I’ve sat down to type this several times over the past years, but I never was 100% sure it was the right time. To be honest, I’m still not totally sure this is the right time, and sometimes I think the right time might have already come and gone. But now is a pretty good time.

HapaMama was the brainchild of those early days of motherhood, when I had more ideas than I knew how to make come to fruition. I was fortunate enough to go a playgroup one day and meet a mom named Eddy, who knew how to do graphic design and build websites. The year that my older kid went to kindergarten, we flipped the switch and HapaMama came to life.

This blog has had a lot of ups and downs since then. It led to me getting a job as an editor for BlogHer, commissioned numerous freelance writing assignments, got me on national TV, and many more opportunities. But it’s also brought me some troubles: trolls and online harassment, Internet dust-ups, and other things I’ve probably pushed out of my mind. Since I started this blog, I’ve started to question some of the fundamentals of its existence: should I be writing about family members? Does the practice of blogging stand in the way of bigger, more refined writing projects (such as a book)? and what about the use of the term “hapa” by non-Native Hawaiians?

There are a lot of things that no longer feel right about this blog. But I will always cherish the days of an idea popping into my head while I was driving around in my minivan, and then running home to tap it out on the desktop computer, and hitting “publish” before I could have second thoughts. In many ways, I was my most uninhibited and truest self. I miss that Grace.

I’m typing this while sitting in the breakfast nook of the Hampton Inn, after moving my younger kid to college. A new chapter in my life is starting, one that is not as defined by motherhood, and yet not not-motherhood. It is exciting and scary, and I wish I knew more.

Moving forward, I won’t be posting here anymore. Thank you so much for reading, having great discussions, and supporting HapaMama. Eventually, this site will need some major updates, and it will be time to fully close it down. And I will continue to work toward my book publishing goals. To stay up to date, check my newer website gracehwanglynch.com and follow me on Twitter/X, Instagram, Facebook, or Threads and subscribe to my Small Bites newsletter.

Here’s to the future..

The post The End of an Era appeared first on HapaMama.

Whole steamed fish, tangerines with the green leaves attached, dumplings curved into ingot shapes. The foods of the Lunar New Year are round and whole, representing the unity of the family, as well as health and prosperity for the coming year. Wholeness of the family is a big thing in Chinese culture. The word for everybody is represented by characters which literally mean “big” and “family”. The gang’s all here! But how to celebrate the new year when the whole family can’t be together? 

I’ve been thinking about how to celebrate the closure of the Year of the Rat and the beginning of the Year of the Ox. My friends have been joking that Asians get a do-over for resolutions and general intention setting, if the Gregorian calendar doesn’t get off to a good start. But our whole family will not be together for the holiday. The pandemic makes travel and large family gatherings unwise, and on top of all that our college-aged son just moved out of our family home to spend the spring semester with housemates 500 miles away.

The last time my extended family—both of my own kids, my husband, my parents, my brother and his wife and children— ate dinner together was to celebrate the last Lunar New Year. It was January 24, 2020 the beginning of the Year of the Rat. In a small restaurant, we dipped paper thin slices of beef and lamb, along with cubes of tofu, leafy greens and clear noodles into hot pots filled with soup. The small metal pots were placed on electric burners in the center of a two-top; I shared a pot of pork broth with my brother, seated across from me. Although the restaurant provided serving spoons and strainers, we didn’t think twice about dipping our personal chopsticks into the pot to snag a thin enoki mushroom or slippery glass noodle. 

While we ate, the news on TV broadcast images of from the city of Wuhan, China. It had just gone into lockdown because of the deadly coronavirus. My mother asked if I was wearing a mask during my hour-long train commutes. I shrugged off her concern, noting that the Surgeon General just held a press conference telling people to stop buying masks. The coronavirus seemed like SARS or bird flu, or a number of faraway diseases that never seemed to impact us. However, I did cover my bases by washing my hands as soon as I reached the office and again when I arrived home. As we parted at the end of the evening, my dad wished my older son a good trip. Any fears about this possible pandemic were not enough to prevent us from flying out the next weekend for an overnight visit to a college in Portland, where I was looking forward to drinking Stumptown coffee and eating Blue Star donuts. 

