5 Questions with Lin Jie Kong and Jennifer Wong

by Colin Ho

Lin Jie Kong and Jennifer Wong / Supplied

"Chances are if you visit a country town in Australia—you'll find a Chinese restaurant. A place for celebration, relationships, and community. But who are the people who run these restaurants? Where are they from? Why do they choose to do it and most important of all, what’s their favourite dish on the menu?"

Directed by Lin Jie Kong and hosted by Jennifer Wong, the ABC series Chopstick or Fork is a love letter to Chinese restaurants in regional Australia—and the families who keep them running.

Can you tell us a bit about how Chopsticks or Fork came to be, and the process of filming it during the pandemic?

Lin Jie Kong: I first spied Jen in the foyer of the ABC building in Sydney, when I was going out to lunch with a mutual friend of ours, and he said hi to her as we passed and later I asked. Hey, who's this Chinese woman in the ABC foyer? (because we are few and far between).

Then I googled Jen after lunch and sent her an email and I've roped her into being my friend ever since. Over the last few years we’ve collaborated on quite a few successful videos for the ABC and we've always discussed wanting to work together on something longer form.

At the start of 2018, I was on a roadtrip and stopped in Karuah, and ended up having the legit best Chinese meal I've had in years at the Karuah RSL. I called Jen up that night as I rolled my overfilled rotund body back to my motel and expounded on how ridiculously good the food was and wondered how these people ended up in Karuah cooking up Chinese food.

Over the years we bounced ideas off each other about regional Chinese restaurants, at one point in time we thought about making a feature length documentary and I had in my head a Sydney Film Festival entry date to work backwards from (which is a ludicrous yet hilarious idea). But that was a pipe dream.

In late 2019, I was just having a chat with a production executive in an ABC kitchenette and somehow got on the topic of having this idea of profiling regional Chinese Restaurants, and she loved it and said I should definitely pitch it. And now here we are.

Obviously it was due to the support of many crucial people at the ABC who believed in the project and believed in us, having seen us deliver the goods in the past, and they really put the trust in us to make a good show.

Jennifer Wong: I think the part of the origin story that Lin Jie left out is that I didn’t meet Susan and Adam until we were on location at the first restaurant, which was Raymond’s at Malua Bay. We quite quickly went from strangers to four travel buddies on a seemingly endless Chinese food crawl around Australia. To this day, I can’t look at a honey prawn without thinking of Adam and his struggle to decide if he could fit in one more prawn (the answer is always yes).

As for process, you might be interested to read about the type of cameras that Susan used, or the challenges of capturing sound in working kitchens. But the process I’m most proud of and will share with you is that after some trial and error, we figured out how to eat the food we filmed with.

At first, we filmed everything and ate the food cold at the end of the night (it was still incredibly delicious, in the way that cold leftover pizza is its own excellent food group). The hallelujah moment was realising we should eat a little as each came out to be filmed on the lazy Susan. (Incidentally, if you’re looking for the history of the lazy Susan, we’ve got you covered.) So the lesson is, if you’re ever making a food show—or even if you’re not—when you see food, eat it.

Lin Jie Kong: Making a travel food show during a pandemic was stressful. At all times we were working with two contingency plans. So we were doing triple the amount of work. We managed to miss the South Australian lockdown by a matter of days. Had we gone to Darwin after Gawler, we would have ended up in quarantine for two weeks. And then it was an anxious wait for Queensland to open up to New South Wales, so we could shoot our final two episodes.

We were very lucky to have the same cinematographer (Susan Lumsdon) and sound recordist (Adam Toole) for all the shoots and we ended up being this really tight-knit super team slathering ourselves in hand sanitiser every five minutes.Also Jen and I burnt incense and made offerings at all the Chinese temples we visited along the way. This was I think crucial to the success of the production, the only thing we missed was cutting into a roast pig at the start.

You’ve both mentioned that the stories and experiences in the series have resonated with you both personally. Could you tell us more about that?

Jennifer Wong: When we were in Atherton, we filmed at a Chinese temple there that was very Australian—parts of it were made with corrugated iron. The historian pointed out two scuff marks near the altar, and said they had been formed by a woman who prayed there so often and so faithfully that she’d left marks on the floor. Now, this may or may not have been true, but what was true was that Lin Jie and I put a foot each over those marks and bowed together, and for a moment we were connected with who knows how many Chinese workers who had bowed the same way in the 1800s.

There are so many untold stories in Australia, from our past and our present. To be able to tell a handful of stories in the series—which will hopefully resonate with viewers regardless of their background—was a real honour.

Lin Jie Kong: I keenly felt this moment of catharsis on our last shoot at Oriental Palace Restaurant in Hervey Bay. The owner, Gary Bong, had invited friends and family for this huge twentieth Anniversary celebration dinner and we were covering this dinner, and I'm shooting Bcam all the way through and in the middle of the speeches and thank yous I just start bawling, sobbing and my camera is shaking, and I look over and Jen's sobbing.

And we couldn't stop crying. We were sniffling and blowing our noses afterwards and Sue and Adam, our crew, were like what is wrong with you guys? And it was just so hard to explain. Gary, like myself, had an immigrant childhood, and in that moment in the restaurant, seeing how proud his parents were of him, how proud his kids were (everyone was crying!), it felt like wow he's made it. And like a lot of immigrant kids, you feel this pressure to succeed, to make your parents proud, so that their move to a new country and culture was worth it, and there's so much unspoken sacrifice, guilt and intergenerational trauma involved.

