On Food family finding LoveChinese Parents Dont Say I Love You LAUNCH

“Chinese Parents Don’t Express Love Verbally” is a poignant and heartfelt memoir exploring themes of affection, cultural roots, and the silent communication conveyed through food. We are thrilled to be the venue for its launch in Edinburgh. Chung’s narrative overflows with warmth, wit, and those cherished, lighthearted instants shared over meals that unite us. Set within the context of a blossoming romance, stolen date nights during the pandemic, and the looming uncertainty of a life split by oceans, Candice contemplates the challenges of migration, loneliness, and connection. How do we restore bonds that have frayed over time? Can cuisine bridge the silence where words are insufficient?

Narrated through amusing personal anecdotes, “Chinese Parents Don’t Express Love Verbally” takes inspiration from food-enthusiast writers, artists, and thinkers such as Nora Ephron, MFK Fisher, Deborah Levy, Roland Barthes, Yiyun Li, Teju Cole, and poet Bhanu Kapil. For Candice Chung, a recently single food journalist, one thought lingers: ‘If only my Cantonese parents weren’t so averse to uttering the word love…’ What is the deepest, most unspeakable thing you’ve longed to tell your parents?

Yet, Candice is resolute in addressing the unspoken. She seeks to decode the messages her family has been conveying all along—not through Cantonese or English, but via the language of food. As she immerses herself in the traditions of family meals and her parents accompany her to eateries she’s reviewing, Candice starts to uncover how years of silence and separation have influenced their dynamic. Through communal dining experiences and gastronomic journeys—from sizzling hotpots to pasta in awkwardly intimate trattorias—they slowly face the unvoiced truths. Together, they explore what it means to express care in a culture where declaring ‘I love you’ isn’t customary.

CANDICE CHUNG is a writer and editor based in Glasgow. Her writing has been featured in publications like The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food, The Australian Gourmet Traveller, Guardian, Gutter, and others. She co-founded Diversity in Food Media Australia, an initiative dedicated to uplifting underrepresented voices in the food industry. Her piece ‘Why Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You’, originally published in The Sydney Morning Herald, amassed over 2 million views.

We are delighted to have the talented writer and editor Katie Goh, author of the upcoming “Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange,” as our event host.