Phoebe Man’s participatory installation “The Taste of Longing: Macau” showed her own food stories and invited audience to draw and write on the food cards to share their food stories. Shown in Macau, the project received a very positive response: with no guided tours and with audiences participating voluntarily, 126 cards were collected. Beautiful pictures and writings are presented on these cards. Many shows thoughtful engagement.
 

One visitor filled out all six cards and exposed some darker sides behind the foods we crave—for example, when talking about Portuguese egg tarts, a visitor wrote that animal husbandry involves the mass culling of male chicks, and that pork chop buns involves the slaughter of intelligent, emotionally complex pigs. Dried peach preserves were considered less problematic and relatively healthy. The work is not the traditional one‑way transmission of messages from artist to viewer and instead invites audiences to become co-creators. The artist used animation to share her food memories and provided colored pens and cards for visitors to participate; visitors could then post their cards in the exhibition. The appearance of the installation was changing throughout the show, and enthusiastic participation encouraged other visitors’ involvement.
 

An interesting finding in this artwork was that many responses were not limited to local foods but expressed homesickness for distant regional dishes—Xinjiang mixed noodles, Chengdu hotpot—making nostalgia visually apparent. This suggests a notable presence of nonlocal labor in Macau. The phenomenon aligns with the fact that more than one third of Macau’s workforce is from Mainland or overseas. Visitors’ expressions of homesickness were often mixed with hopes related to cross‑regional labor, such as earning more money or having successful work. The project briefly functioned like a wish tree: the art space carried everyday people’s spiritual hopes and mutual‑aid wishes, offering migrant workers a place for emotional expression.

The work also revealed the essential link between food and social bonding. Visitors missed roast duck they ate with someone, wonton noodles enjoyed with a son, a grandmother’s fried fish, fish‑maw and chicken‑feet soup from an elder, a mother’s home‑cooked rice, parents’ wonton noodles, and pork chop buns eaten together with family. Food sustained these intimate relationships.

The project highlighted embodied memory and self‑identity: a youth’s pineapple bun, secondary‑school chicken wings, and a long‑time companion milk tea. One visitor said that when he was a child, he dropped dumplings on the ground and was utterly heartbroken; his sister gave him part of hers, which moved him deeply. Eating thus becomes a form of "embodied cognition," with bodily senses closely tied to individual development and identification with particular groups.

Of the 126 audience cards collected, 48 (about 38%) were freehand drawings made by participants rather than using the preprinted coloring cards, showing a high level of autonomy among Macau visitors. Among the preprinted cards, the Portuguese egg tart was the most popular (21 cards). The egg tart appears to be a local favorite and a source of pride—many feel Macau’s egg tarts taste better than those from Portugal, their place of origin.

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The artist, Phoebe Man, produced six Macau food coloring cards, and the interaction went beyond simple coloring-as-therapy: some visitors seemed to be in dialogue with the artist. For example, the artist included a card “African chicken,” and one visitor reported never having tried it but said they would go taste it afterwards. At the venue the artist also used tapes to create a map of Macau; visitors linked their food memories to geographic locations, posting their cards on the map where the shops are—for example, a red‑bean pastry at the Ruins of St. Paul’s and hot milk tea in the San Kio area.

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They also exchanged food knowledge, such as rankings of egg‑tart shops across Macau. African chicken was described as a Macanese dish created by local chefs based on early Portuguese descriptions of African cuisine. Visitors also shared distinctive Macau foods such as cha kue soup and fish‑soup noodles. The tastes people missed were not limited to Macau—responses included Hong Kong wonton noodles, Japanese pudding, and Taiwanese bubble tea—showing the diversity of Macau’s food culture or the diversity of the visitors.

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The project elicited a wide and varied set of Macau food memories, offering another perspective on Macau’s culture.