Latest news with #Shanghainese
RTÉ News
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Emma Chung: How to make Chinese food easily at home
It was Shanghainese spring onion oil noodles that catapulted Emma Chung to TikTok success four years ago. "It's a fragrant oil that you make by frying spring onions and mixed with noodles, it's really easy! It's five ingredients in the whole dish," says the now Hong Kong-based chef and content creator. "I just casually posted, not even telling anyone." Chung, 28, who posts under @ had spent her life in food already, though, working as a recipe developer for a food box company and teaching at London's School Of Wok. With Hong Kong parentage, she moved to Shanghai at the age of five. "So I actually lived more in Shanghai than I did in Hong Kong, however, I've always felt really tied to my Cantonese roots, to my Hong Kong family." Her food is heavily influenced by both areas. "They're really different," says Chung. "I would say Shanghainese food is a little bit sweeter overall, we use more dark soy sauce, so dishes tend to have that dark brown colour. Because it gets quite cold in the winter, it's heartier than Cantonese food, it's quite filling, you've got braised meats, delicious noodles and rice dishes. "In Hong Kong, dishes are lighter in flavour, a lot of seafood, dishes are often steamed." Chung remembers her grandmother ("the best cook I've known") rustling up all her meals on a small electric stove in a tiny kitchen, with tools hung everywhere and meat drying at the windows. "The dish I miss the most when I'm away from home is her stir-fried greens. I also really remember her doing a whole steamed fish in a massive wok. They'd be 20 of us [eating] in this tiny flat and this boiling hot dish of steamed fish coming out." Chung's debut cookbook, Easy Chinese Food Anyone Can Make, aims to prove that forgoing your local takeaway in favour of home cooking is a lot more simple and accessible than you might think. Think easy weeknight dinners like ketchup prawns, to takeaway classics like sweet and sour pork and beef chow fun, and sticky mango rice for pudding. So what's her advice for beginners to the cuisine at home? Get four basics in your pantry According to Chung, all you need is a light soy sauce, a dark soy sauce, sesame oil and oyster sauce. "A light soy sauce is going to be very salty, it adds a bit of seasoning. Dark soy sauce gives it that lovely golden brown colour – when we think of a really delicious stir-fry noodle that has a dark brown colour, that's what's giving it its colour. Sesame oil has a really delicious nutty taste. "Oyster or mushroom sauce [for a plant-based alternative], they taste really similar, adds a nice salty taste to your food that's different to a light soy sauce. From those few basic sauces, you can make so many different types of dishes, says Chung. "When I go to my grandmother's kitchen, when I look at her pantry, she's literally got four large bottles." Stop buying packet supermarket stir-fry sauces "It's just a mixture of sesame oil, light or dark soy, maybe sugar, maybe a few other things to make it taste a little bit better. I would say if you just had those basic ingredients yourself, it's going to taste a lot better, a lot fresher, and probably be a lot healthier than when you buy those packaged ingredients with things that you don't even know what's in it – same as if you were buying like a jar of pasta sauce from the aisles. "Start with a little bit [of each thing] and you can always add a little bit more." It's likely to work out cheaper in the long-run too. Start with fried rice – but don't over-stir A Chinese fried rice dish is usually made of "the most basic of ingredients", says Chung, "some maybe you already have at home – it's an amazing way to transform a very simple ingredient, or leftovers. "I always have lots of different things lying around the fridge, like a half-chopped courgette, or like the end of a spring onion. It's a great way to use what you already have and transform it into something that tastes really different. "If you get that technique right (you don't necessarily need a wok), it can go from a kind of average fried rice to really, really good fried rice." Chung, who taught at London's School of Wok for many years, says the pan needs to be very hot – and not to mix it around too much. "I've taught many fried rice dishes. Almost every class had some kind of fried rice. What I saw all the time were just people constantly mixing it, and when you mix it so much, it's almost like you're breaking the grains of the rice. And so that's why it gets wet and a little bit mushy." "With risotto, they encourage you to continually stir it because you want to break up the grains of rice, you want to kind of release some of that starch. But in the fried rice, that's not what you want. So I would say actually the best tip is to actually not do so much and just let it cook in the pan." Make your own dumplings – with minimal pleats Chinese dumplings or wontons are easier to make than we might think, says Chung. "Making any type of dough, whether you're baking or making pasta, can seem daunting. But I think once you try it a few times, and then you get familiar with how the dough feels – it becomes really easy." In Chinese restaurants, you'll see wontons with many pleats, she notes, but that's just "a plus". "The most basic dumpling, when you go to dumpling stalls in Shanghai, they're doing the most basic fold because they have to make a hundred a day. They're not going to bother sitting there making 10, 12, 14 pleats on each dumpling, they're just squeezing it, sealing it shut and then moving on to the next one." Her best tip for filling dumplings is to cook a little bit to taste it, before putting the rest of the mixture inside. "Like you would if you were making meatballs at home to make sure the seasoning is right. Just cook off a small bit." Chop everything before you start cooking "With Chinese food, everything happens quite quickly. Often, things are being stir-fried within 10-15 minutes. So I would say, make sure you have everything that you need ready and measured out right by you for the very beginning. And if you need garlic, ginger, spring onions or peppers, have that all already chopped."