Fast forward one year: that indecisive high school senior is now a college freshman. He didn’t end up committing to the school we visited last February, although the overnight stay helped him confirm what he did and didn’t want from his college experience. Most universities shut down overnight recruiting trips not long after that, so we couldn’t visit any more campuses. At the end of the fall semester—still living in his childhood bedroom and attending classes and club meetings on Zoom—my 18-year-old announced that he wanted to live with roommates closer to campus. While lectures and discussions would still be remote, he was hungry for independence, even if it meant cooking and washing dishes. 

I humored this exercise; Scouring through Craigslist and real estate web sites trying to find a house that was big enough, cheap enough, and owned by a landlord willing to rent to four college students wouldn’t be easy. The search would keep him busy, and then we’d laugh about what a learning experience it was to search for housing. As I mixed ground lamb and leeks to stuff into dumpling wrappers for the winter solstice, my son burst out of his bedroom, excited that a landlord had called him back. Buoyed by the freedom within his reach, he picked up a circle of dough, and out of habit scooped a bit of meat from the bowl and started pinching the bundle closed, as he told me about the house: four bedrooms and right near a trendy street filled with shops and restaurants. As he set his dumpling on the tray, he deflated just a little bit, noting that his was big and lumpy next to the dainty, evenly pleated row I had already made. I’ve been making dumplings for a long time, I consoled him. With practice, his would look better, too.

To my relief, they didn’t get that house, but as we lazed around the house on Christmas morning, I wondered how many years it would be before I would get a phone call, telling me he won’t be coming home for the holidays. Just a few weeks earlier, I had laughed out loud at a Saturday Night Live skit about mothers who blasted nuclear levels of guilt when their adult children called to say they would not be visiting because of the pandemic. 

But on one of those numberless days between Christmas and the end of the year, my son got another call back. This landlord was willing to rent a furnished house, beginning in the middle of January. As parents, we know that one day our baby birds will eventually leave the nest. Over the past year, I’ve been getting my son more involved in cooking, teaching him college basics like fried rice and chicken curry from a spice brick. Now, with just two weeks to count down, I wondered: what else could I teach him? Always curve your fingers under when chopping vegetables, I warned him, as I watched him cut up a carrot. Always wash the meat when you take it out of the package. I know it’s going to be cooked, but it’s better to be extra safe. Never rely on a timer, you need to watch and smell your food to know if it’s ready. I wanted to give him a set of do’s and don’ts to guide him in adult living.

On January 1, I grated a daikon in my first attempt at making turnip cakes, a dish associated with good luck for the upcoming year. They also happen to be a favorite of my kids. I sauteed the white shreds and tossed them into a bowl with rice flour, minced red sausages, and a few diced shiitake mushrooms, then poured the slurry into a loaf pan to be steamed. After 30 minutes, I carefully unmolded it from the pan. The vegetable bits were still a bit distinct, not uniformly melded into a cake, like in restaurants. Maybe it should have steamed a bit longer. Oh well, this was just a dry-run for the real deal, the Lunar New Year, which would begin on February 12.

During a typical year, celebrating Lunar New Year is not just the equivalent of watching the ball drop in Times Square. It’s not a holiday season after-party that ends at the stroke of midnight. We prepare for the occasion by getting haircuts and buying new clothes, maybe even doing a deep-cleaning of the house, which feels refreshing after the clutter of Christmas. Then there’s the multiple celebrations. Traditionally, this means returning to the one’s parents’ home (if you’re male) on the first day; you’re supposed to think and say positive things, as your actions set the tone for the rest of the year. Married daughters visit their parents on the third day. The festivities start small, with immediate family, and gradually widen to visiting friends and celebrating in public. In Asia, the holiday isn’t even called Chinese New Year, or even Lunar New Year, but the Spring Festival. The two-week period culminates with the Lantern Festival—often marked by evening parades with lighted floats in Asia and American Chinatowns. 

