因為飛紐約要十幾個小時，於是一口氣看了三部關於香港的電影，把之前沒空看的一次性補齊。
無論是《緣路山旮旯》、《飯戲攻心》，還是屬於比較官方宣傳類型的《一樣的天空》，講述的都是同一個主題：家是香港。
因為工作夥伴關係，之前多次去荔枝窩參觀，所以看完電影《緣路山旮旯》，其中有關荔枝窩的片段是我最有感觸的。至於《一樣的天空》，特別提到種族平等問題，在香港，社會對南亞裔人士仍然存在一定偏見，很高興能夠這部影片中有所反映。
《飯戲攻心》因為有子華，所以金句不斷，包括片尾的暗示”走遠一點”，可能也算是對近年來香港人選擇”用腳投票”的移民趨勢的一種認可？當然，無論去哪裡，屋企人在哪裡，哪裡就是屋企。
需要真的看明白這幾套戲還是最好能聽懂粵語，否則很難想像翻譯成普通話，其中的一些文化和背景會有所損失。以前港產片給人印象都是打打殺殺，最出名的包括鄭伊健、陳小春的古惑仔形象，乃至後來劉德華、梁朝偉的《無間道》。最近幾年，大家開始打溫情牌，家成為香港電影的一個新主題。
香港是大家的屋企，大家要繼續齊心支持香港電影！
（以上所提及電影都可在國泰航空航班上觀看）
日本的「中華料理」領軍人物陳建一近日在東京的醫院逝世，終年67歲。陳建一以烹製出符合日本人口味的川菜聞名，特別是「麻婆豆腐」這道招牌菜。在日本，陳建一的名字基本上就是「中華料理」的代名詞，可謂是家喻戶曉。
我也一直喜歡吃「麻婆豆腐」，以前有段時間住在美國，實在忍不住了，都會去中餐店要一份麻婆豆腐配飯，然後就可以開心一整天。麻婆豆腐可以做全素的，也可以放入肉丁，做得好，不僅僅是辣，口感還要麻，所以對辣椒配料等選才很有講究。
據說一百個師傅做「麻婆豆腐」就會有一百多種口味，看似簡單的一碗豆腐實則好像「滑蛋蝦仁」一樣，都是考驗中餐師傅基本功的最佳佐證。
至於「麻婆豆腐」名字的由來，相傳這道菜最初是在同治元年（公元1862年）由當時成都市北郊萬福橋邊一家名為「陳興盛飯舖」的小餐館老闆娘陳劉氏所創。 由於陳劉氏的臉上有麻點，因此當地人都稱她「陳麻婆」，而她發明的燒豆腐就被稱為「陳麻婆豆腐」。
今天午餐在香港外國記者會（The Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong）吃了麻婆豆腐配飯，想起不久又要赴美國生活學習一段日子，我應該會很掛念這裡的麻婆豆腐。
今天吃過，很是滿足。人生啊，知足常樂。
(This is a tribute to my grandpa)
Every Chinese family can tell a fascinating story of contemporary and modern China. So does my family – I mean my roots in Shanghai.
The story about my birth in Shanghai should start with my grandparents, and perhaps their parents too. My grandpa Shao Shude was born in the early days of the young Republic of China. In Chinese characters, his name Shu (樹) literally means tree (or “plant something”, as a verb) and De (德) means virtue. I understand the name comes from an old Chinese saying: It takes ten years to grow a tree; It takes a hundred years to grow (several generations of) people (十年樹木，百年樹人).
For me, my grandpa did his job properly – to grow a few generations of us, my parents and his grandchildren.
The story about my grandpa has to start with the family name Shao, which is the shared name of a humble village in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu close to the city of Shanghai. Few outsiders actually know that my grandpa was adopted by the quite wealthy Shao family in the village right after he was born in a very poor family, of which we don’t even know the name to this day. My great grandpa Shao Jinhai has always been a businessman in my memory. Shortly after he adopted my grandpa, the whole Shao family decided to move to Shanghai for their new life, and they did very well.
In Chinese culture, a name means a lot. My great grandpa Shao Jinhai’s name literally means the “ocean (海) of gold (金)”. I know very little about my ancestors on my mom’s side prior to my great grandpa. But from the name of my grandpa I can guess that the Shao family must have set their life goals for being rich for a long time. My great grandpa turned the family goal into reality and proved himself a successful businessman in Shanghai.