BreakingNews.ie
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- BreakingNews.ie
Emma Chung: How anyone can make Chinese food easily at home
It was Shanghainese spring onion oil noodles that catapulted Emma Chung to TikTok success four years ago. 'It's a fragrant oil that you make by frying spring onions and mixed with noodles, it's really easy! It's five ingredients in the whole dish,' says the now Hong Kong-based chef and content creator. 'I just casually posted, not even telling anyone.' Advertisement Chung, 28, who posts under @ had spent her life in food already though, working as a recipe developer for a food box company and teaching at London's School Of Wok. With Hong Kong parentage, she moved to Shanghai at the age of five. 'So I actually lived more in Shanghai than I did in Hong Kong, however I've always felt really tied to my Cantonese roots, to my Hong Kong family.' (Emma Chung/PA) Her food is heavily influenced by both areas. 'They're really different,' says Chung. 'I would say Shanghainese food is a little bit sweeter overall, we use more dark soy sauce, so dishes tend to have that dark brown colour. Because it gets quite cold in the winter, it's heartier than Cantonese food, it's quite filling, you've got braised meats, delicious noodles and rice dishes. 'In Hong Kong, dishes are lighter in flavour, a lot of seafood, dishes are often steamed.' Advertisement Chung remembers her grandmother ('the best cook I've known') rustling up all her meals on a small electric stove in a tiny kitchen, with tools hung everywhere and meat drying at the windows. 'The dish I miss the most when I'm away from home is her stir-fried greens. I also really remember her doing a whole steamed fish in a massive wok. They'd be 20 of us [eating] in this tiny flat and this boiling hot dish of steamed fish coming out.' Chung's debut cookbook, Easy Chinese Food Anyone Can Make, aims to prove that forgoing your local takeaway in favour of home cooking is a lot more simple and accessible than you might think. Think easy weeknight dinners like ketchup prawns, to takeaway classics like sweet and sour pork and beef chow fun, and sticky mango rice for pudding. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Emma Chung (@ So what's her advice for beginners to the cuisine at home? Get four basics in your pantry According to Chung, all you need is a light soy sauce, a dark soy sauce, sesame oil and oyster sauce. 'A light soy sauce is going to be very salty, it adds a bit of seasoning. Dark soy sauce gives it that lovely golden brown colour – when we think of a really delicious stir-fry noodle that has a dark brown colour, that's what's giving it its colour. Sesame oil has a really delicious nutty taste. Advertisement 'Oyster or mushroom sauce [for a plant-based alternative], they taste really similar, adds a nice salty taste to your food that's different to a light soy sauce. From those few basic sauces, you can make so many different types of dishes, says Chung. 'When I go to my grandmother's kitchen, when I look at her pantry, she's literally got four large bottles.' Stop buying packet supermarket stir-fry sauces 'It's just a mixture of sesame oil, light or dark soy, maybe sugar, maybe a few other things to make it taste a little bit better. I would say if you just had those basic ingredients yourself, it's going to taste a lot better, a lot fresher, and probably be a lot healthier than when you buy those packaged ingredients with things that you don't even know what's in it – same as if you were buying like a jar of pasta sauce from the aisles. 'Start with a little bit [of each thing] and you can always add a little bit more.' Advertisement It's likely to work out cheaper in the long-run too. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Emma Chung (@ Start with fried rice – but don't over-stir A Chinese fried rice dish is usually made of 'the most basic of ingredients', says Chung, 'some maybe you already have at home – it's an amazing way to transform a very simple ingredient, or leftovers. 'I always have lots of different things lying around the fridge, like a half-chopped courgette, or like the end of a spring onion. It's a great way to use what you already have and transform it into something that tastes really different. 'If you get that technique right (you don't necessarily need a wok), it can go from a kind of average fried rice to really, really good fried rice.' Advertisement Chung, who taught at London's School of Wok for many years, says the pan needs to be very hot – and not to mix it around too much. 'I've taught many fried rice dishes. Almost every class had some kind of fried rice. What I saw all the time were just people constantly mixing it, and when you mix it so much, it's almost like you're breaking the grains of the rice. And so that's why it gets wet and a little bit mushy.' 