Spam and Eggs

I love getting up on a Sunday morning to breakfast that awakens my senses. I love the sound of Spam (or more accurately, Great Wall Canned Pork and Ham), sizzling in its own salty, fragrant oil. I love poking through an over-easy egg, its bright, rich yolk gently piercing through. I love the smell of Nissin ramen, its rich broth of MSG, faux beef and sesame oil evaporating into the air and spreading across the room. Most importantly, I love the memory of what spam and egg on ramen brings. It brings the nostalgia of sharing a table with strangers in a Hong Kong teahouse, slurping our own bowls of piping hot noodle soup, never making eye contact with each other, but knowing that we all are joined by a shared experience: a communal, sweat-inducing, cholesterol-raising, and yet incredibly joyful three-and-a-half minute journey through the senses.

These days, I joke about spam and eggs. I joke because it's the weird thing I still hold dearly to from my childhood. But I was reminded the other day, listening to a couple of food entrepreneurs who talked about using food to celebrate culture and heritage. They talked about how sometimes, your food is the last morsel of an immigrant's culture that you get to preserve. Even after you lose your language, your holidays, or your festivals, you'd still cook your food. It's what binds you to your history and the story of your people. That's what spam and eggs are for me.

Spam and eggs tell a story of a people. It tells the story of a people that took food their colonizers didn't want and made it into a delicacy. It tells the story of a people that created traditions out of need - when the Chinese masses couldn't afford fresh meat, they turned to spam. It tells the story of a resilient, creative and resourceful people - my people. My people weren't too proud to reject what their colonizers brought them. They saw an opportunity to take something and make it better. My people weren't ashamed of subsist off canned goods. They had no other choice. Spam and eggs are the manifestation of an identity of a people that grew from a colonized, forgotten majority to the sons and daughters of the freest, most productive economy in the world.

Indeed, every bowl of spam and egg ramen sold at a street corner is an affirmation of our people's unique journey. If we believe that our food defines us, spam and eggs were a protest, a manifesto of who we are and who we're not. Spam and eggs are a declaration that we're not ashamed of our roots. They are an affirmation of the enduring perseverance of our mothers and grandfathers and aunties and uncles - that if spam and eggs were all they got at the end of a hard day's work, they were comforted by a familiar smell. Spam and eggs unite us behind our collective power to define for ourselves what is good and what isn't. And that's what we did - we took what others told us were bad and made them into something beautiful.

So, whenever I make my Sunday morning spam and egg ramen, I'm reminded that my food is a declaration of who I am. I am a Chinese son of a British colony. I am a grandson of a taxi driver and his wife who raised seven children in a two-bedroom flat. I am a friend to many from all over the world who have become part of our people. And when I turn on the television and see my people protesting for their rights, I join them in defending the intersection of identities that made our people who we are, the freedoms that made us resilient, and an unwavering pride in what spam and eggs have come to represent about us.