I don’t remember if anyone told me how my great grandpa started to build his business empire in Shanghai, including his core business about the production of matches. Let me remind you what a match is. A match is something you use to start a fire, for example, to light cigarettes. Nowadays few people will think of matches because of technology and innovation, i.e. the invention of lighters. But in the old days, matches were important resources and there were also match boxes people did collect, especially those boxes printed with rare labels.
According to my grandma, at one point my great grandpa’s match business occupied about one fourth of the total market share in Shanghai, making my great grandpa well known as a “King of Matches” (火柴大王). He might not have been as wealthy as top-tier tycoons like Du Yuesheng (杜月笙) and Huang Jinrong (黃金榮), but it was good enough to have a high living standard in Shanghai, widely known as the “Paris of the Orient” in the Republican era.
My great grandpa used to have a very beautiful private house on Yu Yuan Road (愚園路), one of the most elegant streets in Shanghai. The neighborhood alongside the street is full of the elites including Wang Jingwei (汪精衛), a controversial Chinese politician who for many years served as the puppet state head of China under Japanese rule, and ex-Shanghai Mayor during the Kuomintang (國民黨) era, Zhou Fohai (周佛海). Later when my grandpa got married, my great grandpa gifted him a spacious apartment right behind the famous Park Hotel (國際飯店) near the old racecourse, which is now the People’s Park in Shanghai.
Fast forward. When I bought my first property in Shanghai in the early 2000s, I happened to buy on the same classic Yu Yuan Road, not too far from the former residence of my great grandparents. Their residence was unfortunately taken over by the Communist government during the Cultural Revolution, just like many others who were labeled as “Big Capitalists”.
I remember when I told my grandpa about my apartment on Yu Yuan Road. He told me he was happy and that the whole thing felt like a destiny of full cycle for our big family. What we lost in the older generation was regained in our own ways by the younger generation.
Not exactly the same beautiful private house. But it already meant a lot.
For the locals in Shanghai, location does mean a lot of things. Those areas in the city centre including the large former British and French concessions are known as “Upper Shanghai” (上隻角) and the rest are known as “Lower Shanghai” (下隻角). Location indicates your family background, your social status, and perhaps also your destiny - especially in the old times.
Nowadays the locals tend to be more polite and don’t discuss locations openly. But in many local minds, I know people still have strong opinions about Pudong (浦東, the eastern side of the Huangpu River, which is now known as the Pudong New Area of Shanghai) versus Puxi (浦西, the “old town” of Shanghai, on the other side of the Huangpu River).
Born into a rich family, my grandpa didn’t need to worry about life that much from the very start. He was not very interested in my great grandpa’s business, which eventually saved him from trouble during the disastrous Cultural Revolution that completely changed the development path of modern China.
My grandma sometimes joked to me that my grandpa was known in his circle as an “honest playboy”. Being a playboy means he used to attend many balls in those luxurious nightclubs and dance halls, like The Paramount around the corner of Yu Yuan Road. Of course, it was so close to his old residence with the big family. Being “honest” means my grandpa reported everything he did and saw in those dance halls to my grandma, and later he decided to fade out of his “dancing circle” after he got married.
Perhaps on the brighter side, my grandpa was lucky to have a good education during his youth. My great grandpa always encouraged his kids to study hard, as he believed in education that can change one’s destiny and make more fortune.
My grandpa first attended the Franco-Chinese School (中法學堂), established by French missionaries in 1886, which was taken over by the Shanghai government quickly after the end of the Civil War in the early 1950s and renamed the Shanghai Guangming High School (上海光明中學). Guangming means “brightness”, a popular name for buildings, factories, and almost everything in the era of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東).
Perhaps it was just another coincidence that I was accepted by Shanghai Guangming High School – decades after my grandpa’s studies at the Franco-Chinese School – and I had quite bright memories of my schoolhood in Guangming.
After the Franco-Chinese School, my grandpa continued to study at St. John's University, a Christian university in Shanghai founded in 1879 by American missionaries. In the history of contemporary China, St. John’s University is often dubbed by scholars as the “Harvard of China”.
I don’t remember if my grandpa managed to graduate from St. John’s or not. It was an extraordinary time in China. First, the Japanese came, and then the Civil War broke out. I do remember my grandpa told me his father donated money to the National Government of Kuomintang to sponsor the Chinese military to buy planes to fight against the Japanese.
During the Chinese Civil War, my great grandparents were both already much older and they began to plan their retirement, including moving to a safer place like Hong Kong, still under British rule at that time and a popular destination for rich migrants from Shanghai.
Before the Civil War ended in 1949, some of the big Shao family moved to Hong Kong and Taiwan respectively. In the old days of Shanghai, a man was allowed to marry several wives legally, hence my great grandpa had several women, including a nurse-turned “second wife”, who eventually settled down in Hong Kong.