'With risotto, they encourage you to continually stir it because you want to break up the grains of rice, you want to kind of release some of that starch. But in the fried rice, that's not what you want. So I would say actually the best tip is to actually not do so much and just let it cook in the pan.' Make your own dumplings – with minimal pleats Chinese dumplings or wontons are easier to make than we might think, says Chung. 'Making any type of dough, whether you're baking or making pasta, can seem daunting. But I think once you try it a few times, and then you get familiar with how the dough feels – it becomes really easy.' In Chinese restaurants you'll see wontons with many pleats, she notes, but that's just 'a plus'. 'The most basic dumpling, when you go to dumpling stalls in Shanghai, they're doing the most basic fold because they have to make a hundred a day. They're not going to bother sitting there making 10, 12, 14 pleats on each dumpling, they're just squeezing it, sealing it shut and then moving on to the next one.' Her best tip for filling dumplings is to cook a little bit to taste it, before putting the rest of the mixture inside. 'Like you would if you were making meatballs at home to make sure the seasoning is right. Just cook off a small bit.' Chop everything before you start cooking 'With Chinese food, everything happens quite quickly. Often, things are being stir-fried within 10-15 minutes. So I would say, make sure you have everything that you need ready and measured out right by you for the very beginning. And if you need garlic, ginger, spring onions or peppers, have that all already chopped.' (Ebury/PA) Easy Chinese Food Anyone Can Make by Emma Chung is published in hardback by Ebury Press. Photography by Ola Available July 24th.
Hindustan Times
27-06-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
The Stoic Capitalist: An exclusive excerpt from the book by Wall Street titan Robert Rosenkranz
Every two years, the Whitney Museum in New York showcases works by America's most promising up-and-coming artists in a highly publicized exhibition. Being selected for the Whitney Biennial can transform an artist's life. It brings newcomers to the attention of prominent gallerists looking to add fresh faces to their rosters and to collectors eager to stay abreast of the competition for emerging talent. . However, if you look up the Biennial's catalogs from a decade ago, you will find that most of the artists they heralded now languish in obscurity. Few have important dealers; fewer still have a strong and consistent auction market for their work. Page through Sotheby's and Christie's auction catalogs of contemporary art from a decade ago, and the story is much the same. The art world is in large part a fashion culture, constantly in flux. So, it should be no surprise that investing in art is trickier than, say, buying stocks, and almost always less lucrative. Most contemporary work auctioned a decade ago would not be salable today at a price that could cover the original hammer price, plus the twenty-five percent commission auction houses typically charge, plus the nine percent sales tax a New York resident would have had to pay…not to mention what all this money might have earned over the period in a typical stock market portfolio. There would be notable exceptions, of course, and those are the ones that make headlines. The best that can be said is that if you can afford to buy the finest works by the most prominent artists, and you have first-rate professional advice, you have a reasonable chance to make a decent return. Otherwise, investor beware. Owning art is one of the great attractions of wealth, but you should never mistake it for a great investment. Then why is buying art a great idea? Simply because to own a work of art is its own reward. You can experience art in museums, but it will not enhance your life nearly as much as living with it every day. Nor will it require of you the focus that should be part of the decision to exchange your hard-earned money for an artist's work. As a collector, you will be part of a community that includes artists, curators, gallerists, and other collectors with shared interests. Equally important, each object you buy can be a catalyst for learning. That too is life-enhancing. As soon as I could afford to buy art, I started to collect modern Chinese ink paintings. My mentor in the field was a British scholar/collector/dealer named Hugh Moss, who I met through my Shanghainese friend, Jimmy King. Hugh divided his time between Old Surrey Hall, a vast pile in Surrey with Elizabethan antecedents, and a