As Hong Kong’s economic boom faded and manufacturing moved to China, some long-established, family-run companies preserved their traditions as others innovated to survive. In our new series, HKFP documents the craftsmanship and spirit behind the goods that are still proudly “Made in Hong Kong.”

Passing through the winding paths of Lamma Island’s main village of Yung Shue Wan, which translates as Banyan Bay, day-trippers will arrive at a junction and then a small bridge arching over a stream.

There, as they leave the island’s bustling village toward the direction of its serene hills and beaches, is an unmissable tarp-roofed shack selling sweetened silken tofu pudding under the shade of a sprawling banyan tree. 

At weekends and on holidays, dozens of people line up in front of the stand for a bowl of tofu fa, a traditional Chinese dessert made from soya beans.

With cameras at the ready, tourists and vloggers perch over the metal worktop as a small, slender old lady scoops the pudding from a metal pot with a shallow ladle.

She fills a bowl to the brim, layer by layer. Then she picks up a large kettle and drenches the tofu pudding in caramel-coloured sweet ginger syrup.

Grandma Ching, or “Ching Por Por” in Cantonese, runs the dessert stand – officially called “Kin Hing Ah Por Tofu Fa” but also known as “Tofu Garden.”

The shack, fitted with assorted plastic tables and stools as well as a large round mahogany table, has been a fixture on Lamma Island for almost half a century.

Grandma Ching reckons she is 92 years old, but she is not entirely sure. “I don’t know which year I was born,” she told HKFP, speaking in a Cantonese dialect spoken in Lufeng, a town in southeastern Guangdong province, where she hailed from.

Grandma Ching’s story follows the trajectory of many Hongkongers. She was among the waves of migrants who arrived in the city in the 1960s and 1970s – both legally and illegally – fleeing poverty and the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution in mainland China in search of a better life in the British colony.

Before coming to Hong Kong, she – like millions of others – worked and lived in farming communes, where every aspect of life was dictated by the Chinese Communist Party. Grandma Ching received little formal education and remains illiterate today.

“There was work to do, but nothing to eat,” she said, recalling her life in her native village. She grew sweet potatoes on a commune farm, but all produce had to be surrendered, after which nothing was left for the farmers to eat. 

Together with her husband and their son, Grandma Ching – then around 33 – arrived on the shores of Pok Fu Lam in 1966 after an overnight journey in the hold of a fishing boat. They started a new life on Lamma, joining her uncle, who was already living on the island.

On Lamma, she found work as a farmhand, doing odd jobs in a field in almost exactly the same spot as her tofu stand today, just a few hundred metres from the power station. She earned a salary of HK$7 a day.

Grandma Ching said she opened her tofu dessert stand around the time Hong Kong Electric, one of the city’s utility giants, began constructing a power station on Lamma Island. That would have been in 1978, but she can no longer remember the exact year.

At that time, Hong Kong’s urban areas were hungry for more power to fuel the city’s rapid industrialisation.

The construction of the Lamma power station, which brought many workers to the quiet island, along with the island’s growing population, provided a new opportunity to make more money. 

Grandma Ching’s older brother, who also moved to Hong Kong, taught her how to make tofu fa, which means “beancurd flower” in English. The recipe was simple and required only a few cheap ingredients: water, soya beans, cornflour, and gypsum powder – the common name for calcium sulphate.

Soon, she began offering the popular dessert to island workers and residents in need of refreshment, charging a dollar a bowl. For a while, she even took her dessert in buckets to the power station, selling it to workers on their tea breaks. 

“It’s very easy. There’s no secret, no trick,” she said, as if stating the obvious.

“The only thing is to soak the soya beans for long enough. When the weather is warm, I start soaking them at 2am, and when the weather is cold, I start soaking them the night before, at 9pm,” she said.

“Then, around 5 in the morning, I start grinding the beans,” she said. She doesn’t watch the clock or use a thermometer; everything goes by feeling.

The cooking process takes place in the makeshift outdoor kitchen next to Grandma Ching’s house, across the path from the stand.

The soaked soya beans are first ground into a paste by a machine. The paste is passed through a large sheet of cotton fabric hung over a wooden cross suspended from the ceiling.

The extracted raw soya milk is then boiled in a gigantic wok sitting atop a traditional clay stove, formerly fuelled by a wood fire, but now connected to a kerosene burner.

Once boiled, the liquid has to be poured rapidly into a pot, where it mixes with cornflour and gypsum powder. The impact will help gelatinise the mixture, and within a few minutes, the pudding forms. The process takes no more than an hour.

Over five decades, a bowl of tofu pudding went from costing a dollar to HK$18 today, the latest price written directly over the previous “$17” on a signboard by the side of the path.

The giant banyan tree growing over the tarp roof still stands despite several super typhoons in recent years.

Grandma Ching planted the tree herself.

“The tree was this tall when I stuck it into the ground,” Grandma Ching said, gesturing and pointing to her waist. “I didn’t need to water or fertilise it. Now its roots have broken through the cement on the ground.”

Grandma Ching’s tofu fa is popular among tourists looking for an authentic island experience, although reviews of its taste are mixed.

The proprietor said the stand’s heyday is long over. “I used to sell 20 or 30 buckets a day, now only three or four buckets,” she said.

Today, Grandma Ching’s daughter-in-law is in charge of most of the business.

The stand will move for the first time, from under the banyan tree to a spot next to her house – though Grandma Ching does not know exactly when.

Their landlord is taking the land back, she said. Workers were laying a new slab of cement on the ground when HKFP visited.

“I sold as much as I made, that’s all. I’ve got no feelings about it. Just look at my hands,” Grandma Ching said. She showed HKFP her ageing hands, the joints more visibly deformed on the right than on the left, caused by arthritis and years of labour.