cousins and I stumble into our local Chinese restaurant. Set on a corner block, its bright red front sign has been sun-bleached into a dusty pink, a similar shade to the complimentary prawn crackers served at the start of each meal.
Char kway teow offers solace during a tough time. Source: Benito Martin
I remember the peeling wallpaper against the dimmed gold of the ceiling lights. With a sharp flick of their wrists, waitstaff would whip tablecloths across tables, their starch-pressed corners whooshing over the table like a white cloud.
There was an unspoken hierarchy at the table. Children were herded into the back arc of the table, typically at the back corner of the restaurant. Bathroom breaks were announced by an awkward “sorry” followed by a practised shuffle, scraping our backs and pressing our bodies against the wall Mission: Impossible-style to extract ourselves from behind our aunts and uncles’ chairs. My grandparents would take the premium spot at the table, closest to the carts of steamed longs weaving through the restaurant. Each long was subject to their careful eye, with approval passed with a firm nod or rejected with a dismissive wave of the hand.
Generations of knowledge were passed down with each turn of the lazy Susan. Lessons that aren’t written in any cookbook – from the quickest way to peel a prawn, to choosing the piece of lobster that has the best meat-to-shell ratio. I learnt how to fold by watching mum’s careful hands swirl hoisin sauce onto thin pancakes with beautifully arranged layers of duck and spring onion at the centre. I learnt how to use chopsticks around that table. The white tablecloth exposed every fumble and every hesitation. Inexperience would be punished with a slob of dropped sadly in the white abyss between the lazy Susan and my bowl, doomed to never reach its destination. The dark stain of the tablecloth was damning. Each spill, each lazy pour of the teapot revealed for the rest of the table to see.
Peking duck pancakes feature in family memories. Source: Lee Chan's World Food Tour
If I was too slow to grab the , then it meant that it’d be gone by the time the lazy Susan rotated around again. Being distracted by my phone meant that I risked cousin James getting the last fried prawn dumpling. Eagerly using the age-old “stab it with a chopstick” technique was great for but a disaster for xiao long bao, their soupy middles dribbling sadly into the depths of the long.
Importantly, I learnt that eating was a shared ritual, which required patience and attention to the people you were eating with. I learnt that elders should be served first by the way the lazy Susan would make its way to my grandparents each time a new dish was placed at the table.
Choosing the piece of lobster with the best meat-to-shell ratio is a lesson that's not in any cookbook. Source: Adam Liaw
It was the exchange of longs of food and sizzling plate dishes that shaped the geography of my Cantonese. It taught me how to order basic favourites – from har gao to siu mai. It taught me how to withstand a basic grilling about my grades and my future while being fed charred beef.
I got accustomed to dinners featuring three generations at the table, two parts reminiscing about the past and one part a cross-examination about my future.
Yet, when I accompany my cousins out to dim sum after gong gong’s death, the paper-thin depth of my Cantonese skills is revealed. The pace and familiarity of our meal is disrupted. The daunting realisation that the feasts we were accustomed to were at risk of being relegated to the past was painfully highlighted when we ordered the wrong type of lau sa bao (“what’s the word for baked again?”) and our collective failure to order the crispy cheong fun we all liked, no matter how much Googling we did.
Fuelled by the fear of loss, its pain still fresh and raw against my chest, I throw myself into a spiral of cooking research. I learn the name of the dark caramel sauce my mum simply referred to as “the dark one with the red cap” by flicking through the pages of Adam Liaw’s . The encyclopaedic knowledge of ’s YouTube channel teaches me how to steam my own . When my colleague asks about ang ku kueh I brought to work, I find myself on a deep dive into the world of kueh, and learn why the ang ku kueh at my gong gong’s wake was red, green and white.
I got accustomed to dinners featuring three generations at the table, two parts reminiscing about the past and one part cross-examination about my future.
I write down each step and fill up my internet bookmarks as if I can somehow bake them into my memory – a copy of the past waiting to be retrieved off the shelf for the future. I attempt to preserve the familiar rituals of our dinner table, hoping that it gives me the energy to face the challenges of the future without my gong gong.
I return the takeaway container back to my popo, filled with the gooey soft results of my research. Gong gong’s chair still stands alone.
The flowers have long died, their temporary comfort erased from the table.
When we finish our meal, popo packs the leftovers in the takeaway containers she’s saved from our previous meals.
It’s a lasting parcel of comfort I take to my next destination.
This is an extract from (Somekind, RRP $25), a project dedicated to promoting diverse voices on food. You can read more pieces that were submitted to the anthology and read Ange Seen Yang's winning entry in the SBS and Diversity In Food Media competition .