scholarly retreat on a sparsely populated hillside in Hong Kong. He styled himself a modern Western reincarnation of a Chinese literatus. Historically, the literati were a class of scholar/officials who played prominent roles in Chinese culture and often served in high government posts. They collected meticulously crafted furniture of simple design, brush pots, ancient jade artifacts, snuff boxes and 'scholar's rocks'—unusually shaped stones thought to embody nature's mysterious forces. The literati tradition of landscape painting persisted even after the Communist revolution and Mao's Great Leap Forward. It was the modern expression of that tradition I focused on. There was much that drew me to the genre. I was fascinated that the artists had classical training and technical skill, while their growing exposure to Western influences was encouraging them to experiment with scale, with color, and with abstraction. … I liked the hanging-scroll format of these works, because it let me readily change the paintings I had on display and experience them with fresh eyes. (The Chinese would no more show the same painting all the time than we would play the same music again and again.) Conveniently for me at that early stage in my career, the prices were modest, yet at the same time the genre was so rarified that I could be one of a handful of serious collectors and have access to the best material from the leading dealers. I was not expecting these ink paintings to be good investments, nor did they prove to be. But I stayed with them, accumulating more than fifty over the course of a decade. When I was finally ready to move on, I donated the bulk of the collection to the Harvard University Art Museum, whose senior curator, Robert Mowry, was building perhaps the finest institutional collection in the US. By the 1990s, my interest in art shifted to China's ancient traditions—what my then muse, now wife Alexandra Munroe called a step 'forward into the past.' Hugh Moss again played a pivotal role. He alerted me to the availability of a magnificent Tang dynasty horse which he regarded as one of the finest objects to appear on the market in years. Hugh introduced me to Giuseppe Eskanazi, a preeminent London dealer who was showing the work in New York. Eskanazi was surprised that a beginning collector he had never heard of would buy such an object. The price was hardly modest, but this time I did feel it would be a good investment, because China was fast becoming prosperous, and I expected that collectors there would ultimately spend heavily for outstanding examples of their cultural heritage. … Since I bought it in 1995, the Tang horse has held pride of place at my Manhattan apartment: it stands in solitary splendor on an art deco console in the living room and is the first thing to catch your eye as you enter. Starting with such a great object set the bar for the rest of the collection, which evolved with a focus on Buddhist sculpture. Wen Fong, then head of Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was generous with his advice, and I made the Met my standard. When a dealer or an auction house had an object that I found intriguing, I would go to the Met and see if they had a better example. If they did, I would pass. As a result, I bought only a handful of objects each year. This pace suited me well. While I enjoyed living with these works, which often combined physical beauty and spiritual power, they were also a challenge. Fakes were not uncommon, and even top dealers could occasionally be fooled. I felt a need to know why and how they were made and what they signified, lessons that often took time to absorb. … Part of the reason I responded to Buddhist art was the connection between Buddhist and Stoic philosophical systems. Both encourage the cultivation of virtue, though one approach focuses on spirituality, the other on rationality. Both emphasize mindfulness, which Buddhism seeks through meditation; Stoicism through concentration, focus, and elimination of distractions. The Stoic concept of impermanence and change echoes the Buddhist idea of detachment. Neither philosophy is incompatible with worldly splendor, provided it occupies a moderate share of one's psychic space. Seneca was among the wealthiest men in Rome and the most influential of Stoic philosophers. The Buddha was a prince who renounced worldly goods for an ascetic life and is always depicted in simple robes. In his pantheon are bodhisattvas, who are typically portrayed in elegant, princely garb with elaborate jewelry. My favorite bodhisattva is Vimalakirti.. (He) lived lavishly and had a passion for debate. When Buddha's other followers criticized Vimalakirti's style of life, he argued that they were seeing only the