For my family, the festivities over the years have included passing out red foil candies at school, restaurant banquets with extended relatives, rolling out dough and wrapping dumplings at home, and visiting Asian strip malls in Silicon Valley to buy live fish, rice cakes studded with bits of daikon or taro, and blue tins filled with butter cookies. I’ve even hauled ingredients for a Chinese New Year dinner to a rustic lodge in the Sierras when a ski trip coincided with the holiday. I wanted my kids to be proud of these traditions—and their identity—in a way that I didn’t experience growing up.

This Year of the Ox will enter as quietly as a lamb. We aren’t making plans for any big celebrations. With the infection rates still high and the threat of the more transmittable variants of the virus, we aren’t asking our son to come home for the holiday. After all, one year ago, the downplaying of dangers while people in China returned to their ancestral villages for the holiday may have accelerated the spread of the coronavirus. 

The last things I bought before my son moved were a Zojirushi and a sack of Calrose rice. As I loaded them up in the back of the minivan, I thought about how my mother packed a rice cooker when she boarded a plane from Taiwan to the United States for graduate school. She was just a few years older than my son is now. By the time she returned home for a visit, she was a married mother of two; my parents never go back to Taiwan for the Lunar New Year. After all, the plane tickets are more expensive and everything’s crowded during the holidays. In fact, when I reflect on my childhood in the Midwest, I don’t remember ever making a big deal out of the new year. My mother taped up a red square of paper with a gold Chinese character on the kitchen cabinet, and we might have gathered around the Westbend electric skillet which served as a makeshift hot pot.

We come from ingenious people, so I’ll find some way to spoil my college kid – a care package of homemade cookies? A gift card for local Chinese takeout? This year, it seems so obvious, yet no less bittersweet to me, that the Lunar New Year marks the end of one season and the beginning of another. 

The post New Beginnings For the Lunar New Year appeared first on HapaMama.

These shortbread cookies are earthy, nutty, and slightly salty. A bit of buckwheat flour accentuates the hearty flavor of the black sesame powder and gives the cookies a sandy texture. The edges are rolled in two kinds of sesame seeds for crunch and a pretty trim. Slice and bake dough is great to keep on hand for a quick dessert.

Ingredients

Makes approximately 2 dozen cookies

1 c. butter

2/3 c. sugar

1 1/2 c. All-Purpose flour

4 Tbsp. buckwheat flour

1/2 c. black sesame powder

1 tsp. sea salt (fairly coarse, I used Hawaiian sea salt)

2 Tbsp. white sesame seeds

2 Tbsp. black sesame seeds

Directions

1. Cream butter and sugar in a mixer
2. Add the AP flour and buckwheat flour until combined
3. Add the black sesame powder and salt, and mix on medium speed until thoroughly combined and the dough sticks together.
4. Divide dough in half and shape into two logs, approximately 2″ in diameter. Wrap each in wax paper and chill in the refrigerator for one hour
5. When dough logs are firm enough to handle, but the surface is still soft, remove from refrigerator
6. Unroll the wax paper and sprinkle the two kinds of sesame seeds over the log and around the paper. Roll the log in the seeds so they are coated evenly.
7. Wrap the logs in wax paper again and chill for one more hour or up to three days. Double wrap the wax paper covered logs in plastic wrap, if chilling for more than a few hours.
8. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 325 degrees.
9. Remove dough from refrigerator and let sit at room temperature until soft enough to slice. This may take 10-30 minutes, depending on how long they have been chilled.
10. Slice into 1/4″ rounds and place on a cool baking tray.
11. Bake for 20 minutes or until edges becomes slightly brown and the centers are set.
12. Cool on the tray for 10 minutes and then move to wire rack.