My parents ran a fish and chip shop for twenty years and in a way that experience was what propelled me to want to tell these stories. I think it could be said that no one starts running a Chinese restaurant in a country town because it was their life ambition. Sure a lot of people end up falling in love with the service, ritual and community of the restaurant but everyone starts in a position of necessity, usually one of economics. That night in Hervey Bay was a beautiful moment of seeing the community and Gary's family come together, beyond economic necessity, and in my head I hoped likewise that my parents would be proud of me when they watch this series.

What have been some of the greatest surprises and delights of making Chopstick or Fork?

Jennifer Wong: The greatest delight for me is being able to make space for these stories. I’m so pleased we were able to do interviews in Cantonese, so that Raymond from Malua Bay could talk about what it was like to arrive in Australia from Hong Kong in the 70s, and so that Andy and Tina from Atherton could talk about what it’s like to arrive in Australia from China in the 2000s, as a way to think about what it’s like to move somewhere foreign. I’m so pleased we could hear from Whitney and Ernest’s kids in Moree what it’s like to grow up in a Chinese restaurant, as a way to think about how people grow up.

As for a surprise…I didn’t realise hot springs were that hot. Thanks for the lesson, Moree Hot Springs!

Lin Jie Kong: We can safely say that we are now part of six new families around Australia. And that's a pure delight. Everyone was so hospitable during our shoots and we were absolutely stuffed with food and drink at every turn. I was in the middle of my pregnancy during the shoots and now I can't wait to take my son back to every restaurant and say to him hey these people fed you so well and made you such a beautiful chonky boy. It was such a privilege to allow all these people to share their stories, and for most of them they've never had a chance to sit down and reflect on their struggles and achievements and it was a joy to say, your stories matter to us and our audience.

One of the greatest surprises making the show was just how prolific Chinese communities were in Australia's history. In Atherton, at the turn of the twentieth Century there was a community of over thousand, there's still a temple there which was built in 1903. In Darwin at one stage, Chinese outnumbered Whites, five to one.

And it's crazy to think, what if the Chinese farm leases weren't cancelled and given to returned soldiers after world war one? Or if the White Australia Policy didn't come into play, how different would Australia look and feel? One of the craziest stories we heard was how groups of Chinese people walked thousands of kilometres from Darwin to Queensland to circumvent the poll tax in the 1800s. It's such a shame that these stories and stats are often not explored when people talk about Australian history.

What do you hope viewers get out of watching Chopsticks or Fork?

Lin Jie Kong: Our motto for any Wong Kong Production is: Have a laugh, Learn Something, Offer some self-reflection. I hope the viewers have a laugh, learn something about the people and the food in these restaurants and reflect upon their own experiences with the Chinese community in Australia. I also hope the viewers feel an immediate rush to go out to these towns and try these restaurants.

Jennifer Wong: I hope that it leads to some curiosity from viewers. Maybe it will lead them to wonder about the lives, dreams, and aspirations of people who run small businesses in their area or who they meet on their travels through country towns. I hope that viewers will appreciate the diversity of experiences within the six Chinese and Vietnamese families they meet. And I also hope that viewers plan ahead and have some Chinese takeaway on hand when they watch Chopsticks or Fork?, because they’re going to get very hungry.

What have been your favourite dishes of the series - and did you use a chopstick or a fork (or both!) to eat it?

Lin Jie Kong: I will eat anything sweet and sour. And I did eat all the sweet and sour dishes at all the restaurants and they were all fabulous and delicious. I will never say no to sweet and sour sauce. That being said, I think my favourite dish was the sizzling steak at Happy Garden in Parap, Darwin.

The steak was so tender, the sauce was sweet and tangy (what a combo) and it came out on a sizzling plate, which as everyone knows is the best way for any food to come out of a kitchen. I feel like I used chopsticks but I honestly can't remember, I was delirious from the Darwin heat.

One of my top achievements during the shooting of the series was picking up an entire deep fried ice cream using chopsticks. I looked so smug as I achieved chopsticks ascendancy. But alas, my actual pick of food utensil these days is the spoon, I think it's actually the most efficient all-rounder. Especially as I have to shovel food into my mouth as quickly as possible before my baby starts crying. Perhaps the second series will be titled "Chopsticks or Fork? But really a Spoon please."

Jennifer Wong: I couldn’t just pick one favourite dish, so here are my favourites from each restaurant. I used chopsticks for everything except the deep-fried ice-cream, where I used a little teaspoon.

New Bo Wa at Moree—Deep-fried ice-cream with strawberry topping. I haven’t had one since I was a kid, and eating this fried ice-cream will probably be the closest I’ll ever get to experiencing time travel. I was seriously eight years old again.

Raymond’s at Malua Bay—Honey prawns with honey from the nearby town of Mogo. Sweet and crispy on the outside and tasting like the sea on the inside.

Oriental Palace at Hervey Bay—Char kway teow. This Malaysian offering is smoky, sweet, and savoury all at once, and one of my most memorable rice noodle experiences ever.

Pagoda Chinese Restaurant at Atherton—Sweet and sour pork. Andy from Pagoda made this with a pineapple I picked from a farm in Mareeba that morning, and it took the dish to a whole new level of sweetness.

Gawler Palace at Gawler—Crispy steak in plum sauce. It’s fragrant from sesame seeds, sweet from plum sauce, and its light crispiness makes it extremely moreish.

Happy Garden at Darwin—Roast pork laksa. I still think about this dish at least once a day, which is strange because there are so many other dishes I loved at Happy Garden. It’s the fact that the restaurant makes all their own BBQ meats—on top of their already enormous menu—that I love. It’s such a flex. Yeah, we make our own roast duck and char siu and BBQ pork...no biggie.