Keyrings and Coasters

Every time in Hong Kong, I would feel an excitement when reading old menus and posters. Phrases like 撚手時菜 or 邊爐共飲 or 別饒風味 are both familiar and strangely foreign to me. They have a special aesthetic that‘s quite hard to define, different from the Chinese I grew up speaking and using, not that grand and top-down, short but accurate, more humanistic and elegant.

I felt the same or even more excitement the first time I visited the old ESEACC . On the notices, playing mahjong wasn’t written as 打麻将 but 麻雀耍樂. A singing club wasn’t 歌唱团 but 歌詠會. So when I was trying to design something for the lunch club, I went into the rabbit holes of those menus, signs, slogans in 1970s/1980s Hong Kong, and that’s when I met the phrase “三餸一湯白飯任裝 (Three dishes with one soup, rice for free)”.

It might be the best phrase to describe what the lunch club is doing, elegantly and accurately.