Tau Fu Faaaa!
Now that the 30 Day Challenge is over, I realize that I ought to live up to my little tagline up there: storytelling and anecdotes. Because that was actually my original intent. I'm a really wordy person, and I like amassing my memories in a neat, organized way.
Whether anyone will actually read this, that's the true question!
As a Hong Konger, food is a very important deal to me. I already rambled about dumplings ancient days ago. Foodies are usually foodies simply for the joy of eating great food. But as the climactic scene of Ratatouille also indicates, the memories affixed to delicious food can be highly influential. And I have a very specific memory attached to tau fu fa.
When I was really young, I lived on the sixteenth floor of an apartment building in the Mong Kok/Ho Man Tin area, at the top of Waterloo Hill. It was a good place to live - close to school, a park, a playground, a library, and a market. There was also a little convenience store two buildings away that was a real old-school Hong Kong "sze-dor," with rice and seeds in plastic burlap sacks, as well as a chirpy little bird in a metal cage. The titular character of Amelie From Montmartre has a habit of slipping her hand inside open sacks of grain just for the nice feeling of it. I did that all the time at age three, plunging my arms into the long-grained rice all the way up to my elbows.
But this anecdote is not about how nice grain feels, though I’m suddenly also reminded of the big flock of pigeons that would congregate in front of my apartment building and the old man who would toss them green seeds. No, I digress - I want to talk about the Tau Fu Fa guy.
Tau Fu Fa - “tofu flower” - a type of dessert made of, you guessed it, tofu and sweet ginger soup. There’s also another type of sugar, called yellow sugar, that you sprinkle it on top depending on how sweet you wish it to be. It’s incredibly delicious. Now as a young adult, I can only think of one place where I can get a bowl of it nice and cheap, with as much yellow sugar I want to put on top of it (the slightly sketchy Shanghainese place behind the alley of Emmanuel English Church, near Christian Alliance International School). But when I was little, we’d always get it from the Tau Fu Fa guy.
He was an old man who rode around on a bicycle. The back of the bicycle had two huge tubs attached to it, and they would hold the tofu in one, and the water-soup stuff in the other. He also had stacks of plastic bags, Styrofoam containers, a tin of yellow sugar, and little plastic spoons. The man rode all around Kowloon to sell his dessert.
It’d be some time at night, say eight or nine PM, when we’d be sitting at home - all the way up on the 16th floor - when suddenly, you’d hear a low bellow from outside.
“Tau fu faaaa! Tau fu faaaa!”
Run over to the window and peer down at the street-courtyard below. The old man would be standing next to his bicycle, calling out his wares to the buildings around him.
“Tau fu faaaaaa!”
You could clearly see other people peeking through the curtains next to you, and others already out on the street hurrying towards him, clutching their wallets. He’d ladle the stuff into his cups and the people would thank him, before going back up to their waiting families with a slap-slap-slapping of sandals. My father included, he’d return fifteen minutes later with five containers of tau fu fa, so I could help myself to a bowl and pile lots and lots of yellow sugar into it. I loved to watch the orange-golden granules melt into the watery mix, turning the tofu a pale creamy colour instead of its initial bland white. My mother sometimes scolded me for putting so much in that it got so sweet, I didn’t want to finish my bowl.
But tau fu fa is delicious. And I miss the old guy. With the advent of technology, taller buildings, higher prices, and whatnot, I wonder if he still does the same old thing, riding around to bring dessert to the families in Kowloon. If so, I admire his diligence, and wouldn’t mind running down to get some yummy tofu again.
Whether anyone will actually read this, that's the true question!
As a Hong Konger, food is a very important deal to me. I already rambled about dumplings ancient days ago. Foodies are usually foodies simply for the joy of eating great food. But as the climactic scene of Ratatouille also indicates, the memories affixed to delicious food can be highly influential. And I have a very specific memory attached to tau fu fa.
When I was really young, I lived on the sixteenth floor of an apartment building in the Mong Kok/Ho Man Tin area, at the top of Waterloo Hill. It was a good place to live - close to school, a park, a playground, a library, and a market. There was also a little convenience store two buildings away that was a real old-school Hong Kong "sze-dor," with rice and seeds in plastic burlap sacks, as well as a chirpy little bird in a metal cage. The titular character of Amelie From Montmartre has a habit of slipping her hand inside open sacks of grain just for the nice feeling of it. I did that all the time at age three, plunging my arms into the long-grained rice all the way up to my elbows.
But this anecdote is not about how nice grain feels, though I’m suddenly also reminded of the big flock of pigeons that would congregate in front of my apartment building and the old man who would toss them green seeds. No, I digress - I want to talk about the Tau Fu Fa guy.
Tau Fu Fa - “tofu flower” - a type of dessert made of, you guessed it, tofu and sweet ginger soup. There’s also another type of sugar, called yellow sugar, that you sprinkle it on top depending on how sweet you wish it to be. It’s incredibly delicious. Now as a young adult, I can only think of one place where I can get a bowl of it nice and cheap, with as much yellow sugar I want to put on top of it (the slightly sketchy Shanghainese place behind the alley of Emmanuel English Church, near Christian Alliance International School). But when I was little, we’d always get it from the Tau Fu Fa guy.
He was an old man who rode around on a bicycle. The back of the bicycle had two huge tubs attached to it, and they would hold the tofu in one, and the water-soup stuff in the other. He also had stacks of plastic bags, Styrofoam containers, a tin of yellow sugar, and little plastic spoons. The man rode all around Kowloon to sell his dessert.
It’d be some time at night, say eight or nine PM, when we’d be sitting at home - all the way up on the 16th floor - when suddenly, you’d hear a low bellow from outside.
“Tau fu faaaa! Tau fu faaaa!”
Run over to the window and peer down at the street-courtyard below. The old man would be standing next to his bicycle, calling out his wares to the buildings around him.
“Tau fu faaaaaa!”
You could clearly see other people peeking through the curtains next to you, and others already out on the street hurrying towards him, clutching their wallets. He’d ladle the stuff into his cups and the people would thank him, before going back up to their waiting families with a slap-slap-slapping of sandals. My father included, he’d return fifteen minutes later with five containers of tau fu fa, so I could help myself to a bowl and pile lots and lots of yellow sugar into it. I loved to watch the orange-golden granules melt into the watery mix, turning the tofu a pale creamy colour instead of its initial bland white. My mother sometimes scolded me for putting so much in that it got so sweet, I didn’t want to finish my bowl.
But tau fu fa is delicious. And I miss the old guy. With the advent of technology, taller buildings, higher prices, and whatnot, I wonder if he still does the same old thing, riding around to bring dessert to the families in Kowloon. If so, I admire his diligence, and wouldn’t mind running down to get some yummy tofu again.