What is on your Dinner Table

Chatting with Cathy, who was really surprised with the dinner arrangement with Micheal's family who are originally from Taiwan and live in US for decades. Mother would order take-out or pizza as dinner. When they return to Micheal's parent's house, the parents were sitting in front of the TV and said "Dinner is on the table, help yourself". What she found is the cold frozen pizza!!!! Hong Kong origin, this scene chilled her spine and was really confused if the parents were making a joke or something.

My family had a dinner ritual that there must be a least 3 or 4 dishes and a hot soup for dinner. Kids were instructed to set up the table, chopsticks and soup spoons would be laid for each member's usual location on the dinner table. Of course, guests would join our dinner (don't ask me why, but there were always some sort of uncles living with us whether they were just visiting or even stayed for months for work). I needed to help my mom to cook, clean and serve fruits while everyone sat down in front of TV. After moving to Taiwan for ages, my mom didn't have the time or habit to cook the Cantonese soup which requires hours of cooking. But that's very common in average Cantonese families. Everyone would sit on the table, sharing the food together is the official end-of-day. My family has simplified the dinner - comparing to family in Hong Kong. Rice has to be freshly cooked, all ingredients would be purchased from the market on the day (frozen food? Out of question!). That's the reason many Hong Kong housewives busy themselves in the market every morning, thinking what to make for dinner. They can even tell whether the fish is male or female.

Food is so heavily related to Hong Kong/Cantonese culture. The typical way of a Cantonese girl to signal her love and caringness is to say to her boy friend "Would you like to taste the soup I made?". God knows how many hours she spent on the soup. When I explained this to Grace, she was totoally lost.

Taiwanese families are not so pain-stakingly aggressive about dinner - part of the reasons is that most moms work during the day and, I think, the main reason is that Taiwan has not yet developed into the state to appreciate food - think about it, Taiwan was still a agriculture society in the 70s. Hong Kong has long been the hub of business since British government cultivated the humid fish village in mid 19th century.