However, my great grandpa himself decided to stay in Shanghai partly due to the large scale of his assets, including properties, factories, and many workers who worked for him for almost their entire lives. So my grandparents, who come from the wing of the “official first wife” of my great grandpa, also decided to stay.
Such a life-changing decision quickly proved to be a big mistake that my grandma has complained about for decades.
When I told my grandparents about the opportunity for me to move to Hong Kong for a job with the British news agency Reuters in 2007, I still remember such a firm, direct, and short answer from both of them: “Go, of course you should go.”
In the early 1950s, the Communist government did show a lot of respect to the capitalists for social and economic stability in Shanghai. My great grandpa was allowed to keep most of his businesses, including the core match business, private and independent. Later the government declared matches should be included as part of “resources for military use” and proposed to form a new joint venture with my great grandpa.
My great grandpa had to accept the so-called peace-making deal, even though his stake of the company was sold to the government at a very cheap price.
The Cultural Revolution changed everything and everyone in China during its horrible ten years. It should be no surprise to anyone that my great grandpa’s business was eventually fully occupied by the government and his whole family, including my grandpa, became “enemies of the people”. The reason? Because they were rich so they were the opposite of the proletariat, i.e. the workers.
To make a living, my grandparents had to find ways to deal with the “Red Guards” who can rush to your home and search for everything again and again without any legal notice or permission. The “Red Guards” were the loyalists of Mao. They were the kings during the Cultural Revolution. My great grandpa, once upon a time known as the “King of Matches” in Shanghai, was suddenly nobody.
My grandma once told me some funny stories of how she managed to hide some assets during those random home searches by the “Red Guards”. One day she decided to hide some money in a big framed portrait of Chairman Mao. “I guess they don’t dare to touch anything that symbolizes Chairman Mao,” she said, jokingly.
How lucky. If she was caught, it could mean the death of my grandma. In those turbulent times, all families in China tried to save their own lives and only care about their own interests. The several generations of the “Cultural Revolution” eventually became the very selfish generations, which to this day I think still have some long term implications on Chinese society.
One of my favorite books about this part of Chinese history is “Life and Death in Shanghai”, an autobiography published in the United States in November 1987 by Nien Cheng. Cheng’s story was far more dramatic, but I know every Chinese family who survived from the decade-long Cultural Revolution can certainly share a lot of similar memories.
After the Cultural Revolution, my grandpa was invited by the government to return to work for the Shanghai Match Factory, which was the result of the merger of three or four private match manufacturers in Shanghai, including the one owned by my great grandpa. Apart from a job offer at the new state-owned enterprise, my grandpa didn’t get anything else for compensation. In fact, no one talked about compensation as if the Cultural Revolution never really happened.
My grandpa accepted the job and then he became an accounting manager at the factory, thanks to some financial knowledge he learned during his time at St. John’s. He worked in more or less the same role until he retired in his early 60s.
The rest of his life – for almost another three decades – was mostly content and fun, together with the big Shao family.I should say his post-retirement life was also quite “delicious” as my grandpa focused more on his hobbies of eating and cooking. In today’s popular language, my grandpa was quite a foodie.
Being a fellow foodie, I definitely inherited his DNA!
My grandpa was a big fan of spicy cuisine. The more spicy, the better for him. His passion for spicy food left a mark on my tastes too. I can add a few spoons of spicy sauce, especially the Chinese Sichuan-style chili sauce, to anything I eat, wonton, noodle, soup, beef, crabs, and almost anything else you can name. My mom is often worried if I add too much spice, which the doctor will warn you about lest you get stomach trouble.
One of the most popular dishes my grandpa cooked for the family was something we call “Eight Treasures in Spicy Sauce” (八寶辣醬) in Shanghai. It’s called “Eight Treasures” for a reason.
Eight is a really lucky number in Chinese culture. A dish with 8 main ingredients? It’s luck in a bowl. This is a common dish for any Shanghai family and different families cook in their own ways. The eight ingredients usually include pork, chicken, or both, and shrimp, mushrooms, bamboo shoots and so on. There is no strict rule on what the eight ingredients must be, as long as you get eight main things as you don’t want to miss the lucky number eight.
For me and my family, my grandpa’s “Eight Treasures” is always the best we can get in Shanghai. It had been a family tradition for many years that the big Shao family get together for reunion dinner on Lunar New Year’s Eve and my grandpa would cook “Eight Treasures” as one of the dishes. In more recent years, the Shao family began to choose to dine out on Lunar New Year’s Eve due to my grandparents’ age. I told my mom I did miss the good old days when the whole big family could sit around the table for dinner at home – usually at the residence of my grandparents – rather than in a hotel or restaurant.
