The memories we make

My first memory of dim sum is with my maternal grandmother, my Po Po. I lived with her until the age of four, before migrating to my paternal grandmother, my Nai Nai. I still have a photograph of Po Po and me, blowing out the birthday candles on my crown birthday as a four-year-old. Till this day, I look at the photograph and marvel at how youthful she looked, with her head of jet-black hair.

She had become a mother at a young age and, as such, a grandmother to me when she was only 48. She was undoubtedly more youthful than the grandmothers of my peers and her energy matched mine. We often walked to distant food markets, starting our morning excursions at a very particular dim sum restaurant. The restaurant, close to Po Po’s home, opened at 7am. It was vibey, full of chatty pensioners and large roundtables. People didn’t mind sharing tables with strangers. A large round table would sit eight, and Po Po and I would join one, along with two or three other dim sum parties.

The scene is still so vivid; the chatter and the clanking of cutlery, the dim sum carts pushed by waiters announcing what’s being served. Po Po would order the same things each time. I’d hear her remark to our fellow patrons, “This place is better at steamed dishes, but the pastries aren’t as crispy here, if you want dim sum pastries, try this other place… it is down the road from here.”

Steamed cheung fun arrived in a steamed cart — Cantonese-style steamed rice rolls, filled with char siu (barbequed pork), beef slices, shrimp or eggs, and finished with a super light and sweet soy sauce. Our next order would be a bowl of slow-cooked congee — rice porridge with century egg and pork bits, sprinkled with finely chopped spring onions and generously laced with ground white pepper.

I remember begging for a po tat (egg tart) for dessert, but Po Po would stay firm on her pastry assessment and promise to buy me one later from a street vendor on our way to the market. She never spent money on anything not worth her coins. If it wasn’t worth it, even if it cost 50 cents, she’d think it too pricey. Po Po practised ancestral ceremonies every new and full moon.

On the lunar calendar, these fall on the first and 15th of the month, and so our market missions often involved buying ingredients for ancestral meals, but our time spent together, our conversations, were mostly about food. I have often wondered if others experience the same sensation, of cooking with a new ingredient and having your knowledge about it flow intuitively and abundantly, as though you are tapping into a well in your subconscious. Po Po nurtured that well.

I remember asking her to take me to try pizza after the first Pizza Hut landed in Guangzhou in the early 1990s, post economic reform. She obliged and, at the end of our meal, all her disappointment could offer was: “So much money for bits and pieces on slices of bread!”

Gong Gong, my maternal grandfather, was Po Po’s best sous chef. Not only did he make the best marinade for her famous steamed black-bean ribs but he was also responsible for all the dips and dressings in the house. A pestle and mortar was the only kitchen tool he used. Everything was so delicious and, after the countless compliments Gong Gong would give her while we ate, he’d be met with, “Eat your dinner, enough with the sweet words.”

After leaving China, I would return to visit them. Love still overflowed at every meal at that table and my favourite foods would be prepared — steamed black-bean ribs, egg-and-ham omelettes, wontons, steamed fish, and dry-fried green beans.

I’d tell Po Po about having tried a croissant, and that the pastry was totally crispy and that one day I would buy one for her. Naturally, we would also walk to our favourite dim sum place and, like clockwork, order only the dishes they were good at.

Yang Zhao is a chef and Wanted food columnist.

• From the July edition of Wanted, 2024.