\u201cLike food, songs too can speak without words,\u201d writes the Seattle-based author at one point in this offbeat memoir. \u201cA melody stirs a memory as a dish summons nostalgia. Both speak the language of the heart.\u201d This creative book isn\u2019t merely about the author\u2019s love of music, though, but also her love of cooking, and how she found her way back to culinary masterworks that she experienced in childhood (she immigrated from Hong Kong to the United States nearly 50 years ago). She also discovered that her passion for writing, which she\u2019d put aside decades ago, was not a dying dream but an awakening of herself and her talent. This rediscovery of who she was occurred unexpectedly when she witnessed a Macanese singer on a Hong Kong singing competition show called Midlife, Sing & Shine!\u00a0His talent and passion for his art touched the author greatly, she says; she goes on to explain how she came to learn more about the singer, German Ku, and found that his career somewhat paralleled hers, especially in how they both faced adversity, yet never quit. Cheng takes a philosophical perspective on what she sees as the similarities between music, food, and writing, and how this insight led her to delve deeply into Macanese culture and cuisine, creating a kind of homecoming for her. She was inspired to express herself in a cookbook, which she\u2019s crafted in a highly original style in these page. The philosophical interludes do tend to be a bit repetitive at times, but she effectively expresses how she\u2019s \u201ccome to see Macanese cuisine not merely as food but as a language that speaks of resilience and adaptability.\u201d She not only expresses to readers how she found her joy again, but also how, more broadly, \u201cJoy matters.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cLike food, songs too can speak without words,\u201d writes the Seattle-based author at one point in this offbeat memoir. \u201cA melody stirs a memory as a dish summons nostalgia. Both speak the language of the heart.\u201d This creative book isn\u2019t merely about the author\u2019s love of music, though, but also her love of cooking, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6928"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}