the colour of sunshine: pineapple buns 菠萝包

菠萝包

Lately the weather in Shanghai reminds me of when I was fourteen, when I went to high school here, when we used to sit on the grass outside Starbucks after school drinking mango smoothies and watching boys with bad haircuts skateboard across the hot concrete. It always smelled like sweat and damp grass. As May got closer it rained more and more. It was hot, but nothing like the bright shockwave of heat that always came in June. Summer was just within reach, and we were restless.  
 
Certain foods attach themselves to memories. Memories attach themselves to foods. My earliest memories are the ones where I can smell or taste something: two-minute noodles and pink plastic chopsticks, apple juice in green cups, chocolate ice cream covered in sprinkles, buttered toast with the crusts cut off, peeling the thin rice paper off the bottom of warm, fluffy char-siu bao.
 
It’s when I’m sitting on the grass doing my homework after class that the teenage-dream pre-summer smell hits me. It must be something to do with the late afternoon light, the warmth, the terrible humidity that’s making my hair frizzier each day.
 
And since I spend lots of time thinking about food, and since I’m back in Shanghai now after eight years, all the taste-memories come rushing back: crispy dumplings, spring onion and sesame pancakes, Starbucks blueberry muffins (which, I discovered yesterday, still taste the same), cinnamon-coated pretzels, chocolate milk, waffle fries from the cafeteria, peach iced tea, and warm pineapple buns.
 
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I can’t remember my first pineapple bun. I think it must have been when I was around ten. Whenever we travelled to see family in Singapore, Malaysia or Hong Kong, pineapple buns were a daily staple. They were everywhere, not just in every bakery but in every supermarket and café, their bright yellow tops shining happily out of shop windows alongside rows of egg tarts and brittle sesame cookies.
 
Like me, and like most things I love to eat, pineapple buns (boluo bao, 菠萝包) are not fancy. They’re usually the size of a bagel and made of fluffy, sweet dough with a crumbly, sugary, bright yellow coating on top. That’s it. They come from Hong Kong and are listed by the government of Hong Kong as part of the city’s official cultural heritage. You can find them in Chinese bakeries all over the world.
 
The name in Chinese literally means “pineapple bread” but the bun contains no trace of actual pineapples, as far as I can tell. The only link, as my Aunty Bin pointed out to me in a comment on my Instagram post (thanks, Aunty Bin) is that when the yellow topping is decorated in a criss-cross pattern it vaguely resembles a pineapple. But the name is perfect nonetheless, full of sunshine yellow. 
 
In Shanghai, I pass several bakeries on my usual route between the university and the subway station. I usually end up biking home with a paper bag in my basket that has a warm boluobao inside. Even when I eat them in mid-winter—or perhaps especially—they remind me of sun, tropical heat, and family.
 
In Wellington we don’t have any Chinese bakeries (correct me if I’m wrong, and also take me there as soon as I get back) but we do have a decent-ish selection of yum cha restaurants. Here, towards the end of the lunch hour, servers carry around trays of sweet treats (the Wellington yum cha scene still hasn’t graduated to trolleys) including egg tarts, peanut cakes, pink gelatinous rice things, mango pudding, and pineapple buns straight out of the oven (er, microwave).
 
On the brink of collapsing into the familiar meat-and-carb yum cha coma, we usually lower our eyes as the trays approach. “No, we’re finished, thank you,” we mutter. And then one brave person calls out: “Wait—we’ll just take some boluo bao.”
 
Mooncakes, the cakes eaten during the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, are meant to look like little moons. Pineapple buns look like shining suns. The kind served at yum cha restaurants are smaller and brighter yellow, sometimes with rich custard baked into the middle. Even after eating twice your weight in dumplings and spring rolls, you can’t resist the smell: like warm sugar and butter and freshly baked bread all rolled into one. The exact stuff dreams are made of.

I got many strange looks for taking this picture.

For a long time I didn’t actually know what boluobao were called in English.
 
My introduction to Mandarin, Cantonese and Hakka, the three languages my mum and her family can all speak, was through food. The first Mandarin words she taught me when I was little were niunai, milk, and mianbao, bread (I guess because I was a little kid who ate a lot, and still does).
 