surface of things and echoing a conventional understanding of wealth and poverty. In contrast, he believed in 'non duality'—the idea that one could be fully engaged in the world, could enjoy material possessions without becoming attached to them, and find true wealth in spiritual insight, compassion, and wisdom. … My expectation about China's economic growth, and the demand it would stoke for the nation's cultural icons, proved correct. The value of my collection has probably increased fivefold. Five times sounds like a fine return, but it is far less than the stock market returned over the same period. Since I have no intention of selling, that doesn't matter very much to me anyway; what did matter was that great objects were no longer 'coming out' of China, and the window of opportunity to add to my collection closed. I adapted quite radically, stimulated by seeing some extraordinary private collections of time-based media, video art, and the intersection of art and technology. My focus shifted from the past to the here and now, from objects to experiences, and from a category with reasonable investment prospects to one with little financial upside. It struck me that video was the natural language of young people, of a whole generation that gets most of its information from screens, and does most of its communicating on devices. Some artists were doing very innovative work, enabled in part by rapidly changing technology ranging from cameras that make a thousand images a second, to facial recognition software, to artificial intelligence, to virtual reality. Other artists were basing their work on video games, often with an ironic critique of the aggressiveness and gender stereotypes they embody. While I had enjoyed learning the history, now I enjoyed getting to know artists. I found that I had a good rapport with many of those I met and quite a few have become real friends. Doug Aitken has been aptly described as the best dinner company the art world has produced. He has surfer dude good looks, boyish curiosity about virtually any topic you introduce, and the charm and skill of an accomplished raconteur. He resists the confines of the museum and is eager to project his art into unexpected places. This penchant for the unexpected is central to a work in my collection, Migration, set in a series of cheap motel rooms reminiscent of B-movies. The motels are mostly in desolate industrial settings in a landscape devoid of people. Into each motel room, he introduces a different species of wild animal. A horse stares in bewilderment at a TV set, a beaver frolics in a bathtub, a mountain lion attacks a pillow as if it is his prey, a buffalo overturns a lamp and crashes a telephone to the floor. The result is sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious—and a metaphor for the struggles of human migrants to find their footing while adapting to unfamiliar environs. … Because there were relatively few collectors, I had the opportunity to be among the leaders in the field. The small universe of potential buyers kept prices reasonable, which in turn meant that the artists were making their work with the purest of motives. … Video art is a challenging area for museums too. Some museums have large collections, excellent curators, and strong technical staff. However, visitors to museums typically expect to enter a gallery with a dozen or more paintings or sculptures and spend less than a minute with each. They do not expect to engage with a single work of art for ten minutes or more. It's not that visitors have short attention spans; they go to operas, ballets, concerts, movies, and theater. But those activities are done sitting down in the evenings, not standing up in the daytime. I have long felt that if video art is to offer the kind of immersive experiences the artists intended, a new kind of cultural institution is needed—a hybrid between a museum and a performing arts venue. As a venture philanthropist, I am excited to help create such an institution. I have taken a giant step by acquiring a 40,000-square-foot venue in Manhattan's Lower East Side, which we are calling Canyon. It will incorporate the latest technology, and it will showcase both established masters and exciting new talent. I hope it will become a 'must see' destination for lovers of contemporary art. It will be open in the evening to attract new, younger, and more diverse audiences, drawn by the dramatic, experiential nature of its exhibitions. (Excerpted with permission from The Stoic Capitalist: Advice for the Exceptionally Ambitious by Robert Rosenkranz, published by Bloomsbury; 2025)
Business Insider
26-06-2025
- General
- Business Insider
My dad's death led me to China. Living in Shanghai helped me heal.
