Wandering Hong Kong at Year’s End

The server was getting impatient. Hovering over our table, she made it clear from her thinly veiled annoyance that we’d taken a little too long to order our food. Bama and I were having our Boxing Day breakfast at a no-frills cha chaan teng (local diner) in Cheung Sha Wan, a working-class neighborhood of Hong Kong’s Kowloon Peninsula. We’d crossed the harbor to track down Gold Garden Café and its puff pastry egg tarts made to a traditional recipe. “Did they just come out of the oven?” I inquired politely. “No, you’ll have to wait till 11 for that. The ones we have now are still kind of warm.”

Were it not for Bon Appétit’s Street Eats YouTube videos — which recently won a James Beard award — we might never have come here in the first place. Each episode is hosted by thirtysomething chef Lucas Sin, a born-and-bred Hong Konger and Yale graduate who has a knack for explaining the intricacies and nuances of Chinese and especially Cantonese cookery to an English-speaking audience. Watching him happily devour a freshly baked egg tart and wax lyrical about its qualities was enough to convince us to put Gold Garden Café on our wish list.

Speed and efficiency are prioritized over customer service at any Hong Kong–style diner. Gold Garden’s breakfast was served impressively quickly, never mind the fact that the waitstaff almost slammed our plates on the table. Our sets included a square hunk of soft, fluffy bread, buttered along a cut down the middle; two fried eggs with runny yolks; macaroni soup featuring slivers of ham; and hot milk tea served in chipped mugs. As for the egg tarts, they arrived cold, but were still rather tasty. I was curious how these would compare to the ones at Sun Wah Café, an older cha chaan teng the next block over also known for their egg tarts. We ended up buying two from the street-side pastry display case to eat on the go. This version proved deliciously warm and fragrant. The buttery crust was even flakier and more delicate than at Gold Garden, and the luscious egg custard filling had a richer, more complex flavor. Sun Wah was the clear winner.

Our “cha chaan teng” breakfast at Gold Garden Café

The heavenly egg tarts from nearby Sun Wah

Freshly baked egg tarts in the street-side display case at Sun Wah Café

Sun Wah’s old-school signboard

Public housing blocks outside Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb Museum

A canvas roof shields the nearly 2,000-year-old tomb from the elements

Some of the Han Dynasty artifacts found inside the burial chambers

A three-legged pottery “ding” that may once have contained food

Looking into the well-preserved tomb at Lei Cheng Uk

While in Cheung Sha Wan, I brought Bama to a heritage attraction I’d known about for years but never got around to seeing. Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb was discovered in 1955 while a hillside was being levelled to build blocks of affordable housing. Archaeologists have dated it to the Eastern Han Dynasty, nearly 2,000 years ago, and the protected monument is now part of a small but informative museum with a room showcasing pottery and bronze artifacts left inside the vaulted brick burial chambers. (No human remains were ever found.) After a while perusing the exhibits and taking pictures, a friendly attendant approached us. “I saw that you two were so interested I thought I should show you more.” The smiling woman began an impromptu virtual tour on a computer in the main gallery. “Up until 1977, people could actually walk into the tomb, but after that a glass screen was installed to protect it. We also keep the temperature and humidity constant inside,” she explained. Via the simulation, the attendant pointed out a brick inscription on the domed ceiling, then led us back to the tomb’s viewing porch so we could crouch down and spot the real thing. I was touched by her unexpected kindness.

From the next metro station, we boarded a double-decker bus to Sham Tseng, where high-rise apartments and a highway viaduct loom above a village known for Bama’s favorite kind of Cantonese roast meat. Family-run Yue Kee Roast Goose Restaurant began serving customers back in 1958, and for a long time it has used geese reared on its own farm in nearby Guangdong province. We shared excellent sides of seafood (prawns, scallop, squid) sautéed with cashews and Chinese chives, and stir-fried baby bok choy with minced salted fish. But nothing could outshine the pièce de résistance: half a roast goose served with sweet-sour plum sauce, featuring crispy, crackly skin and tender meat. We dunked the pieces in bowls of slippery lai fun rice noodles in a clear and flavorful broth. Bama and I agree that Yue Kee’s Cantonese roast goose is the best we’ve ever had — and we have Lucas Sin to thank for the recommendation.

Hong Kong’s extensive and ever-reliable public transit system gave us the means to jump between disparate areas all within a single day. Later that same afternoon, after dropping off some leftover roast goose at my parents’, we headed to the M+ museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District for a one-off retrospective on the late Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei. I’ve always thought of him as my favorite architect, and he was a huge source of inspiration in my formative years. Architectural models and drawings illustrated both his long career and his time as a gifted student at Harvard. The exhibits walked us through major projects like the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the remodelling of the Louvre, not to mention Pei’s skyscrapers in Hong Kong and Singapore. Through several videos, I discovered that his manner of speaking English — precise, measured, and rather polished — reminded me of my late paternal grandfather, who had a similar upbringing in pre-1949 Shanghai. Another unexpected find was one of Pei’s original passports from the seventies. Its unfolded pages revealed a business visa for Qatar, as well as immigration stamps from England, Kuwait, Singapore, Malaysia, and an Indonesian tourist visa, valid for just one week.

Yue Kee Roast Goose Restaurant lies on a quiet street leading to Sham Tseng village

A table for 10 in an upstairs dining room at Yue Kee

The tastiest Cantonese roast goose Bama and I have ever had

Baby bok choy stir-fried with minced salted fish

A bowl of “lai fun” rice noodles at Yue Kee; the restaurant backs onto a tidal inlet

This model from 1988 shows I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower and its surroundings

The architect’s actual passport from the mid to late 1970s

It was on loan to the M+ museum for this special exhibition

Models of the National Gallery of Art’s East Building in Washington, D.C.

