I was in the kitchen about to have some yoghurt, when out of the blue I thought about my late mum. I went into our “dungeon”, the space underneath our home, and found a box with sets of her Chinese rice bowls. I had kept two sets, one with a yellow pattern, and the other a blueish green, and brought them from London to Sabah, then on to Australia.

I’m not sure when Mum would have bought these bowls, but guess it might have been in the early 1970s when she bought a bungalow in Cowplain, Hampshire, England.

Mum used to take the bus to North End, to shop at an Asian grocer, so maybe she eventually picked up some bowls and spoons from there.

To a British kid of about eight years, that grocer had a completely nondescript storefront, in an equally nondescript alleyway. God knows how Mum ever found it. We then entered a dimly-lit world of tall, narrow aisles crammed to the ceiling with boxes and cans, and more of the same on the floor. Everything was labelled in Chinese, except for the occasional brand name like ‘Amoy’ or ‘Lee Kum Kee’. That’s where we got our staples of dark and light soy sauce, and sesame oil, plus all the yummy preserved foods like lap cheong Chinese salami, dried shiitake mushrooms, dried shrimps, century black eggs, salted duck eggs, canned salted fish with black beans. Add a reddish brown, ceramic jar of pickled tung choi vegetables, a small sack of rice and — of course — Maggi Mee.

The place had a sweet, musky smell that was completely foreign, although not unpleasant. To me, it was just that smell — the smell of the Chinese grocery store!

In my dungeon, I took one yellow bowl out to the kitchen, and washed it. I ate my yoghurt from it and decided that when I have something small and nice I’ll have it in that, and think of her ❤️.

Mike said, Tau Fu Fa.

I agreed. A bowl like that reminded me of the warm, silky soybean dessert with gula melaka syrup and ginger. I found a photo from Facebook when I last made it (in 2018! Really?)

Looks like that’s a plan then.

(My niece just asked about making it, so here’s an example of a premix. Just boil in water!)