Buddha's Delight: Exploring the Changing Significance of a Vegetarian Chinese Dish through Generations
How reckoning with going vegan and losing touch with food from my culture led me to discover the effects of imperialism on Buddhism in Hong Kong
Growing up, there would sometimes be days where the dishes on the table were devoid of meat.
“Why are we not eating meat today?” I would ask my mom.
“It’s Lunar New Year,” she might say. “Today, we shouldn’t kill animals for food.”
Other times it’ll be: “It’s grandpa’s birthday. We’re eating Lo Han Jai with him because it’s good luck to eat vegetarian on your birthday.”
Or, “It’s the first day of the month on the lunar calendar.”
Sometimes even, “It’s the fifteenth day of the month on the lunar calendar.”
Confused, I would shrug my shoulders, but not dwell too long on the topic. Vegetarian or not, the Lo Han Jai that my grandma made on those days was delicious.
Buddha’s Delight
Lo Han Jai, otherwise known as Buddha’s delight, is what we always eat for dinner on those days. It is an assortment of vegetables: firm fried tofu, juicy shiitake mushrooms, chewy wood ear mushrooms, soft baby corn, baby bok choy, thinly sliced carrots and broccoli—all soaked in a savory sauce. Under this mixture are cellophane noodles. They’re not the star of the dish like many other noodle dishes, but interspersed throughout the vegetables: sneaky add-on ingredient that you might not notice until you’re halfway through the dish.
I was always told it was a Buddhist tradition, but that always confused me—we weren’t Buddhist ourselves, and my mom actually used to go to church with her parents. It wasn’t until I went vegan later in life that I remembered this dish I had growing up and started wondering more about why we followed this particular tradition despite not being Buddhist or vegetarian otherwise. It was just tradition, and in our household there wasn’t a huge emphasis on the meaning behind the reasons why we followed it. We weren’t strict about it; we just did it when we remembered and when we could.
The other days of the year, however, were free game.
Drifting from My Family’s Food
Hailing from Hong Kong, my family loved meat-heavy Cantonese-style dishes, like Cha Siu Bao (Barbeque pork buns), Beef Chow Fun, and Hainanese Chicken Rice. And of course, we were regulars at local dim sum places in Brooklyn. Although I grew up in the states, I didn’t feel very separated from my family’s language and culture and food—not when Chinatown was just a half hour-long subway ride away.
But when I went vegan during my freshman year of college, I started to feel a newfound distance from my family and culture. In terms of my health and my activism, I was feeling the best I’ve ever felt. Yet I couldn’t help but feel like a part of me had to be traded in exchange.
Even though there was a lot that I could no longer eat, the one dish that I knew I would still have was Buddha’s delight. Going vegan made me view the dish in a whole new light: it showed me that maybe there could be a balance between the culture I grew up with and my new eating choices.
Nevertheless, I still didn’t know why we followed the tradition.
“The belief is that there shouldn’t be anything killed on Lunar New Year,” my mom explained when I called her about it. “Eating vegetarian helps in accumulating good karma, purifying the body and enhancing longevity. Eating vegetarian on the first day of the lunar month is one thing, but doing the same on Lunar New Year, the first day of the first lunar month, is said to earn you even more good karma, since many other families would be celebrating with meat and seafood. The same goes for birthdays.”
When I asked her why we still followed the tradition despite not being Buddhist, she paused. “I’m not really sure,” she paused. “We just do.”
My family is not the only one to lose the full reasoning behind following the tradition, and there are historical reasons for it.
The Decline of Buddhism in Hong Kong due to Imperialism and the Cold War
In 1841, Hong Kong became a British colony, and with the exception of four years (1941-1945) under Japanese rule, it remained under British rule until 1997, when it was handed back to China. In 1949, China was proclaimed a communist state by Mao Zedong. In the two decades that followed, there was a lot of unrest in the region, which was exacerbated by the Cold War and the battle between capitalist Western powers and communist states.
Hong Kong is a symbolic backdrop to watch this struggle take place: it was under British rule, which was heavily anti-communist, but culturally tied to nearby China, where the Communist Party of China had a successful Communist Revolution.
The effects of this ideological struggle played out in Hong Kong society, and Hong Kong further diverged from China because of Great Britain’s efforts. Wary of Communist influences, the British-run Board of Education of the Education Department allowed Christian churches to expand their involvement in secondary and primary school education, according to a paper by religion and philosopher professor Shun-hing Chan at Hong Kong Baptist University.
It went on to affect more than just education, but other medical and social services as well, like nursing homes, daycare centers, schools for the deaf, and the list goes on. “Due to the constraints of the colonial situation Chinese religious organizations did not have an equal opportunity to take part in such development,” Chan continues.
Buddhism, a religion that had a long history in China (which includes Hong Kong before British rule) felt the effects of these constraints in Hong Kong. For one, the British government did not allocate public holidays for the major feasts in Buddhism, but allowed churches to celebrate their festivals, explains Chan. But the effects are also seen on a wider scale, culturally. As the population increased in Hong Kong, people (many of whom were refugees) increasingly became Christian as they received more welfare from church-backed schools and initiatives. As the generations passed, less and less people followed Buddhism as the generations went on.
This certainly was reflected in my family.
“Your grandma’s older sister, being the oldest, would carry home sacks of flour and other ingredients from school every month, which would help feed the family,” my mother told me. “Her mom, your great-grandmother, followed Buddhist traditions, going to temple, burning incense, and of course followed this food tradition with Lo Han Jai. But your grandmother went to a Catholic school, where she and her sisters got food.”
Even though Buddhism was not passed down to my grandmother, the tradition was. Thus, I am able to enjoy the delicious Lo Han Jai that she makes, even though I have never met the Buddhist family members generations above me from which the tradition came.
Buddha’s Delight as my Starting Point
I was born on the 12th of February, 2002, just any other day—from a Western perspective. But that day had been Lunar New Year, which meant that my birthday on the lunar calendar was also the first day of the month. Birthday, New Year, the start of the month—it all lined up. It was almost like the universe had been sending me a signal.
I’m not Buddhist, and none of my family members are. The significance behind the tradition has been changed throughout the generations, but Lo Han Jai will always be special to me in more ways than one. The relationship that my family has with the dish and the tradition encapsulates the history of the place we are from. It also gives me a starting point for finding more vegetarian Chinese food. I won’t be able to explain the full meaning behind the tradition to my future kids, but I will pass on the tradition and this story.
I’d love to hear from you all! Are there any dishes that have been passed down in your family, and do they reveal anything about your family history?
Leave a comment down below. Thank you!
To further decolonize our minds:
gal-dem | Is being vegan killing my culture?
Harvard Political Review | “Vegan” Shouldn’t Be The Last Word in Sustainability
Media Diversified | Giving up the food of my family: life as a vegan in diaspora
Atmos| Reminder: The Roots Of Veganism Aren’t White
The Stanford Daily | White Veganism
thrillist | The Vegan Race Wars: How the Mainstream Ignores Vegans of Color
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