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Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai
Tiny Moons is a collection of essays about food and belonging. Nina Mingya Powles journeys between Wellington, Kota Kinabalu and Shanghai, tracing the constants in her life: eating and cooking, and the dishes that have come to define her. Through childhood snacks, family feasts, Shanghai street food and student dinners, she attempts to find a way back towards her Chinese-Malaysian heritage.
92 pages, Paperback
First published February 27, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 501 reviews
April 16, 2023
books about food...i love combining my passions.
although at this point after finishing this i'm so hungry i could weep, thus destroying pages, which feels like a lose / lose.
this is a lovely little book with lovely little drawings and lovely little descriptions and stories and anecdotes about food in shanghai.
i highly recommend it, as long as you go in with a firm plan and a doordash budget.
bottom line: nice!
although at this point after finishing this i'm so hungry i could weep, thus destroying pages, which feels like a lose / lose.
this is a lovely little book with lovely little drawings and lovely little descriptions and stories and anecdotes about food in shanghai.
i highly recommend it, as long as you go in with a firm plan and a doordash budget.
bottom line: nice!
August 29, 2022
I like books on food. Not just recipe books, but food-writing too. Books on different sorts of food, books on the science of cooking and books that are all about eating. This book is all about eating. It is well-written to the extent that there isn't nothing wrong with the writing, but over the 100 or so pages describing eating Chinese food mostly in Shanghai, not once did I feel I was there.
I didn't get the atmosphere, I didn't have any conception of how Shanghai must be except that students had dorm rooms smaller than prison cells and the food was delicious but unhealthy (meaning fried and not much, if any, fresh vegetables). Apart from soya sauce permeating the book, I couldn't taste the food either.
That's not quite true. I couldn't taste it but it seemed to be an endless litany of noodles and dumplings, dumplings and noodles in soup, not in soup, soup in them all enlived by chives (green part preferred) and soya sauce. Everything fried and greasy or steamed. This may not be because of the author's descriptions although she does say the food she is eating as a student in Shanghai is fried, greasy and unhealthy, but because, I know I'm an outlier here, I don't like Chinese food.
I do like soya sauce, and I love pasta and occasionally have crunched on dry Ramen, soup is ok, dumplings once in a while, stir fry when the mood takes. But Chinese restaurants and takeaway, no never enjoyed them. So this could be me and you could be transported into the delights of every kind of dumpling and savoury porridge, congee, for breakfast instead of coffee and a croissant. You could love the taste of soya sauce on or in everything, and think that yeah, Petra really is an outlier, this food is delicious.
So read the book.
__________
Notes on Reading Tiny Moons does not read like a book, or even essays, as much as blog entries that have been reworked and put together as a book, because the blog was popular and someone (the author? a publisher? a best buddy?) thought it would sell. I don't doubt that the author has writing talent but this book is not doing it justice.
I didn't get the atmosphere, I didn't have any conception of how Shanghai must be except that students had dorm rooms smaller than prison cells and the food was delicious but unhealthy (meaning fried and not much, if any, fresh vegetables). Apart from soya sauce permeating the book, I couldn't taste the food either.
That's not quite true. I couldn't taste it but it seemed to be an endless litany of noodles and dumplings, dumplings and noodles in soup, not in soup, soup in them all enlived by chives (green part preferred) and soya sauce. Everything fried and greasy or steamed. This may not be because of the author's descriptions although she does say the food she is eating as a student in Shanghai is fried, greasy and unhealthy, but because, I know I'm an outlier here, I don't like Chinese food.
I do like soya sauce, and I love pasta and occasionally have crunched on dry Ramen, soup is ok, dumplings once in a while, stir fry when the mood takes. But Chinese restaurants and takeaway, no never enjoyed them. So this could be me and you could be transported into the delights of every kind of dumpling and savoury porridge, congee, for breakfast instead of coffee and a croissant. You could love the taste of soya sauce on or in everything, and think that yeah, Petra really is an outlier, this food is delicious.
So read the book.
__________
Notes on Reading Tiny Moons does not read like a book, or even essays, as much as blog entries that have been reworked and put together as a book, because the blog was popular and someone (the author? a publisher? a best buddy?) thought it would sell. I don't doubt that the author has writing talent but this book is not doing it justice.
