Fancy a helping of Steamed Buns with Onion? It’s not the latest in haute fusion cuisine but the titles of two Chinese pop songs currently simmering on the charts.
Steamed Buns is by Hong Kong indie singer-songwriter Chet Lam and is taken off his Three Kinds Of Happiness EP (2008). The retro-sounding piano ballad is paired with a music video filmed in black-and-white in an homage to silent slapstick movies.
Onion is sung by Aska Yang, the white-hot Taiwanese singer, from his album Dove (2008). In the music video, Yang is shown wrapped up in layers of white cloth like a mummy.
The title of the song, Yang Cong, is also a pun on his Chinese name Yang Zongwei and also because he’s been said to make listeners cry with his emotive singing.
Food and song though are no strangers to each other. Back in 1957, Zhang Zhongwen was singing about Char Siew Buns, from the film Sisters Three.
More recently, Lam has crooned about instant noodles, Faye Wong has rhapsodised about red beans and David Tao has waxed lyrical over kungpao chicken.
Rich pickings indeed for a thesis on food imagery in Chinese pop culture. Just hold the MSG.

Lyrical Food For Thought
Choice picks: Yang Cong (Onion)
“The onions at the bottom of the plate are like me
Forever a seasoning”
“If you are willing, layer by layer by layer, to peel apart my heart
Your nose will crinkle, you will tear”

Taste test: Songwriter Ashin from Mayday uses the metaphor of an onion to express feelings of inadequacy and inferiority as the humble vegetable is often ignored or taken for granted - always the garnish, never the main dish.
He takes it one step further by conflating the physical reaction one gets from peeling an onion to the tearful emotional response of getting to the core of the truth when the layers of defence have been peeled away.


Choice picks: Man Tou (Steamed Buns)
“I am your steamed bun, often by your side
The most considerate romanticism, the most earnest gentleness”
“The purest steamed buns have always agreed with you
They have tasted the sour, sweet, bitter and spicy times with you
And won’t let you grow thin”

Taste test: The plain steamed bun represents simple, fulfilling happiness to Chet Lam. It may not be the most exotic or exciting dish, but it is reliable comfort food.
The steamed bun can also be read as a metaphor for Lam himself. He may be a modest looker but his earnest, endearing charms as a singer-songwriter will outlast the flash and sizzle of here-today gone-tomorrow boybands.
(ST)