With Chua Lam’s death on June 25, Hong Kong has lost not just a culinary icon but a storyteller who inspired a generation of Hongkongers to explore the world through food.
As a child of the Asia-Australia diaspora, my first experience of Chua Lam was via television. My mother had rented one of his series on VHS tapes, and I remember sitting down to an episode of him visiting a vineyard in Australia.
While tasting the wine, the vineyard’s owner said: “This is a rare vintage, so we should drink it instead of spitting it into the spittoon.” Chua, however, looked straight at the camera and said to the audience, in Cantonese: “This wine isn’t that great, but we can drink it anyway.”
I was instantly captivated – not only because of Chua’s candour, but also because he said it with confidence. Through that confidence, you felt wisdom in his words.
Born in Singapore in 1941 to a poet father – who later worked at Hong Kong film studio Shaw Brothers – and a school principal mother, Chua was the third of four children. As a child, he lived above a movie theatre, which helped fuel an obsession with cinema.