Contemplations on Tofu Fa

A memory from elementary school: My mother and I walk down a sloped street in Elmhurst, stopping by a laundromat and a take-out place. I don’t remember whether the laundromat is on the left and the restaurant is on the right, or if it’s the other way around. It does not matter. What we are looking for is the alleyway between the two storefronts, where Wong Kwong Hop operates. Without an awning and operating out of the side of a building, it looks like a shady business, but the people in-the-know understand that this is the best place to get fresh soy and rice noodle products to-go. My mother, a woman who grew up fluent in three languages in Myanmar’s Chinatown, is exactly the kind of person who is perpetually in-the-know. I wander behind her as she pulls me into the alleyway, the steam from the soy and rice noodle machines pouring out of the side door like a cloud. A man with an apron nods at my mom as she orders in rapid-fire Cantonese, and he goes inside and returns with two bags filled with goods. I ignore the soy milk and the rice noodles but my eyes light up when I see the two tall containers of tofu fa, packaged with little plastic saucers of ginger syrup. As soon as I got home, I would eagerly shove the tofu fa and syrup in the fridge, anticipating a cold and refreshing dessert the next day.

Tofu fa with ginger syrup  | Wong Kwong Hop machinery (c) Yelp!

Wong Kwong Hop is now a factory-turned-store in a more official capacity, displaying its name with a bright yellow awning. They even have something of a breakfast menu on the weekends, with options to customize your morning rice rolls with eggs, minced meat, and vegetables. (It’s a delicious and lucrative addition, even if the rice rolls only taste good if you eat them within an hour. At $1.50 a roll, what kind of quality did you expect?) Yet the one thing that hasn’t changed after all this time is the tofu fa with ginger syrup.

Those $1.50 rice rolls are made in front of you. (c) Yelp!

It’s hard to explain tofu fa to someone who hasn’t eaten it before. People have Westernized the name to “tofu pudding,” but I dislike that term because of the associations attached to the word “pudding” – tofu fa is not sweet at all by itself and doesn’t have the viscous consistency of a rice or chocolate pudding. To describe it more accurately, tofu fa has the plain taste of regular tofu straight from the box and a texture similar to flan, but even softer. The ginger syrup that comes with it is fragrant without being overpowering, sweet with just a trace of sharp ginger and pandan. You should place warm tofu fa in a bowl and pour ginger syrup over it, then eat it by gently skimming the top layer of it with a Chinese ceramic soup spoon. I say “you should” because I always ate it cold from the refrigerator with a silver spoon, carelessly mashing my tofu fa to distribute the syrup more evenly.

Delicious goodness. (c) Rotinrice

Tofu fa is exactly the kind of dish that I worry about never enjoying again. Unlike my mother, I did not grow up in Chinatown – Cantonese is a dialect foreign to me, unlike Mandarin. I only know Mandarin because my mother put me in Chinese school as a child, but even my Mandarin is fraying – an old hand-me-down with too many holes to patch up, fighting a losing race against time. Every time my mother orders from Wong Kwong Hop in Cantonese, I stand by uncomprehendingly, the language rushing in one ear and out the other. I fear that even if I make the effort to learn these Chinese dialects, it won’t be enough to cross the cultural chasms that separate me from the generations who grew up with Chinese as a natural extension of thought.

It sounds pretty privileged to worry about being cut off from traditional food. It’s not like I’ll starve to death if I never eat tofu fa again, and it’s not like it’s even something I eat very regularly. I could probably manage to order it using English and broken Mandarin and gestures, but that’s not the point. Wong Kwong Hop makes me realize that I will never move through spaces the same way my mother does, armed with languages and people skills that grant her permission to rare culinary treasures and cheaper price tags. It is the quintessential, polarizing experience of my hyphenated identity: Asian-American, American-born Chinese, Chinese-American, Burmese-American. Among my friends, I can be “very Chinese,” but to my parents I’ll always be “too American.” I’m learning to come to terms with that.

I’m going home this weekend. I’ll probably have some avocado toast for breakfast (with salt and pepper, I’m not an animal) and rice with some kind of meat and Chinese vegetables for lunch and dinner. But for dessert, I think I’ll have some tofu fa.

-Monica