These cookies keep well in a tin and can hold up to shipping.

Black sesame powder can be found at a Chinese or Japanese grocery, usually near the beans or grains

Also try my recipe for Spiced Shortbread Cookies!

The post Slice and Bake Black Sesame Shortbread Cookies appeared first on HapaMama.

One of the most iconic Taiwanese foods is the bah tsang (or zong zi, in Mandarin). These bamboo leaf wrapped glutinous rice dumplings are a traditional food for celebrating the Dragon Boat festival (Duan Wu Jie, which falls on June 28 this year), as folklore has it that a Chinese poet drowned himself in a river over his unrequited love. Apparently, this river was home to some vicious flesh-eating fish. So the search party, desperate to keep the flesh-eating fish from devouring his body, threw bundles of rice wrapped in leaves, to stave them off.

But in Taiwan, bah tsang are not just a holiday dish. In the olden days, vendors walked through villages with bundles of these leaf-wrapped treats tied to a pole. Taxi drivers sometimes have little fabric replicas of these bah tsang bundles dangling whimsically from their rear-view mirrors.

A few years ago, I interviewed some older Taiwanese American women who are known in the community for their bah tsang folding skills. Here’s the story for Public Radio International. The ingredients are simple–rice, pork, egg, mushroom, and maybe nuts–but making them come together as more than the sum of its parts is not so easy. In my family, we usually bought some from an industrious auntie who ran an assembly line in her kitchen. Now, Asian markets like Ranch 99 have steam tables full of different styles of glutinous rice dumplings every June: sweet ones, with red beans or dates inside, as well as savory ones in Cantonese, Shanghai or Taiwanese style.

But even on the tiny island of Taiwan, there is disagreement about how bah tsang should be made. Is the rice raw or precooked? Is the pork simply marinated or braised? Salted duck egg yolks or a wedge of soy sauce egg? Some of this is a matter of personal taste, but there are two main types which generally fall along the lines of northern or southern styles. My relatives are from Taipei, so I’m making the northern style, with fillings that are already cooked. After all the insides are tied inside the leaves, the bah tsang are steamed. In the south, the fillings are prepped–but raw–and the finished bundles are submerged in water and boiled for a longer time to ensure they are thoroughly cooked.

Over the past few years, I’ve had a chance to make bah tsang with my mom and also with several other Taiwanese Americans, and I’ve picked up some tips to make this very daunting task seem less scary.

Maybe you’re a visual learner, and you’ll want to jump right into watching my video tutorial. If you want the recipe and step-by-step directions, keep scrolling…

Recipe: Northern Taiwanese Bah Tsang

Ingredients

48 dried bamboo leaves (sold in Asian markets, most often in May or June), soaked in water for at least 4 hours or overnight

6 c. glutinous rice, rinsed and soaked in water for 4 hours or overnight

1 very large shallot, peeled and minced (you may need multiple small shallots, to total 1/4 c.)

6 large shiitake mushrooms (soaked, if using dried and then stemmed and cut into quarters)

1 lb. pork belly, cut crosswise into 1/2″ slices

24 dried chestnuts

6 hard-boiled eggs

Pork braising sauce:

2 T. soy sauce

1 T. dark soy sauce

1 T. Xiao shing jiu (Taiwanese rice wine)

1 T. sugar

3 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 t. Five spice powder

Rice seasonings:

3 T. soy sauce

1 T. sesame oil

2 t. white pepper

2 t. salt

1-2 c. water

Kitchen twine, cut into 24 15″ segments, longer if you want to bundle all the tsang together

Directions – Prepping the fillings

Step 1: Pork and eggs

This can be done the day before, so that all the fillings are prepared and ready to go when it’s time for assembly. Combine all the ingredients for the pork braising sauce in a heavy bottomed pot or Dutch oven. Add two cups water and pork. Bring to a boil, skimming off any scum that rises to the top, then reduce heat. Add hard boiled eggs and simmer very low for 1-2 hours, spooning sauce over the pork and turning the eggs gently once in a while, until the pork is tender. It will cook further when the finished bah tsang is steamed. Be careful not to overheat the eggs or they will crack or become rubbery. Let cool and refrigerate, if preparing ahead of time.

