We are What We Eat
Cooking Up Hong Kong Identity: A Study of Food Culture, Changing Tastes and Identity in Popular Discourse

The study of food - of culinary tradition, dietary rules, consumption trends, and food as linked to cultural identity - is an important area of contemporary anthropological concern. Food and cuisine may not always seem to be an obvious marker of identity - not as obvious as clothing, or festivals - but food clearly plays an important role in demarcating cultural identity. 'We are what we eat' is true not only in a physical sense but also in a cultural sense, albeit metaphorically. We may eat Cantonese, Japanese, or Hakka cuisine to affirm to ourselves who we are culturally, and to explore who we are not. Cuisine plays an important role in solidifying our subjective senses of cultural identity and in creating, through the taste of the present, a nostalgia for a real or imagined cultural past.

Profs. David Y.H. Wu, Siumi Maria Tam, and Sidney C.H. Cheung of the University's Department of Anthropology were fascinated by how changing culinary habits in Hong Kong reflect social and cultural trends in the last few decades. They embarked on a research titled 'Cooking up Hong Kong Identity: A Study of Food Culture, Changing Tastes and Identity in Popular Discourse' in 1995, and were awarded a grant of $510,000 by the Research Grants Council for the purpose.

The researchers examined food and cultural identity in the context of demographic and family structure, the local tourist industry, the emergence of Hong Kong as an international market-place, and recent political changes. Special attention was paid to five representative foodways: the coexistence of two contrasting food consumption habits at home and in restaurants, 'yum cha', tea cafés, nouvelle Cantonese cuisine, and 'puhn choi'. By studying these areas they hoped to arrive at a clear conception of the development of food culture in the territory and a deeper understanding of Hong Kong culture as a whole.

Questionnaire surveys in various districts were followed by in-depth interviews of selected subjects during the two years from 1995 to 1997, and interesting new insights were gained into the correlation between food and cultural identity in postwar Hong Kong.

Foods

Eating Habits Reveal Dichotomy between Traditionalism and Cosmopolitanism

The researchers first compared eating habits inside the home with those outside, and found a marked difference between the two. It is apparent that when people dine outside, variety is what they seek: going to McDonald's for breakfast, lunching at a Japanese restaurant, and having Indian curry as dinner. They are eager to try Korean barbecue after they have tasted belon oysters from France and cherry stone clams from the United States. Food consumed inside the home is by far more conservative: the ingredients used are highly similar in most families and cooking styles seldom vary from day to day. According to the researchers, such a contrast reflects the dichotomy of Hong Kong life itself: Hong Kong is a cosmopolis boasting international sophistication on the one hand, and on the other an extension of Chinese culture and tradition displaying Cantonese characteristics.

The Function of 'Yum Cha' is Changing

Another area of investigation was the changing function of 'yum cha' - a Chinese-style breakfast meal outside the home with tea-drinking as its main feature. The researchers discovered that in the postwar period when Hong Kong experienced an influx of 'refugees' from mainland China, 'yum cha' was largely an activity of single males, who met over their breakfast tea to socialize or exchange tips about job-seeking. As these first-generation immigrants settled down, got married, raised families, and became grandparents, 'yum cha' has also been transformed into a family activity. It serves to draw together family members who may now live and work in different parts of the territory, and hence reinforces the institution of the family. The changing function of 'yum cha' reflects the full indigenization of a whole generation of early immigrants.

Tea Café a Uniquely Hong Kong Product

From tea cafés which sprang up in the difficult postwar years to the fast-food stalls that have prospered since the mid-1980s, Hong Kong people have found a great variety of both Chinese and Western food at very inexpensive prices. According to the researchers, the tea cafés are not only typical of Hong Kong as a melting pot of different cultures, they actually produce typically Hong Kong food stuff which can reinforce a Hong Kong identity. One example is a drink called yin yeung, a mixture of coffee and tea with milk. In yin yeung one can see the localization of both Eastern and Western cuisines in the Hong Kong context.

Nouvelle Cantonese Cuisine Emerges with the Middle Class

Then there was also the emergence of nouvelle Cantonese cuisine in the early eighties, first found in a host of tastefully decorated restaurants in Tsim Sha Tsui east. Characterized by the use of exotic ingredients, new recipes, adventurous cooking techniques, and excellent service, it was a taste deliberately created and pursued by the 'newly rich'. The researchers believe that this process of culinary invention reflects larger social and cultural trends: Hong Kong is getting rich and its new middle-class aspire after a lifestyle that is more glamorous and that stresses greater delicacy.

Puhn Choi a Complex Metaphor

A traditional dish in the New Territories, 'puhn choi' boasts a history longer than colonial Hong Kong. The researchers found that towards the end of British rule in Hong Kong in the 1990s, it suddenly became very popular. This nostalgia for 'puhn choi' is pregnant with political meaning. The researchers regard it as a metaphor of Hong Kong people's search for a sense of cultural belonging during a period of great political change.

Many of the research findings can be widely used to understand the changing foodways, consumption patterns, lifestyles, and cultural identities of not only Hong Kong but also Asia and the rest of the world. The three researchers in the Department of Anthropology thus organized two international conferences to provide a forum for academic exchange with experts in the same field.

The first conference was held from 12th to 14th June 1996. Entitled 'International Conference on Changing Diet and Foodways in Chinese Culture', it was co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center of East Asian Research at Harvard University. Attendees included such well-known anthropologists as Profs. Li Yih Yuan, James Watson, Rubie Watson and Sidney Mintz. Prof. David Wu delivered a paper on 'Chinese Cafés in Hong Kong', Prof. Maria Tam on 'Yum-Cha in Hong Kong' and Prof. Sidney Cheung on 'Hakka Cuisine: A Case Study of the Consumption of Food in Postwar Hong Kong Society'. The second conference was held on 21st and 22nd November 1997. Entitled 'Chinese Foodways in the Twenty-First Century: Prospects of Globalization of Chinese Food and Cuisine', it was co-organized by the Foundation of Chinese Dietary Culture (Taiwan). Eminent scholars specializing in the anthropological studies of food such as Profs. Jack Goody, Sidney Mintz and Nancy Pollock attended and shared their views on the subject.

The researchers will continue with their analysis of research findings to better understand how urbanization and industrial development have shaped individuals' lifestyles and their sense of the culture they live in. They will also compare Hong Kong with other societies to better grasp the processes of indigenization and globalization through which cultural identity is created.

From left: Prof. David Y.H. Wu and Prof. Sidney C.H. Cheung
Prof. David Y.H. Wu (Ph.D., ANU) is a social-cultural anthropologist with special interest in psychological anthropology, ethnic relations, and food and popular culture. He has published extensively on childhood socialization, national identity, and cross-national cultural influence in east Asia. Currently chairman of the Department of Anthropology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, he is directing research into the social history of local cuisines in southeast Asia and in Chinese communities in the United States.

Prof. Siumi Maria Tam (Ph.D., Hawaii) is a social-cultural anthropologist with special interest in Chinese and Hong Kong culture, gender relations, ethnicity, and social and cultural change. She is currently conducting research on the Hong Kong diaspora and gender in professions.

Prof. Sidney C.H. Cheung (Ph.D., Osaka), assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, is a social-cultural anthropologist with special interest in visual anthropology, film studies, anthropology of tourism, Hong Kong and Japanese culture. He is currently conducting research related to changing lifestyles in Hong Kong, domestic tourism in Hong Kong and Japan, and antiquarianism in southeast Asia.