Work commitments meant that Bama could arrive only on Christmas Day. In his absence, the trip revolved around medical appointments and family reunions, which often took the form of boisterous restaurant dinners. On the 23rd, Second Aunt treated us “kids” to a sumptuous 11-course dinner inspired by the imperial cuisine of the Qing Dynasty. We tucked into bird’s nest soup with a boiled pigeon egg, roast suckling pig, juicy charcoal-grilled goose stuffed with fish maw, and a fried rice whose hand-rolled “grains” combined four different kinds of rice flour. The more exotic items on the menu included a mock “bear paw” (a giant pork meatball wrapped in cooked pig skin) and sour, coriander-flecked rice noodles crowned by jiggly tofu set in a comical brain-shaped mould: a tongue-in-cheek reference to the supposed monkey brains once eaten by 17th-century Qing royalty. A thin red sauce drizzled over the top made the dish look even more convincing.

This time, my sister and nephew — a highly intelligent and endlessly talkative elementary schooler — had flown in from Europe for the week. Babysitting duties sometimes involved telling and listening to stories, coloring in Christmas decorations, and fruitless attempts at solving several Rubik’s Cubes. While my dad treated them to Malaysian food (which did not sit well with my nephew, who is an extremely fussy eater), Bama and I took their place at a Boxing Day dinner with a dear uncle, aunt, and cousin visiting from Canada. They had always been present during my childhood summers spent in Toronto. The last time I’d met them before Christmas was 11 years ago, and on this occasion, we relished French wine and Hangzhou-style dishes (sticky rice–stuffed lotus root in sweet sauce, noodles with crab roe, battered fishcakes) while laughing and talking about life and travel. Bama enjoyed their company immensely. It made me consider what might have been if Covid hadn’t forced us to cancel a planned trip to Canada in the fall of 2020.

On our final full day in Hong Kong, we lined up for 20 minutes outside Sister Wah Beef Brisket in the Tin Hau area for its namesake specialty in noodle soup. Bama by now is well-acquainted with the common Hong Kong practice of daap toi, or sharing tables with strangers, in more casual settings. Inside Sister Wah’s awkward wedge of a dining room, we were joined by two young couples — one Korean, the other possibly Southeast Asian. I made sure to order an extra topping of wontons for us both, tall glasses of soy milk, and a plate of Chinese broccoli to share.

A double-decker tram trundles through the Wan Chai neighborhood

Hong Kong–style baked goods in a window; a Wan Chai street scene

Beef brisket noodles with wontons at Sister Wah in the Tin Hau area

Condominiums soar above a temple dedicated to sea goddess Tin Hau

Old folk traditions and modern life intermingle in Hong Kong

Two more views of the 150-year-old Tin Hau Temple

Looking across Victoria Harbour from a promenade in Kowloon’s Hung Hom area

One of the two ferry piers at Hung Hom

Then it was time to photograph the area’s mid-19th-century Tin Hau Temple, a landmark I’d passed countless times while being shuttled to and from school. In neighboring Fortress Hill, we wandered around an experimental art space called Oi!, which spans a two-story British colonial building and a sympathetic concrete-and-glass pavilion. Of the mainly local contemporary artists it promoted, a standout was Inkgo Lam. Her imaginative bamboo installations and kinetic artworks representing organs of the human body — the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys — used techniques learned from one of the city’s last remaining craftsmen of dim sum steamers.

That night, Bama and I joined a Japanese dinner hosted by Fourth Aunt. Our group of five (including two food-loving cousins) passed around plates loaded with yakitori and exquisite sushi of salmon roe, plump scallop, luxurious Hokkaido sea urchin, and seared olive flounder. Fourth Aunt and Uncle have always been adventurous travelers. When we spoke about our recent time in Uzbekistan, Fourth Uncle showed us the evocative portraits he took there on a small group trip with Fourth Aunt and a few friends in the early 2010s. They also had the great fortune of visiting prewar Syria, where they toured Damascus and Aleppo, the ancient ruins of Palmyra, and the hilltop Crusader castle Krak des Chevaliers. “With the way the world is now, it’s better to go places sooner. We never know what will happen,” Fourth Aunt mused. Bama nodded in agreement.

With each passing year, I’ve realized that every Christmas spent in Hong Kong is different. The weather didn’t play ball this season; much like the tail end of 2016, the skies were either thickly clouded over or visibly smoggy. Nor did we have the chance to go hiking on one of the outlying islands. But I’m still more than grateful for the time spent with family — especially those living on other continents — and the new experiences in parts of my hometown I barely knew before. ◊

Fishing beside Hung Hom Ferry Pier

Passengers wait for the ferry to North Point

The Hong Kong Island skyline on a smoggy winter’s afternoon

Beneath the banyans at Kowloon’s Mody Road Garden; a kinetic artwork at Oi!

An upper-floor gallery sits inside the modern extension at Oi!

The experimental art space in Fortress Hill doubles as a community living room

Starfruit growing on the branch at Oi!; soaking up the winter sunshine

A hidden oasis with heritage buildings amid the concrete jungle

“Transmute”, an Ingko Lam artwork made of bamboo, rattan, and paper airplanes

Nighttime in the shopping area of Causeway Bay; another of Ingko Lam’s pieces at Oi!