Jad
Of Care Packages and Backdoors
How Culinary Infrastructure Shapes Foodways of Care
One of the things I love the most about my fieldwork is how my informants, a group of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong, would always make sure to send me home with some of the food they prepared for that day’s gathering. Despite my assurances that I already had enough food at home, they would always insist on packing me enough food to last me the next three days. The food was always delicious Filipino food, I really couldn’t – and didn’t want to – say no. I would tell them that I didn’t bring anything to pack food with, and they would always say, “That’s okay; we have plenty of boxes!” And sure enough, there would always be a lot of microwaveable containers for everyone, not just me, to bring home leftovers from that day.
The humble microwaveable container is central to my discussion here. It is a common sight in Hong Kong, especially to those who have taken food home from a restaurant or bought dinner at one of the city’s many this-this-rice (loeng5 sung3 faan6, 兩餸飯) shops. These plastic containers come in many shapes and sizes, but all of them serve a specific purpose – to be able to safely contain food and be able to withstand being heated (or re-heated, most of the time) in a microwave. While certainly not unique to Hong Kong, the microwaveable container plays a key role in its foodways largely because of its culinary infrastructure. Coined by Jeffrey Pilcher, culinary infrastructure encompasses the essential facilities and technologies that facilitate the movement of food and food-related knowledge[1].
Culinary infrastructure as a concept reminds us that while food choice plays an important role in human diets and food habits, our food choices are ultimately shaped and limited by the larger culinary infrastructure of the society we live in. Hong Kong, for example, is influenced largely by its scarce space. It imports around 90% of its food because it has very little space to grow it. Living areas, and by extension cooking and eating areas, are much smaller compared to other places also because of the same scarcity of space. Most Hong Kong domestic kitchens have to get by with just a one-burner stove or cooker, a small refrigerator, and perhaps a small rice cooker. Hong Kong’s culinary infrastructure and how it affects Hong Kong foodways makes for an interesting paper on its own, but for now I would like to focus on how the same infrastructure affects the ways in which foreign domestic helpers share food with each other, or what I refer to as foodways of care. In this post, I wish to highlight three main effects of culinary infrastructure.
Culinary Infrastructure and Cooking
The most immediate effect of culinary infrastructure on foodways of care is how it limits helpers’ abilities to cook. Some helpers are only allowed to cook if they are cooking meals for their employers; they are prohibited from using their employer’s kitchens for their own consumption. However, those who are fortunate enough to have employers that allow them to cook their own food are also limited by their employers’ kitchens. If all the kitchen has is an induction stove, then all the meals they can make must be prepared using that stove – no baking or grilling, for example. This is why with my informants, some of the dishes that they look forward to during their weekend meals are grilled fish and pork belly cooked in the public barbecue pits, and rice cakes that are made in the oven. Those who are fortunate enough to work in a house with an oven are thus able to make the latter, with the ingredients usually supplemented by other members of the group.
Figure 1. Baked dishes served at a gathering - these could only be made at a bigger kitchen, one with an oven or space for a large steamer.
Figure 2. A photo of a lunch in a picnic in Central Hong Kong taken from fieldwork. Note the use of microwaveable and disposable eating utensils.
Culinary Infrastructure and Food Sharing
Because helpers have very little personal space in their employer’s homes, they prefer to spend their day off with their friends, often hanging out in Hong Kong’s many public parks or occupying some streets, such as the case in Chater Road in Central Hong Kong. These parks and streets lack the necessary infrastructure for meals, with most helpers sitting on the floor on top of picnic mats or flattened cardboard boxes. While toilets can be found near some of these areas, these facilities rarely allow for the cleaning of eating utensils, and thus helpers must resort to utensils that are cheap and disposable, such as paper plates, plastic gloves, and the humble microwaveable container. Vendors of cooked food around the area often provide these utensils for customers; buying a meal set of about HK$30 will give you a cup of rice and one or two viands (packed in plastic bags), a serving of soup (packed in a microwaveable plastic bowl), and a paper plate with some plastic gloves or a plastic spoon and fork. All of these ensure that one will be able to enjoy their meal relatively securely and be able to easily dispose of the waste after they eat.
Culinary Infrastructure and Food Distribution
Helpers working in the same residential building or estate will know each other, often running into each other when running errands like walking dogs, picking up children from school, or going to the market. These helpers eventually form communities of care and support, and one of the primary ways in which they practice care if through the provision of food. Often, when a helper is allowed to cook their own food, they will cook extra servings to share with their fellow helpers in the same building. These helpers often belong to an online messenger group, such as Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger. They will announce to their friends that they have food, and anyone who wants to have some only has to say so. It is in the distribution of this cooked food that the culinary infrastructure once again shapes practices. First, the food has to be packed in secure containers that can easily be reheated – microwaveable containers of aluminum foil. Next, because some employers are a bit stricter regarding having visitors at home, helpers have to come up with creative ways to get food to those who need it. Some of the common practices are to leave the packages at the front door and inform the recipient so they can get it as soon as possible, or to wait for them to go out on errands so they can hand them the package in person. In some buildings, there are service corridors, or “backdoors” as one of my informants calls them, where helpers pass along food until it gets to its intended recipient.
These are just three of the ways in which Hong Kong’s urban culinary infrastructure shapes the foodways of care of foreign domestic helpers. Despite the challenges posed by the limitations of space, technologies, and practices, helpers still manage to find a way to practice care for each other. Aided by digital technologies such as in the case of messaging apps, they are able to navigate the culinary infrastructure and ensure that everyone they care for is able to eat as well as possible, making life as a foreign domestic helper just a little bit more bearable despite its many difficulties.
[1] Pilcher, Jeffrey (2016) Culinary Infrastructure: How Facilities and Technologies Create Value and Meaning around Food. Global Food History. 2:2, 105-131.http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2016.1214896