The fine art of moving on

There were two reasons for inviting Alice Piccus to the Ning Po Residents' Association for lunch. One was that Ms Piccus - former head of Christie's Hong Kong, art collector and consultant - and her husband Bob are leaving Hong Kong after 30 years. The second was selfish: last time we ate there - a favourite Central restaurant for both of us - she wrote down the best dishes in Chinese. When I lost my diary a few months ago this was one of the saddest losses.

Ms Piccus is from Ningpo (or Ningbo), a port city near Shanghai, although she has never been there. 'My family left three generations ago - but there's a saying that you can take the Ningponese out of Ningpo but you can't take Ningpo out of the Ningponese.' There is another saying that Shanghainese would rather have an argument with people from Suzhou - because their dialect, like their food, is so sweet - than speak romantically with Ningponese, because they sound so harsh. 'We spoke Ningponese behind closed doors; outside we spoke Shanghainese and at school it was Mandarin,' she said of growing up in Shanghai before the Revolution.

Soon English and Cantonese were added to the mix when Ms Piccus' father L Z Yuan was invited to become editor of the Hong Kong Standard when it launched in early 1949.

The restaurant's menu has a mix of Shanghainese and Ningponese, and our dishes - enough for four people, we realised - reflected the range.

Tiny prawns came with lightly fried seaweed ($130) - a sea candyfloss which apparently is very hard to get right without becoming a burned mess. We chose pak choi with gingko nuts ($100) because the gingko was healthy. 'I forget what it's actually good for,' Ms Piccus said. 'Perhaps for the memory.' The plump xiao long bao dumplings ($40) lived up to their reputation and squirted soup all over the table ('dry-cleaners' dumplings,' Ms Piccus noted) while the Wuxi pork spare ribs ($70) were sweet, meaty and almost boneless.

'I remember when I was a child and my grandfather took us to Wuxi. We went by train and then the hotel was a boat on the huge lake, with another boat as the kitchen. It was an odd holiday - they were afraid of pirates so we had guards.' A speciality is chopped spinach with dry beancurd ($60), which looked like tiny emerald jewels; another is beancurd with 1,000-year-old eggs ($60) which are marinated raw in limestone. 'They probably contain lead, so you shouldn't eat them too often.' It is strange to leave Hong Kong after so long, Ms Piccus commented. Some people thought they were going because life was no longer so easy. 'But it's not because Hong Kong is no good any more. I think there are still good days to come.

'My parents live in California and they're getting old. I want to spend some time with them,' she said.