The last time my grandpa cooked “Eight Treasures” for me was in the autumn of 2019 when I made a quick trip to my hometown Shanghai. My parents and I went to see my grandparents and it was a short visit as we didn’t want to bother them too much. However, my grandpa insisted I should stay for at least one hour and then he went to the kitchen to cook the “Eight Treasures”. He knew I liked to eat “dry noodle” mixed with the “Eight Treasures” and that became my quick lunch before we said bye to my grandparents.
One of my regrets is I didn’t get a chance to ask my grandpa to write down his “family secret” recipe for “Eight Treasures” and I don’t think I can have the same taste any more. Or perhaps it’s more about my memory than the taste of food.
Talking of “family secrets”, one of the “open secrets” for the big Shao family is my grandpa’s health situation since he was just a child.
Shortly after my grandpa was adopted, my great grandpa got a doctor to do full checks and the doctor quickly confirmed my grandpa may have some genetic heart problems. I don’t know the details, but I remember once my grandparents jokingly saying some doctors predicted my grandpa would not live long given his heart problem. This had been an open secret for the Shao family for decades while nobody really wanted to talk about it at all.
I still don’t know if my grandpa took his heart problem too seriously or perhaps just let it be. It may have some impact on his personality as my grandma sometimes complained that my grandpa was not an “ambitious man”.
“If your grandpa is a little bit more ambitious, he perhaps could take over more wealth and business from your great grandpa, and perhaps the whole family would have settled down in Hong Kong or Taipei rather than being stuck in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution,” my grandma once said to me in front of my grandpa.
My grandpa laughed. In response, he jokingly said it was all about destiny and God knew how to deal with everyone and everything. Sometimes I wonder if his sort of Confucius approach to life was a result of his heart disease. If so, then it turned out my grandpa did enjoy a very big and open heart for the world and people around him.
When my grandparents knew my decision to move to Hong Kong, the only advice they gave me was “to take better care of myself from now on.” For them I may be like someone who can finally take over the torch from my grandparents and carry it to Hong Kong, a place where they almost decided to move, way before the perfect storm of Cultural Revolution hit all the capitalists on the Mainland.
My grandpa did visit Hong Kong a couple of times, accompanying my great grandpa for some business trips. That was before the end of the Civil War and my great grandpa felt it was important to diversify investments so he decided to move some wealth abroad. Hong Kong, just like nowadays, has always been the first choice for many rich Chinese to consider when it comes to diversifying their investments and wealth.
I once joked with my grandparents if they decided to move to Hong Kong in the early days, then my mom would be born in Hong Kong, and who knew whom my mom would meet and my dad would be, or perhaps I would not have been born into the world. They all laughed when I made such meaningless hypotheses.
Of course, life cannot afford to have so many “ifs”. Life is all about who, when and what happens. Like what my grandpa said, life was all about destiny.
At the age of 91, my grandpa made his life complete and concluded his destiny.
This is the story of my grandpa. I decided to write this because I want his story to be told and remembered. His life may seem like an insignificant one but he did live through all the significant changes of contemporary and modern China, for better or for worse.
Every Chinese family must have a story to tell. This is our story.
Farewell, my grandpa.
(February 28, 2023, Shanghai, China)
The cinematography of ”First Love” on Netflix is really beautiful.
The light, filter, composition, focus, and detail … Everything feels just in the right temperature and pace.
The scenes feel so warm and close. As a big fan of photography and an amateur photographer myself, I admire the way how the drama was shot, and you may say it feels like very “Japanese”. I guess many of us may not be able to well define what being “Japanese” really means.
We often focus on the director and actor/actress of a show. The cinematographer plays an equally important role in a show. A picture is worth a thousand words. To this day you can still see and feel the power of a good picture (or a good movie).