Along with boluobao, I grew up with Cantonese dim sum classics such as hagao (steamed shrimp dumplings), shaomai (shrimp and pork dumplings), char siu bao (BBQ pork buns), and luobogao (turnip cake). It was only when I got older and ate dim sum with my friends that I realised I didn’t know the English names. To me, English words don’t quite exist for them. “Steamed shrimp dumpling” could mean any old shrimp dumpling, not the delicately folded spheres with translucent skin that are hagao. Until we moved to China when I was twelve, these were the only scraps of Cantonese and Mandarin that I knew. But I knew them well.
 
It’s with words like these that I’ve always managed to communicate with my grandma, Popo, who doesn’t speak English. Ni chi le ma? Chibao le ma? Have you eaten? Are you full? The last time we visited I asked her how to make one of her simple chicken curries. After dinner the three of us sat round the table: Popo explaining the steps in Hakka, Mum translating into English, me writing everything down. In the background I could hear my Gung Gung watching a Cantonese soap opera, and the tiny clicking sounds of moths and mosquitoes flying at the netted windows. 
 
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The sun is out when I stop by Tsui Wah Restaurant & Bakery on my way home. I didn’t know this place existed until something caught my eye as I walked past one day not long ago: a man coming out of the kitchen carrying an enormous tray of enormous shiny buns, straight from the oven, steam still rising from them, and sliding them one by one into the bakery cabinet. I stopped in my tracks. Since then, I’ve been a regular.
 
Shanghainese people really know how to snack. I consider myself a very experienced snacker, but the truth is I know nothing. Here, entire floors of giant supermarkets are devoted to snacks: crackers, nuts, cakes, cookies, candy, dried fruits, dried meat, dried fish, dried octopus, dried everything. The Chinese bakery is a crucial part of this #snacklife. At all hours of the day it is crammed full of grannies and grandpas piling their trays full of pastries, buns, and several loaves of bread. At first I thought it couldn't possibly be all for them but now I'm not so sure. If so, they're living the dream. 
 
The warm smell of the bakery wafts out into the street. Sugar, yeast, melted butter. Standing in the pineapple-bun queue, I can see right into the kitchen where two bakers wearing white hats roll pieces of dough into fat balls. For the crumbly topping, the most important part, they cut what look like large sheets of golden pastry into squares and lay each square over each bun. They brush them generously with egg for extra shine. I try to get a sneaky photo but one of them sees me, then laughs at me for a full minute. I guess no one’s tried to photograph unbaked pineapple buns before. 

菠萝包 nearly ready for the oven at Tsui Wah Restaurant

If you don’t get your pineapple bun dabao (to-go), it arrives at your table on a plate, cut in half and with an astonishingly thick slice of butter in the middle. Let’s be clear: I’m a firm believer in butter. But there’s a time and a place for it (crumpets, waffles, hot cross buns). “Buttered pineapple bun” may be the cutest nickname in the world, but the fact is: a pineapple bun is beautiful and satisfying enough on its own, best enjoyed while biking home at night or wandering through the streets in the late afternoon. 
 
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Homesickness comes in waves but there are many known cures, even for the biggest ones. Usually it’s the lack of colour here that makes me want to be somewhere else.
 
So I notice things. At the fruit shop where a lady sits carving pineapples out front, I take note of all the colours and try to fill myself up with them. Sunny mangoes, fuschia-pink dragonfruit, blood oranges, watermelons, blush-orange papaya, strawberries so red and soft they look about to burst. I notice when the gutters are full of crushed plum blossoms from last night’s rain. At night I take note of the sky: tonight it is a thick, dark, burning purple. I notice the city lights at night, the way they disperse weirdly in the fog, pink and green clouds eating each other above the buildings. And I read as much as I can. I eat whatever makes me happy. I seek out sunshine. However weak and hazy it might be, it’s there. I feel it.  

When it rains here, it really rains.

5 RMB box of fresh papaya #blessed

There is no better afternoon study snack.