Step 2: Soak all the dried things

Put the leaves in a sink full of water or a very large basin or bowl. If the container isn’t big enough for the leaves to lay flat, adjust them once in a while to ensure that all the parts get rehydrated. Pay extra attention to the stem ends, which tend to be tough. Rinse and soak the rice, straining before you move on to the next steps. If you are using dehydrated shiitakes, this is a good time to soak those, as well. These steps can also be done the night before.

Step 3: Par-cook the rice

Heat 3 T. of oil over high heat in a large wok or heavy frying pan. You may need to do this in batches if your wok isn’t big enough. Add the soaked and drained rice, along with seasonings. Keep turning the rice, and add a little extra oil if it sticks to the pan. After the rice starts to look shiny and golden, drizzle in the water, about 1/4 c. at a time, covering the wok, to keep the steam in. Keep adding the water a little at a time. The grains of rice will start to look more opaque and plump, but they will not be overly sticky. When all the water is absorbed, turn off the heat and cover the pan while you assemble the other fillings.

Step 4: Mise en place

Get all the fillings ready and arranged in small bowls near your workspace. Quarter the mushrooms, Cut the eggs into four wedges, remove the pork from the braising liquid, and take the chestnuts out of the packages, cutting them in half if they are too big.

Wrapping

Now, it’s showtime! Layout all your ingredients in the order your will be using them and give yourself a good amount of workspace. Keep a towel handy, because this can be wet and messy work!

Take two rehydrated bamboo leaves and lay them, stem end facing the center, in one horizontal line. The leaves should overlap by 5-6 inches in the center.

Bring the ends of the leaves toward the center, forming a cone in the middle. The part of the leaf away from you (on the other side of the vein that runs lengthwise down the center) should be folded over a little

Place a spoonful of rice in the bottom of the cone, packing it down and towards the back of the cone. Set a piece of in the center, pressing it down into the rice. Place the rest of the ingredients in the center, firmer ones first and then ending with the egg.

Spoon some more rice on top of the fillings, compacting it down.

Then, squeeze the open part into a “V” shape with hand and get ready to fold the top parts of the leaves with the other…

Then, squeeze the open part into a “V” shape with hand and get ready to fold the top parts of the leaves with the other…

Fold one of the leaf ends over the opening, making sure to tuck the loose edges inward, so the rice doesn’t fall out.

Then do the same with the other leaf. If there were any gaps left from the first leaf, try to angle the second leaf to cover those spaces.

Carefully tie a string around the middle, binding any looser areas and tucking the tips of the leaves under the string, if possible.

Repeat 11 more times ;)

Steam for 20 minutes on low pressure in the Instant Pot, followed by natural release, or steam on the stove for 40 minutes. Feel proud of mastering homemade bah tsang. Enjoy!

The post How to Fold Bah Tsang, With a Video Tutorial appeared first on HapaMama.

How much do Taiwanese people love to eat? So much that even a museum dedicated to commemorating the injustices of the island’s forty-year period of martial law includes many exhibits involving food.

This is the White Terror museum, located in New Taipei City. Originally a military training ground, it was turned into the Jing-Mei prison for suspected political dissidents in the 1970s.

In case you aren’t familiar with the term ‘White Terror’–and most people outside of certain political or academic Taiwanese circles haven’t heard of it–the term refers to the forty-year period that the island was under martial law imposed by the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, that fled China when the Communists took control.

While growing up, I only heard hushed bits and pieces about this life in Taiwan, the fear was so pervasive even among immigrants in America. In fact, I think I subconsciously put off writing this post because it felt a little dangerous, and also because I worry that I can’t possibly do it justice.

