Chef Kelvin Cheung

We came back to Hong Kong last week to the same woman sitting there like time answers to her, not the other way around.

When you live far from home, time is compressed into these brutal little jolts. You come back and suddenly your son is a whole different human being, and your grandmother looks just a little more fragile than she did before and you feel it all at once in your chest.

Bodhi was four the last time we were here. She held his face then the same way she held it this week except this time she looked up at me after and said something in English just for him. Because she does that. She still code-switches to this day. She showed him a village life documentaries that takes her back to a childhood I’ll never fully know. And he’s pretty sure she thinks Transformers are the best too because “she laughed so much when I showed her them”. 


And that laugh. 哈哈哈哈! That laugh has followed her whole life like a signature. The Loud Laughing Lady. She laughs at everything.


I thought about my dad a lot this trip. My mom too. They should be in this photo. Four generations in one frame is the photo I wanted. But I’ll hold onto what I do have: my son learning that this woman, his Tai Ma, is where a lot of who we are comes from.