Leung Ping-kwan

Tea fragrant and strong, made from Five different blends, in cotton bags or legendary Stockings—tender, all-encompassing, gathering— Brewed in hot water and poured into a teapot, its taste Varying subtly with the time in water steeped. Can that fine art be maintained? Pour the tea Into a cup of coffee, will the aroma of one Interfere with, wash out the other? Or will the other Keep its flavour: foodstalls by the roadside Streetwise and worldly from its daily stoves Mixed with a dash of daily...

Vermicelli made from bean starch Picked up with chopsticks, savoured My taste buds report: it is mixed with Eggplants cooked to a mush Memories surface, of the first time we met Conversation drifted, we chatted about eggplants I remember you said you grew up in Taiwan Your dad was a Cantonese, your mum from Beijing I forgot to ask how your folks cooked eggplants Did you cook it first, leave to cool and dress it with sesame oil? Eat it with a hot, fish-flavoured sauce? Or have it Cantonese...

They say What’s so great about an onion? Serves it right to be criticised so very often lately It’s got homely clothes on, all right but its name sounds suspiciously alien and its background is no good, strip off one layer there is yet another layer, with nothing much inside nothing the people will call substance, mere formalist! In the end they use some harsh words, and do away with this simpleton good-for-nothing. I, who spend all my time cooking, peel off one layer after another, different...