Taste of Soup 湯之味

The first thing that impressed me when I first arrived in Hong Kong at about this time five years ago was the variety of soup I could enjoy there.

I recall that a local Hong Kong colleague and friend of mine told me when we were having a lunch at a Canteen that there were Chinese soup (中湯)and Western soup (西湯). She told me that there was a choice of either white soup or red soup if I ordered Western soup, but for Chinese soup, I could expect different varieties.


Throughout the five years in Hong Kong, I have tasted not just different aspects of life in Hong Kong, but also different varieties of soup, be it for winter or summer, for vegetarians or meat lovers, or for different therapeutic effects.

I did not grow up in a soup culture, but I’ve acquired it and fallen in love with soup over the years. Back in Perth before I went to Hong Kong, I learned from my daughter, who learned from her school teacher, how to cook vegetable soup. I experimented different ingredients and recipes, and since then, I started enjoying soup. When I was in Hong Kong, I usually didn’t have time to cook vegetable soup, but every time I had lunch or dinner at the C-Canteen on campus, I would order Chinese soup, plus whatever food I felt like. I would always appreciate the fact that after hours of hard work in my office, I could sit down and enjoy a small and simple pot of hot soup.

Later, the mother of a colleague and friend of mine got to know that I was keen on Chinese soup, so she would often ask my colleague to bring a flask of soup for me after work. Every time before I ate the soup, I would say a prayer with gratitude. It was always an interesting game for me to figure out what the ingredients were: pork, dried fig, peanut, almond kernel, pear, carrot, Chinese yam, lotus seed, red date, lily bulb, dried longan, sweet corn, and dried barley. Sometimes, I could not have a clue what the ingredients were, but I was aware how much love and care a mother would put in her soup for a family.


My obsession with soup continued even after I left Hong Kong. After a couple of weeks of exploration in local Asian grocery shops, I could finally start cooking soup. Inexperienced as I was, I simply put all the ingredients that I could get in a pot, and add some appropriate amount of water, and put the pot on the stove. Half an hour later, the whole kitchen smelled good, as my wife said to me. To my amazement, the soup tasted good too. My family and I seemed to have all enjoyed it.

While having soup with my family, I was able to understand why Hong Kong had kept its soup culture, and how a simple pot of soup could bond a family and comfort the souls of its members. The taste of soup does not just lie in the soup itself, but also the bonding and sharing it has nurtured within a family.

Note: A day after writing the blog, my family and two local friends had a lovely dinner at the Mountain View Hotel nearby, and we had spinach and mushroom soup before the main course. It tasted superb.