We can never borrow each other’s mouths. I will never know what it means to taste the way you do, nor you me. Then again, perhaps if we could try that, we would no longer be the sufficiently the same people we originally were to make the new observation meaningful... Anyway, that imperfect empathy is part of the tragedy of writing and reading about food and drink. I also often wonder if my speculations on taste may be even less meaningful to someone who has a Y chromosome. In Classical legend, there...

The tea was oolong, with just a hint of Formosa-perfume-tanginess. Or was it a hint of detergent? Anyway, this was a nice restaurant, too nice for pouring spilt water onto the floor.  This was a rare lunch with my teenage daughter, waiting for dumplings to arrive, cheekily spying on her friends’ QQ Music playlists. To her cup I poured expertly. Now, trying to fill mine, arms slightly retracted, I… over-tilted… liquid seeping from the teapot’s lid. It wasn’t a big puddle, so I swept it off the table edge, hoping to...

You don’t need to come to Asia to encounter bamboo; it’s there on the steering wheel of the E-Type Jaguar, on umbrella handles, there on that corporal punishment device once kept behind teachers’ desks. Even edible bamboo was a concept familiar to me before I arrived here; bamboo shoots in tins were part of my English mother’s cooking in the 1980s. But, as with many things we already know about China, we’re not prepared for the abundance or the variety. The bamboo shoots that appear in Chinese dishes in the real...

I love games consoles. I own more than I care to admit. But (Marie Kondo, since you’re asking) every one of them sparks joy. The console is a well-named invention, providing solace that sometimes even tea can’t provide. I’m not the only one; retro gaming is as much of a draw for my generation as steam trains for my father’s. An industry surrounds console nostalgia, with restorations, re-releases, emulation and excavation. But in focusing so much on the games console, the home experience of games, the nostalgia is neglecting another great...