May 17, 2025
Poet, essayist and zine-maker Nina Mingya Powles’s book is small but beautifully formed. A fluid, lyrical account of a year studying in Shanghai – where her family once lived – and steeping herself in its rich food culture. Her account unfolds over the seasons, each tied to specific fruits, vegetables and festivals. As she hunts down sources of particular dishes from unusual noodle combinations to special varieties of dumplings her delight’s palpable. At first, food here is about comfort – stirring memories of family, friendships and childhood – but its textures, smells and flavours gradually conjure a series of intricate associations, enabling a highly personal reclamation and celebration of her Chinese-Malaysian heritage. A charming, atmospheric piece enhanced by Emma Da’an Wright’s delicate illustrations – Wright also runs the indie press Emma the publisher behind this.
June 1, 2020
This lovely pamphlet of food-themed essays arose from a blog Powles kept while in Shanghai on a one-year scholarship to learn Mandarin. She’d lived in the city as a teen, attending an international high school, so it was somewhat familiar – yet she struggled with homesickness. From one winter to another, she explores the city’s culinary offerings and muses on the ways in which food is bound up with her memories of people and places.
As a child in a mixed-race household in New Zealand, she only knew food words in her Malaysian Chinese mother’s native languages. “My earliest childhood impressions are ones where I am just about to eat something,” she writes. That something might have been Western or Asian food – they coexist in the book (most delightfully on a long-distance train ride she takes: you can buy noodles and dried chicken feet, but also Oreos and Pringles).
As a student in Shanghai, she has dumplings and soup for lunch almost every day. She could live off of spring onion oil noodles and pineapple buns (named for their cross-hatched top rather than their flavour). Messy foods, greasy foods, comfort foods – “It is tiring to be a woman who loves to eat in a society where hunger is something not to be satisfied but controlled.” She and her classmates know that their time here is limited, and they’re going to make the most of these flavours you can’t find every day.
Two sets of cooking lessons add dishes like sticky rice dumplings and stir-fried aubergines to her repertoire. She learns about the traditional foods associated with Chinese festivals, and about the country’s north/south divides: wheat noodles versus rice and thick-skinned dumplings versus thin ones. Street food and snacks abound, including savoury and sweet buns, filled pancakes, tofu bowls and mooncakes.
This is a book about how food can help you be at home, despite loneliness or a language barrier: “In any city anywhere, if there’s a Chinatown I’ll feel at home,” Powles concludes. I love how she uses the senses – not just taste, but also smell and sight – to recreate important places in her life. A fresh banana fritter eaten at her grandparents’ home in Borneo brings it all back, with the senses mingling synaesthetically: “I taste tropical heat. I can taste the slow hours spent in the back garden beneath the mango tree … I taste the fierce sun on my neck”.
Readalikes: Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China by Fuchsia Dunlop & Two Trees Make a Forest: On Memory, Migration and Taiwan by Jessica J. Lee
Note: Last year Nina Mingya Powles won the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for underrepresented voices in nature writing, earning a publishing contract with Canongate for a nature/travel memoir that will be released in August 2021. I’m looking forward to it already.
My thanks to Emma Dai’an Wright of The Emma Press, a small press based in Birmingham, UK, for the free copy for review. (Emma also illustrated the book!)
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
As a child in a mixed-race household in New Zealand, she only knew food words in her Malaysian Chinese mother’s native languages. “My earliest childhood impressions are ones where I am just about to eat something,” she writes. That something might have been Western or Asian food – they coexist in the book (most delightfully on a long-distance train ride she takes: you can buy noodles and dried chicken feet, but also Oreos and Pringles).
As a student in Shanghai, she has dumplings and soup for lunch almost every day. She could live off of spring onion oil noodles and pineapple buns (named for their cross-hatched top rather than their flavour). Messy foods, greasy foods, comfort foods – “It is tiring to be a woman who loves to eat in a society where hunger is something not to be satisfied but controlled.” She and her classmates know that their time here is limited, and they’re going to make the most of these flavours you can’t find every day.
Two sets of cooking lessons add dishes like sticky rice dumplings and stir-fried aubergines to her repertoire. She learns about the traditional foods associated with Chinese festivals, and about the country’s north/south divides: wheat noodles versus rice and thick-skinned dumplings versus thin ones. Street food and snacks abound, including savoury and sweet buns, filled pancakes, tofu bowls and mooncakes.