I went to Shanghai for the first time in 1987. My grandma had died, and the family plan was to spend a month in China. It was my Chinese father's first trip back since he'd immigrated to the US in the late 1960s. Sleeping in my father's family's home, meeting relatives for the first time, sharing meals, hearing Mandarin all around me, and navigating the maze of their neighborhood marked the beginning of my connection to Shanghai. My Shanghainese father met my Mexican mother near Los Angeles in the 1970s, and I grew up speaking English and Spanish. I even chose Spanish as my minor in college. But I didn't speak Mandarin. Growing up, my father didn't talk about his past or his Chinese roots. Instead, it was through food that I learned about my dad. Our trips to Chinatown provided me with a peek into his world. Before the days of international food aisles in grocery stores, trips to LA's Chinatown were necessary for Chinese ingredients — my dad did a lot of cooking. Chinatown was also where we went to celebrate special occasions. As a kid, I remember the excitement of catching glimpses of the Lunar New Year dragon parade from a restaurant. For birthdays, we would stop by Phoenix Bakery to pick up a strawberry whipped cream cake with sliced almonds. Looking after my dad My parents divorced when I was in college, and it put a real strain on my relationship with my dad. But in my late 20s, we slowly began to reconnect. I remember him hosting a Chinese Thanksgiving. One of my cousins cooked crab with green onion, egg, and ginger. After my dad had a stroke that left him paralysed on the left side of his body, he was unable to speak. I helped as a caretaker during the last two years of his life. I scheduled appointments, managed transportation, went with him to doctor's appointments, prodded medical staff to do as much as possible, and cheered on his physical therapy progress. Our Chinese connection My dad died in 2017. Two years later, I traveled back to China. I walked the streets of Shanghai, after what would've been his 83rd birthday, and I felt that at any moment, I would turn a corner and bump into him. I'd think about him — almost as if I could hear his voice — whenever I smelled dumplings frying and tried to decide which variety to choose. I reveled in the hum of people walking, cycling, or rushing to their destinations. I loved watching early morning deliveries — boxes of fresh vegetables dropped off at restaurant doors. Struggling to pronounce words in Mandarin added to the vibrancy. Shanghai felt electric, and as the city revealed itself to me, I knew my father was watching over me, welcoming me back to his hometown or laughing at my attempts to speak Mandarin. The majority of that trip was spent in Shanghai, but I also visited Hong Kong to see my grandfather's grave and spent three days in Beijing. Shanghai felt like home I was drawn to Shanghai and wanted to move there. At the time, I was in graduate school, switching careers from journalism to urban planning. I came across an English teaching position in Shanghai. I had yet to make peace with my father's passing, and in addition to the high cost of living in LA, I felt I needed a change. I arrived in Shanghai with two suitcases and from January 2023 to earlier this year, I called China home. I worked as an English teacher and corporate language instructor. In Shanghai, the ease and options for getting around, the low cost of living, incredible food, and widespread use of digital wallets made life feel incredibly convenient. I also loved exploring the city. Across from the hotel we stayed at in 1987 — which is walking distance from where my dad's family home once stood — I often found comfort. When the weather was good, I'd sit on a bench, munching on a shao bing, a Chinese flatbread a little larger than a corn tortilla, which became one of my favorite snacks. And I fell in love with walking — to get a latte, pick up steamed pork buns, to meet friends, or just take in the city. Something I had rarely done in LA. I wandered Shanghai's wide streets and its small, tucked-away alleys lined with old homes. In those quiet lanes, far from the boulevards and busy pedestrian promenades, Old Shanghai still lingers — patiently waiting to tell its stories. I was happy about the life I was creating. The old parts of the city made me think back to that treasured first visit with my father. In many ways, Shanghai will always feel like home. When my employment contract ended and the job offers I received were insufficient to keep me in Shanghai, I moved back to the US. But I didn't feel ready to leave.
