Theatre review: A Taste of Hong Kong reveals warmth and fears of a censored city
With its anonymous playwright, the Pi Theatre production faces the unease and violence beneath Hong Kong’s bustling surface
Derek Chan in A Taste of Hong Kong. Photo by Javier Sotres
Pi Theatre presents A Taste of Hong Kong with Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre and fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company, at The Cultch’s Vancity Culture Lab to March 15
A TASTE OF HONG KONG is a pretty accurate reflection of this play’s breadth, not just because food tasting plays a role, but because it covers a little bit about a lot: Hong Kong’s bustling cityscape, its uneasy history, the quirks of its transportation system, its food, and the political realities shaping its present. In this Pi Theatre production’s best moments, we see how all of it interconnects.
The show was written by an anonymous playwright, and we learn, if we didn't already know, that in Hong Kong, especially after the 2019 protests, speaking out comes with real consequences. But the play doesn’t start there. It eases us in with humour and warmth, with Derek Chan stepping into the role of Jackie, the anonymous writer’s stand-in.
He cracks jokes, shares memories of growing up and living in Hong Kong, throws in cultural tidbits, and gets us involved in the learning. At one point, he runs a question-and-answer game, handing out White Rabbit and Swiss candies as prizes, but even if you don’t play along, there’s plenty of food to go around—snacks that Jackie connects to childhood, to history, and to a city that keeps changing and pushing back against state crackdowns.
Through it all, Chan keeps the energy up, and the food adds to the immersiveness of the experience without feeling like a gimmick, though it’s worth noting that the show makes a good choice in reducing this element in the second half, when things shift into a sharper, less playful focus.
Jackie still carries the same warmth and enthusiastic presence, but there’s something noticeably heavier behind his recollections. The city he’s been describing is the same city where citizens were and still are at the risk of surveillance, censorship, and governmental suppression, and things that felt like passing details earlier start to land differently.
The play’s design does some heavy lifting here. During the first half, the stage is bright and open, but at some points in the second half, a single spotlight seems to lock Jackie in place. In one of his stories, he describes being on the subway when riot police stormed in, swinging batons at anyone in their way—protesters, commuters, people just trying to get home, with no way out. Behind him, the paper screen projections show a subway map we saw earlier when he was walking us through the city. Now, a red circle marks the exact station where it happened.
Even with all of Jackie's vivid, unfiltered detail, it’s hard to capture both the weight of state repression and the momentum of those pushing back, especially in a one-person show. And after the play’s lighter first half, the shift can feel abrupt. But the realization lingers that this isn’t just a story.
For all its weight, the play never loses its care, and that’s its strength. In the same breath that Jackie denounces his best friend Alex’s fate, he remembers what toppings Alex liked in his congee, or remembers digging through PolyU’s campus kitchens, scraping together a comforting recipe for fellow protesters that we get to taste.
A Taste of Hong Kong feels like an urgent love letter to a city that is being held on to from a distance. It speaks to both the diaspora and those unfamiliar with its history and present. It left me full, but also wanting to know more, which I imagine is exactly what its anonymous writer was going for. 
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