How Hong Kong culinary icon Chua Lam inspired a generation to explore the world through food
Chua Lam's death on June 25 , Hong Kong has lost not just a culinary icon but a storyteller who inspired a generation of Hongkongers to explore the world through food.
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As a child of the Asia-Australia diaspora, my first experience of Chua Lam was via television. My mother had rented one of his series on VHS tapes, and I remember sitting down to an episode of him visiting a vineyard in Australia.
While tasting the wine, the vineyard's owner said: 'This is a rare vintage, so we should drink it instead of spitting it into the spittoon.' Chua, however, looked straight at the camera and said to the audience, in Cantonese: 'This wine isn't that great, but we can drink it anyway.'
I was instantly captivated – not only because of Chua's candour, but also because he said it with confidence. Through that confidence, you felt wisdom in his words.
Chua at Luk Yu Tea House in Central, Hong Kong, in 2008. Photo: David Wong
Born in Singapore in 1941 to a poet father – who later worked at
Hong Kong film studio Shaw Brothers – and a school principal mother, Chua was the third of four children. As a child, he lived above a movie theatre, which helped fuel an obsession with cinema.
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