Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai

It is tiring to be a woman who loves to eat in a society where hunger is something not to be satisfied but controlled. Where a long history of female hunger is associated with shame and madness. The body must be punished for every misstep; for every "indulgence" the balance of control must be restored. To enjoy food as a young woman, to opt out every day from the guilt expected of me, is a radical act, of love.

Maybe it's impossible to recreate the exact weight of a memory, but we keep trying.

What does it mean to taste something and be transported to so many places at once, all of them a piece of home? To be half-elsewhere all the time, half-here and not-here. There are two sides of myself: one longing for the city, one at peace near the sea.

I have left several homes and created new ones. Home has always been complicated. But there is a mountain I do keep coming back to: Mount Kinabalu in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, a small city on the northeast coast of the island of Borneo, where my mother was born and raised. This is my mountain

I wish I had thought to ask: what’s your favourite dish to cook? Which flavours remind you of when you were little? What did your mother teach you?

Home sickness comes in waves, sometimes leaving me reeling.

With some practice, I learn not to regret it ... I begin to prioritise joy.

I often end up biking home with a paper bag in my basket, a warm boluo bao inside. Whatever the time of year, they remind me of sun, tropical heat, being with family. Mooncakes, the little cakes eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival, are meant to look like moons. Boluo bao look like shining suns.

It is June. I am in Shanghai and I am not tired. June in Shanghai is for cold bubble tea, for kissing, for three-yuan ice creams and misty rain mixing with sweat on skin.

To me, English words don’t quite exist for these dishes. ‘Steamed shrimp dumpling’ could mean any shrimp dumpling, not the delicately folded spheres of translucent skin that are har gow.

The bamboo leaves give off a deep, earthy scent that permeates the air throughout the end of May and early June.

I starved myself of language, but I couldn't starve myself of other things.

These used to make me feel lonely, but they don’t anymore. They are all places of temporary existence – of waiting, coming and going – where you aren’t meant to stand still. In this city you’re supposed to keep moving, but I let myself be still. I go for long walks in the evening and watch other people in their private solitude. Everything around me is disappearing and reappearing at the same time and I will never be able to keep up, and for the moment I know that’s okay. I can’t stop the city from changing shape, but by writing things down – recipes, names, colours, Chinese characters – I can hold it still for a moment