在香港，除了麥當勞、星巴克，以及到處可見的7-11便利店，最常見的還有大大小小的日式拉麵店，分布在港九新界十八區，香港的拉麵店家總數應該以千來計，曾有日本朋友來香港玩，見到香港居然有那麼多拉麵店，感到非常驚訝。
香港人喜歡吃拉麵和大家常愛去日本旅遊有關係。春天去東京看櫻花開，到了冬天則可以組團去北海道滑雪，然後回到香港，大家又開始想念在日本的假期，也自然而然會想起吃一碗日式拉麵。特別是天氣冷的時候，順便再點上一份“唐揚”（也就是日式炸雞）或者煎餃，這一頓應該可以算是心滿意足了。
在香港，據說一些專業食客都有自己心儀的拉麵店，而且大多都非常忠誠，喜歡吃“一蘭”的就堅決不會去“豚王”，喜歡豚骨原汁原味的就肯定不會要豉油味湯底。一碗拉麵，其實也可以講原則。吃拉麵事小，原則是大，我還真的見過有朋友為哪家拉麵店好吃而爭的面紅耳赤，可見不同拉麵店的粉絲效應之大。
說到日式拉麵的歷史和發源，坊間有許多不同版本，但大致上都會指向當年中國與日本之間的文化交流，最早可以追朔到日本的江戶時代，也就是中國的明朝，隨著中日兩國民間交流日漸增強，中國的傳統麵食由廣東帶入日本，後來在日式烏冬的基礎上在發展成拉麵，而日語外來語片假名“ramen”的名稱其實也不難看出是來自中文漢字“拉麵”的發音，日語更直接借用漢字寫成“拉麺”，可見中日之間對於拉麵的傳承和發展的確是有著相當長遠且深厚的緣分。
在香港吃一碗拉麵其實不便宜，動輒百元。有時遇到一些拉麵店推出“當季限量”款拉麵，那價格就更高了。問一些業內人士，為什麼拉麵要賣的這麼貴，業內人士說主要還是因為食材。千萬不要小看湯底，拉麵的精髓都在湯裡面，再加上數個小時的熬制，如果一家拉麵店中午開門營業，那麼拉麵師傅其實一早就開始熬湯了，可見一碗拉麵的材料和時間成本確實不低。
換言之，一碗拉麵好不好，最重要在於湯，其次是麵，叉燒野菜其實都只能算是錦上添花，如果湯不好味道，麵又沒嚼勁，加再多叉燒也無濟於事。
我平時也喜歡吃拉麵，雖然每次遇到體檢，我的醫生都會叫我少吃一些拉麵，因為拉麵代表著高脂肪、高熱量，尤其叉燒、溫泉蛋之類，都是“三高”人士的禁忌。我也曾經笑問醫生，日本人好像都很喜歡吃拉麵，而且幾乎可以天天吃，也沒有見到日本人都很胖呀。醫生說，除了飲食，運動也很重要。
對此我也請教過一些日本朋友，他們說在日本吃拉麵，通常一碗拉麵的份量不會特別大，可能拉麵碗看上去比較大，其實麵就是小小的一團，絕對不會大過你手心。這也是為什麼在日本吃拉麵，如果真的怕吃不飽，很多人會選擇在吃完拉麵後，添加一小碗白米飯，然後把飯放入剩餘的拉麵湯裡，這樣就有點好像“湯泡飯”，順便把湯一飲而盡，沒有一點浪費。在日本，有些拉麵店也會提供加麵的服務，目的也是既為了讓你吃飽，也不必浪費剩餘的湯底。
在日本，吃拉麵可以說是一間再平常不過的事，大街小巷，你總能找到一間拉麵店，有些很小的拉麵店甚至只有吧台，位子都很少，於是大家就站著吃，匆匆忙忙吃完，然後埋單走人。這樣的街坊小店在日本各地都有，通常價廉物美，只要味道好，自然有回頭客。
這種街坊店大多做的都是熟客生意，久而久之，老闆會記得每位熟客的喜好，加不加蛋，麵要硬一點還是軟一點，老闆都能記得一清二楚。與其說是去吃一碗拉麵，更像是是去找老闆敘敘舊，見一位老朋友。
日本拉麵大多都是以豚肉（也就是豬肉）做湯底，而我卻對雞肉情有獨鍾。近年來日本也確實多了不少雞湯拉麵專門店，比如在日本古城京都，我有一家自己特別喜歡的拉麵店叫“美鶴”（見配圖），每次去京都，我都會去他們家吃一碗雞湯拉麵。從這家店聽名字就知道，他們只做雞肉，要吃豚肉拉麵，請去別家。
除了豚肉、雞肉，也有日本拉麵店專門以北海道鮮蝦為特色的，比如在香港已經開有分號的“一幻”就只做蝦湯拉麵，有些人覺得味道鮮美，有些人卻還是會選“一蘭”原汁原味豚骨拉麵。
無論如何，在這個動盪的年代，認真用心做好一件事，而且每天都要做好同一件事，這樣的人和事本來就已經不多了，所以能夠吃到一碗好的拉麵，是一件很幸福的事。
人嘛，還是要知道知足常樂。