But I’ll do my best to give a brief explanation of this history: During the White Terror period, which included the time of my parents’ childhoods in Taiwan, uniformed soldiers patrolled the streets. Any activities that might be considered undermining the government could be punishable. Minor infractions, such as speaking the Taiwanese language in public might invoke a fine. More serious allegations, such as reading about Marxism or democracy or talking about Taiwan independence could land a person in a jail like this one. Some people simply disappeared without a trace.

I’ve visited other jails turned into museums, such as Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. But I can’t think of any other historic prison that showed this many examples of how detainees ate (as well as how the washed their clothes and other mundane daily tasks).

There’s a visitor’s center, complete with the telephones separated by bars, where family members can talk briefly with their loved ones. There’s also a small shop, where visitors can buy small gifts for the prisoners, such as soap or fresh fruit.

And there’s also a display showing how wardens would then cut open those edible gifts, fruit or pastries like the box of mooncakes shown above, to make sure there was no proverbial saw hidden in the cake.

We only spent an hour or two at the White Terror museum, but it was a profound experience, more than I can adequately express in this blog post. This visit opened up a lot of emotions for me that I will continue to reflect upon for a long time.

Taiwanese are not known for being emotionally demonstrative. And that’s why I’m so touched by these glimpses into how the prisoners lived and ate and how their family members showed their love.

For learn more about the White Terror, read:

My review of the movie ‘Formosa Betrayed’

Shawna Yang Ryan’s novel Green Island

Read the first two installments from my 2019 visit to Taiwan:

Part I: Eating All the Things

Part II: Getaway to Kenting

Thank you for reading!

The post Taiwan 2019, Part III: Food for Political Prisoners at the White Terror Museum appeared first on HapaMama.

This is the second installment in my series about our trip to Taiwan. Read on to find out how we travelled to Kenting in southern Taiwan to relax by the beach.

This was my third trip to Taiwan in as many years. But during my last two visits, I didn’t have a chance to venture beyond Taipei and its immediate vicinity. With limited vacation time this year, our family wanted to take a beach vacation and we also wanted to visit my motherland. So we thought a good compromise would be to go to Taiwan and schedule a mini-getaway at a beach resort right on the island.

Kenting sits at the southernmost tip of Taiwan, about the same distance from Taipei as Los Angeles is from San Francisco. We took high speed rail, leaving from the Taipei Main train station around 9:30 am. In about two hours, we arrived at the end of the line, Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung. From there, we boarded the hotel’s chartered shuttle bus, although there is also a public bus that runs frequently between Kaohsiung and Kenting. The drive was longer than I expected, another hour and half past farms, local temples with huge statues, and eventually mango orchards and the coastline.

I decided on the Chateau Beach Resort after asking around and researching hotels in the area–some more elegant and many which aren’t as nice as this one. What stood out to me about the Chateau was its location: right on the beach. The hotel also has several pools and restaurants on-site, seemed very family-friendly and is walking distance to the night market.

One day, we also took the hotel shuttle to Kenting National Park, which is a mountainous rainforest with hiking trails, caves, and even monkeys. We were practically the only ones there. Probably because the sky was quite dark and thunderstorms were forecasted. But we had such a short time in Kenting, we decided to take our chances.

I had to use my rudimentary Taiwanese language skills to ask our driver to come back early in case it rained. I don’t have too many pictures from that outing because halfway through, the clouds opened up to a torrential downpour. Luckily, our shuttle driver gave us some plastic ponchos, which helped keep us from getting completely drenched.

Check back next week for the final installment of my updates from Taiwan…

The post Taiwan 2019, Part II: Getaway to Kenting appeared first on HapaMama.

