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100 days left

(01/29/21 5:00am)

A small ritual I’ve developed since my return to Durham from our much-needed holidays has been to start my mornings by heating water in my electric kettle. The use of an electric kettle is a habit I’ve carried from my time in the United Kingdom, where my consumption of tea and biscuits (of the custard cream variety, and not accompanied by gravy), was at a lifetime high, while the practice of drinking warm water is one I’ve inherited from my family in Hong Kong. Back home in Hong Kong, hot water dispensers (which also function to brew tea) are as ubiquitous in kitchens as fridge water dispensers are here in the United States. Chinese culture possesses a general aversion to the consumption of cold water, stemming from the precept in traditional Chinese medicine that cold water disturbs the balance of the body. You would be hard pressed to find restaurants in Hong Kong that serve the American restaurant standard of water with ice. Hot tea and warm or room temperature water are usually preferred. 

https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2021/01/01282021-tong

Just dough it (or doughn’t)

(10/08/20 4:00am)

When I pop outside, bare-footed and bleary-eyed, to water my plants in the morning, I feel the cold that has started to linger on my concrete balcony floor. Vibrant veins of scarlet are slowly bleeding into the tips of the trees that dot the parking lot next door, and I’m reminded that it will be a whole other year before we’ll have sticky, sweaty summer afternoons again. 

https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2020/10/tong-08102020

高糖度 (High Sugar Content)

(09/28/20 4:00am)

Over the past summer, I was listlessly wandering the supermarket basement of Sogo, a Japanese department store in Hong Kong. The store entrance was a rendezvous point for a friend who was running late, and I took the opportunity to browse the produce aisles while I waited. Hong Kong is a city that imports most of its food, and grocery stores there have such an international variety that they may as well serve as poster children for globalization. I meandered around Spanish romaine lettuces, French chanterelle mushrooms, Kenyan sugar peas and Thai baby corn before coming to an abrupt stop at a pile of familiar red boxes labelled ‘高糖度’ (high sugar content) attached to an exorbitant price tag. At the sight of those red boxes of tomatoes, I was whisked away to a particular moment in my mother’s kitchen in Karuizawa, Japan.

https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2020/09/tong-28092020

I love char siu; I love you

(09/10/20 4:54am)

I’ve never indulged food as a hobby like I did when isolating in Durham from the months of March to July. Ritualizing making food, celebrating it and eating lots and LOTS of it (sometimes out of sheer boredom) was one of the only things I could create an event or an occasion out of. As the recipes I attempted became increasingly time consuming and complex, my deep sense of homesickness drove me to explore and create flavours from home.The 19 in COVID-19 may as well signify the 19 pounds I gained in isolation. 

https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2020/09/tong-10092020

On feeling foreign at a Walmart

(08/27/20 4:10am)

Starting a kitchen is a lot like building a home - you start with the foundations, build a basic structure, (stress about the perfect shade of green for your couches) and finish with the decorative touches. When I returned to Durham from abroad as a cliché last spring, glowing from the Australian sun that ‘changed’ me, I had the chance to build a kitchen space that for the first time in over a decade of co-living in various dorms I could call my own. My flatmate at the time, who had moved in a few days prior, had neatly sorted her kitchen essentials into the empty drawers and cabinets. Her kitchen cabinet foundations were a giant bottle of extra virgin olive oil, a large jar of oregano and a tub of tahini — she’s from Greece, if you couldn’t tell. As I slotted in my bottles of soy sauce, mirin and sesame oil, my flatmate remarked on the cross-cultural fusion that the space had become. I loved that our kitchen cabinet had echoes of our respective homes which would translate into tubs of homemade hummus and bowls of noodle soup that we could share with each other.

https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2020/08/tong-27082020