Yum cha events serve up help to local charities
Carmen Lee has been nominated for a Cultural Preservation Award in the South China Morning Post’s Spirit of Hong Kong Awards.
Did you know if you touch your ear at a waiter at a chalau, or teahouse, you’re indicating you want Pu’er tea? Prefer jasmine tea? Just touch your nose.
“Back in the day, chalaus were particularly bustling and noisy, so people developed ways of communicating non-verbally,” Carmen Lee Ka-man explains. Both her parents were dim sum chefs and the backdrop of her childhood memories is mostly the inside of a dim sum restaurant.
Yum cha, literally meaning “drink tea”, is a distinctively Hong Kong feature. “It’s still a standard greeting to say to each other, ‘Let’s yum cha when we’re free.’” For Lee, it’s not just a culinary culture; she sees the yum cha tradition as an embodiment of the “Lion rock spirit”. “It reminds me of that can-do ethos, as my parents worked hard in the industry to bring me up; and it forges that sense of community, as people bond over sharing dim sum and pouring each other tea.”
In 2014, she published a book, Yum Cha Together, which shares stories of those in the industry, through which she hoped to rekindle that “Lion Rock spirit” in society.
A lawyer by profession, Lee often volunteered advice to social enterprises and NGOs. She realised many of them lacked resources and needed more help and exposure. So Lee and her husband, both long time volunteers, decided to turn the book’s intentions into a whole movement.
They set up the Yum Cha Together event, aiming to connect under-resourced charitable organisations with an audience, while boosting their understanding of the tea-drinking tradition.
Those interested can sign up to visit a particular NGO at its site, where they learn about its background, what it does and who it helps.