Six years after our last family trip to Taiwan, we made another visit last month. As usual, we flew red-eye, arriving at Taoyuan airport shortly after 5 a.m., Taiwan time. Exhausted and bleary-eyed, we met my dad and uncle at the airport, and they drove us first to Taipei, where we feasted on soy milk, shao bing-you tiao, fan tiao, and many other delicious breakfast items.

Right now, I’m going to whet your appetite by showing you some of the delicious things we ate while on vacation..

For our first dinner, we stopped by Du Hsiao Yueh restaurant near Zhong Xiao East Road in Taipei. This very traditional restaurant comes from Tainan in southern Taiwan. The name Du Hsiao Yueh (or Du Xiao Yue, as the Dongmen branch is romanized with Pin Yin) translates into “slack season” or very literally, something like “the month of small fishing”. This shop is famous for danzai mien, or slack season noodles: a tiny bowl of wheat noodles in broth topped with a blanched bean sprouts, a spoonful of braised pork and a single shrimp. I didn’t take photos of our dinner as we were hangry and jet lagged and devoured everything quickly.

Our trip this time was a little different. After a few days in the city, where we saw some relatives and visited a few landmarks–such as the White Terror Museum (another post about that later)–we headed on the island’s amazing high speed rail for a few days of relaxing by the beach. (I’ll write more about that later.) The photo above of Chinese okra with salted duck egg and salt and pepper chicken was taken at an aboriginal restaurant in Kenting.

This barbecue plate was also advertised as an example of aboriginal cuisine. In addition to cumin-scented shish-kebab and sausage, there’s a grilled sweet potato, a leaf-wrapped millet dumpling, and a shot glass of millet wine.

We capped off our visit by coming back to Taipei for a few days.

To me, one of the most quintessential Taiwanese foods is ba wan. It’s often called either a “meatball”, which is what the Taiwanese name literally translates to, or a “dumpling”, but neither is quite an adequate term.

Ba wan is a palm-sized, super-chewy round of goodness. The outside is a thick, translucent wrapper made of tapioca and/or sweet potato starch. This epitomizes the Taiwanese texture “qq”, that stretchy, bouncy quality that islanders love so much. Inside is a mixture of shredded pork, bamboo shoots, some shiitake mushroom slivers, and maybe some aromatics. The whole thing is served topped with a sweet and savory sauce and a sprinkling of chopped cilantro. Heaven!

Later, we roamed around Ximending, a part of town where young people, including a lot of Japanese and Korean tourists, like to wander around late at night. I was suprised and sort of disappointed to find out that many of the popular restaurants and stalls specialized in foods such as risotto or cheesy baked potatoes (really!). I was happy to find this old chestnut–Ay Chung Flour-Rice Noodles– a more traditional stand serving mi sua in a tangy vinegary broth with a few rings of pork intestines. It’s more delicious than it sounds.

Check back soon… I’ll be posting some highlights from Kenting next!

The post Taiwan 2019, Part I: Eating all the Things appeared first on HapaMama.

What is Agrarianaa? An art show organized by Asian American Women Artists Association featuring art that showcases the contributions of Asian Pacific Americans in Agriculture.

I’m honored to be one of 24 artists, mostly Asian American women, who are part of this exhibit.

My piece is pretty low-key… it’s called ‘Heart’s Delight’, sort of a play on the old nickname ‘ Valley of the Heart’s Delight’. Doesn’t Heart’s Delight sound like a Chinese phrase? Can’t you imagine the characters in gold on a red banner?

My mixed-media collage draws upon snippets of my essays about the magical apricot tree in our backyard when my family first moved to San Jose, memories of fruit picking in Taiwan at my Ah Gong’s farm, and my own recent attempts to grow a lemon tree.

This is my second exhibit with AAWAA. Back in 2011, I had a piece in the Hungry Ghosts show, which you can see here.

The opening reception was packed! I may have an interview in Tsingtao newspaper, I’ll link to it when I find it.