Business Insider
26-06-2025
- General
- Business Insider
My dad's death led me to China. Living in Shanghai helped me heal
I went to Shanghai for the first time in 1987. My grandma had died, and the family plan was to spend a month in China. It was my Chinese father's first trip back since he'd immigrated to the US in the late 1960s. Sleeping in my father's family's home, meeting relatives for the first time, sharing meals, hearing Mandarin all around me, and navigating the maze of their neighborhood marked the beginning of my connection to Shanghai. My Shanghainese father met my Mexican mother near Los Angeles in the 1970s, and I grew up speaking English and Spanish. I even chose Spanish as my minor in college. But I didn't speak Mandarin. Growing up, my father didn't talk about his past or his Chinese roots. Instead, it was through food that I learned about my dad. Our trips to Chinatown provided me with a peek into his world. Before the days of international food aisles in grocery stores, trips to LA's Chinatown were necessary for Chinese ingredients — my dad did a lot of cooking. Chinatown was also where we went to celebrate special occasions. As a kid, I remember the excitement of catching glimpses of the Lunar New Year dragon parade from a restaurant. For birthdays, we would stop by Phoenix Bakery to pick up a strawberry whipped cream cake with sliced almonds. Looking after my dad My parents divorced when I was in college, and it put a real strain on my relationship with my dad. But in my late 20s, we slowly began to reconnect. I remember him hosting a Chinese Thanksgiving. One of my cousins cooked crab with green onion, egg, and ginger. After my dad had a stroke that left him paralysed on the left side of his body, he was unable to speak. I helped as a caretaker during the last two years of his life. I scheduled appointments, managed transportation, went with him to doctor's appointments, prodded medical staff to do as much as possible, and cheered on his physical therapy progress. Our Chinese connection My dad died in 2017. Two years later, I traveled back to China. I walked the streets of Shanghai, after what would've been his 83rd birthday, and I felt that at any moment, I would turn a corner and bump into him. I'd think about him — almost as if I could hear his voice — whenever I smelled dumplings frying and tried to decide which variety to choose. I reveled in the hum of people walking, cycling, or rushing to their destinations. I loved watching early morning deliveries — boxes of fresh vegetables dropped off at restaurant doors. Struggling to pronounce words in Mandarin added to the vibrancy. Shanghai felt electric, and as the city revealed itself to me, I knew my father was watching over me, welcoming me back to his hometown or laughing at my attempts to speak Mandarin. The majority of that trip was spent in Shanghai, but I also visited Hong Kong to see my grandfather's grave and spent three days in Beijing. Shanghai felt like home I was drawn to Shanghai and wanted to move there. At the time, I was in graduate school, switching careers from journalism to urban planning. I came across an English teaching position in Shanghai. I had yet to make peace with my father's passing, and in addition to the high cost of living in LA, I felt I needed a change. I arrived in Shanghai with two suitcases and from January 2023 to earlier this year, I called China home. I worked as an English teacher and corporate language instructor. In Shanghai, the ease and options for getting around, the low cost of living, incredible food, and widespread use of digital wallets made life feel incredibly convenient. I also loved exploring the city. Across from the hotel we stayed at in 1987 — which is walking distance from where my dad's family home once stood — I often found comfort. When the weather was good, I'd sit on a bench, munching on a shao bing, a Chinese flatbread a little larger than a corn tortilla, which became one of my favorite snacks. And I fell in love with walking — to get a latte, pick up steamed pork buns, to meet friends, or just take in the city. Something I had rarely done in LA. I wandered Shanghai's wide streets and its small, tucked-away alleys lined with old homes. In those quiet lanes, far from the boulevards and busy pedestrian promenades, Old Shanghai still lingers — patiently waiting to tell its stories. I was happy about the life I was creating. The old parts of the city made me think back to that treasured first visit with my father. In many ways, Shanghai will always feel like home. When my employment contract ended and the job offers I received were insufficient to keep me in Shanghai, I moved back to the US. But I didn't feel ready to leave.
