‘I feel like what I love about food is more about family’

In the days leading up to February 16, the world’s largest mass human migration will take place as millions travel home for Lunar New Year. Over a period of more than two weeks, families gather together, share gifts and eat traditional dishes for good luck and prosperity.

“On New Year’s Eve, it’s like the Chinese version of Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner – a chaotic dinner where you have your mom running around yelling, ‘Oh, why does this stove not work in this stupid house!’” says University of Bristol PhD student Vivian Kong.

She was born and brought up in Hong Kong, but will spend her third Lunar New Year in Bristol. “The dinner will be held at home with my grandparents too, and my mom cooks good luck dishes like pork knuckle stew with dried oyster. If you translate the Chinese name into English, would mean ‘Good fortune and get winnings easily’.”

Lamb bone hotpot with mooli and wide glass noodles at Toro

We’re talking over hotpot, a cold weather favourite in Hong Kong, at Toro Noodle Bar on Park Street, one of Vivian’s favourite restaurants in Bristol along with Chilli Daddy. Tonight it’s packed with young people speaking both Mandarin and Cantonese. Vivian ignores the leather-bound menu and instead pulls out a picture of sizzling hotpot from a stack in a menu holder.

We get a card to mark up, picking from fish, oxtail, lamb bone and pig trotter hotpots (from £26.80), choosing our spice level (“Even low spicy level can put someone from Hong Kong in tears!”) and additions including meat, vegetables, mushrooms, tofu and noodles.

Vivian with home made egg tarts, a Hong Kong delicacy imported by the Portuguese

The hotpot arrives a stone vessel big enough to feed at least four. Lamb on the bone floats in a delicious steaming broth, with pieces of mooli (giant radish) and wide glass noodles. We ladle out portions as Vivian reminisces. “Every New Year we got really excited because we knew there was going to be good food. A week or two before, my mom would get really busy, helping us get new clothes and buying candy to go in a special box.

“She’d get all sorts of sweets – normal candy, Chinese candies where they preserve things like lotus seeds with a little sugar to make it sweet, and even chocolates. During the process of helping her prepare that box we got to eat some of it.

“My mom would have it ready on the night of New Year’s Eve, and she’d put it on the dining table with a red packet on top for good luck.”

Several dishes from a New Year’s Eve dinner at the Kong’s home

After the family dinner, Vivian’s parents finish cleaning the house to sweep away the dirt of the old year, and everyone takes a thorough shower, finished with water boiled with pomelo leaves to get rid of bad spirits. “That’s the start a busy night for my mom because she’s a very religious person, so she burns incense and paper money and prays,” says Vivian. “She’ll prepare a vegetarian dish as a sacrifice for the deities, and then we have it for breakfast the next morning.

“My mom is a great cook – I grew up eating all this great food. My family is quite traditional as my mom does all the cooking: my dad does it two or three times a year, including at Chinese New Year. Some of the things they buy to make the dish for the gods are also necessary for a dish that come from my dad’s village, a savoury glutinous rice ball in a broth made from Chinese sausage, bacon, dried shrimp, celery and green onion. In order to not waste the ingredients, he would make it. My mom made it once and he said, ‘That’s not how it tastes in my hometown’.”

Turnip cakes, made by Vivian last Chinese New Year

New Year’s morning is all about receiving gifts – red packets filled with money, given by older relatives. “We’d get up really early, rush into my parents’ room and say things like, ‘Dad, you look really handsome, I think that you look more handsome this year’ – the best things that can come out of your mouth – and they give you red packets.” They would spend the day visiting the homes of their extended family, visiting relatives and exchanging red packets, and eating dim sum with their grandparents.

“I used to really like Dynasty for dim sum,” Vivian says of Bristol’s restaurant scene. “I used to not even like dim sum, because I used to eat it on a Sunday as a teenager, sitting down with my grandparents and my dad to talk about school.

“It was only after I left Hong Kong that I started to appreciate how good dim sum is because I was deprived of it for quite a long time. Water Sky is good for dim sum, and I’ve heard really good reviews about Wok Cafe on Nelson Street, but I heard they didn’t have my favourite – chiu chow fun guo (dumplings with pork and chopped peanuts).”

Vivian’s friends preparing dumplings in their halls of residence

This month, Vivian will spend Lunar New Year with friends: cooking dishes that taste like her own her childhood and others that her friends remember: many from northern China eat dumplings made into a shape that resembles a traditional gold ingot, a symbol of prosperity.

“I feel like what I love about food is more about family,” Vivian says. “I definitely am more concerned about food than most people. I plan my meals a few days ahead no matter whether it’s a special occasion or just a normal meal at home. My parents taught us not to spend money on things that are unnecessary, but they would definitely spend more on good food.”

An exhibition of archive photographs of Hong Kong, organised by the Hong Kong History Project at the University of Bristol, will  form part of the Chinese New Year celebrations at Bristol Museum across February 17-18 2018. For more information, visit www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/bristol-museum-and-art-gallery/whats-on/chinese-new-year-dog