To be honest, it was a little overwhelming. I never know what to do during art shows. Some of the artwork was truly historic and inspiring, such as a piece that honored Japanese Americans who were released from incarceration camps during World War II to work on farms raising crops for soldiers, MalPina Chan’s tribute to her grandfather who was the manager of a pear farm in Locke, California, and an interactive display honoring the Filipinos who organized for farm labor in Delano. I was glad to see a few familiar and inspiring faces, such as Reiko Fujii, who was one of the mentor artists for the Place of her Own program I did last year also had an exhibit. Read about her piece in the San Francisco Chronicle.

AGRARIANAA

SOMArts Cultural Center

934 Brannan Street

San Francisco, CA 94103

open through May 23

Tuesday-Friday 12 noon-7pm

Saturday, 12 noon-5pm

Closing Reception and Reading

May 23, 2019

6pm-9pm

The post See My Art in AGRARIANAA Through May 23 in San Francisco appeared first on HapaMama.

I have been kind of quiet in this space for a while. The other day I went to a burger place I haven’t been to for a while. This particular restaurant used to be my favorite place to get a hamburger. Then they closed down the location closest to me. I happened to be near another branch, so I stopped in. The interior looked worse for wear… chipped paint, signage that hadn’t been updated for a while, kind of a stale scent in the air. It made me very sad, as I had so many fond memories of eating these burgers as treats when my kids were little. And when my burger arrived, it didn’t disappoint. Still had a wonderful charbroiled flavor, nice soft bun, crisp fresh lettuce. They still serve organic milkshakes, although I chose to pass this time (I miss you, Orange Creamsicle!). As I enjoyed my burger, I pondered why this local chain had closed several locations and this remaining one looked like it was struggling. The product was still excellent.

I think this is the reason: so many new burger chains have moved into our area in recent years. Some offer better fries, some advertise that their burgers are superlatively better than the competition, others inspire people to stand around the block.

What am I getting at? To thrive, we need to change and keep moving. Maybe big changes, maybe just minor adjustments. That includes me. I have things brewing that I’ve been working on quietly for a while now, and I’m looking forward to sharing them with you in 2019.

Want more Lunar New Year stories?

Make some homemade dumplings to celebrate the new year, using my easy recipe.

If you have little kids, you might want some tips on how to teach them and their classmates about new year traditions, while avoiding common pitfalls. Check out my suggestions.

Also, here are some chapter books about Chinese New Year and Lunar New Year in other cultures and a book about how the animals of the Chinese zodiac came to be.

Here’s to the new year and trying new things! Happy Year of the Pig!

The post The Year of the Pig and Lessons From a Burger Joint appeared first on HapaMama.

Over the years, I’ve written about the Mixed Match film and the folks working to improve access to bone marrow donors for multiracial patients.

Read on for an update and to find out how you can watch it for free through the end of November.

Animation showing HLA factors, Image Credit: Mixed Match

I had the chance to catch up with Athena Asklipiadis and Jeff Chiba Stearns (One Big Hapa Family) recently, to chat about what’s happened since their documentary Mixed Match was released in 2016. The film has been shown at 30 film festivals and 60 college campuses, and either Athena or Jeff (and sometimes both of them) have been at each event to talk about the production and host a bone marrow donor drive for mixed-race people.

L-R: Athena Asklipiadakis, Krissy Kobata, Jeff Chiba Stearns, Image Credit: Meditating Bunny Studios

Speaking of donors, some good news: Krissy Kobata, one of the main patients profiled in the Mixed Match film finally received a bone marrow transplant last year. While she wasn’t able to find a perfect match, gene therapy technology has advanced so much that doctors were able to give her a transfusion from a donor that matched 9 out of 10 markers.

Meanwhile, Jeff has written a children’s picture book with a mixed-race theme. I hope to tell you more about that soon!

To learn more about Mixed Match and find out how to stream it through November 30, read my whole article at the CAAM website.

The post Mixed Match is Streaming on Xfinity and an Update on Krissy Kobata appeared first on HapaMama.