This is a book about how food can help you be at home, despite loneliness or a language barrier: “In any city anywhere, if there’s a Chinatown I’ll feel at home,” Powles concludes. I love how she uses the senses – not just taste, but also smell and sight – to recreate important places in her life. A fresh banana fritter eaten at her grandparents’ home in Borneo brings it all back, with the senses mingling synaesthetically: “I taste tropical heat. I can taste the slow hours spent in the back garden beneath the mango tree … I taste the fierce sun on my neck”.
Readalikes: Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China by Fuchsia Dunlop & Two Trees Make a Forest: On Memory, Migration and Taiwan by Jessica J. Lee
Note: Last year Nina Mingya Powles won the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for underrepresented voices in nature writing, earning a publishing contract with Canongate for a nature/travel memoir that will be released in August 2021. I’m looking forward to it already.
My thanks to Emma Dai’an Wright of The Emma Press, a small press based in Birmingham, UK, for the free copy for review. (Emma also illustrated the book!)
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
April 3, 2025
با تصور اینکه نویسنده برای آشنایی با غذاهای چینی به شانگهای سفر میکنه کتاب رو خریدم ولی متاسفانه کتاب اون چیزی نبود که انتظار داشتم نویسنده به واسطه ملیت چینی_مالزیاییش با این غذاها کاملا آشناست!!!
یکی از مشکلات دیگه کتاب که البته مربوط به خودم میشد ناآشنا بودن غذاهایی بود که توصیف میشد من هیچ تصوری از طعم یا حالت اون غذا نداشتم چون حتی مواد اولیه رو هم نمیشناختم!
یکی از مشکلات دیگه کتاب که البته مربوط به خودم میشد ناآشنا بودن غذاهایی بود که توصیف میشد من هیچ تصوری از طعم یا حالت اون غذا نداشتم چون حتی مواد اولیه رو هم نمیشناختم!
May 17, 2025
دومین همخوانی (این بار من زودتر تموم کردم!)
خوندن راجب غذاهایی که کاملاً باهاشون غریبهام تجربهی خیلی جالبی بود و اگر هدفش گشنه کردنم بود موفق شد.
خوندن راجب غذاهایی که کاملاً باهاشون غریبهام تجربهی خیلی جالبی بود و اگر هدفش گشنه کردنم بود موفق شد.
June 11, 2020
A brief but sweet collection of essays centred around the author's time living in Shanghai whilst studying Chinese. This brought back fond memories of my own time spent doing the same in China (albeit in Nanjing and Shenzhen)... and made me really very hungry and homesick for my old city and favourite restaurants and foods!
May 24, 2021
Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai was a beautiful, transportive essay collection about belonging and food. Powles' writing took my breath away over and over again. If you are looking for a book to make you feel like you are somewhere else, I can't recommend Tiny Moons enough.
"What does it mean to taste something and be transported to so many places at once, all of them a piece of home? To be half elsewhere all the time, half-here and not-here."
"What does it mean to taste something and be transported to so many places at once, all of them a piece of home? To be half elsewhere all the time, half-here and not-here."
August 30, 2023
aw this was such a wholesome little book. food memoirs are starting to become one of my new favorite things to read. these collections of essays were filled of memories & family history
June 23, 2025
2.5 ⭐️
یه حس دوگانهای نسبت به این کتاب دارم.
از خوندنش لذت میبردم ولی لذت نمیبردم.
کتاب راجع به غذاهای چینی، فرهنگ و مراسمها و زبان چینی هست.
برای علاقمندان به آسیای شرقی میتونه کتاب زیبایی باشه ولی شاید یه مقدار زیادیه. یعنی مثلا من خیلی کِیف میکردم که خودم رو جای نویسنده میذاشتم که توی بارون بستنی میخورم و توی صف نونوایی برای نونهای آناناسی وایمیسم و غذاهای جدید رو توی رستورانهای مختلف تست میکنم (مخصوصا الان که دوست دارم جای هر کسی باشم جز یه ایرانی) ولی به نظرم این محتوا مناسب کتاب شدن نبود و اگر تبدیل به یه فیلم کوتاه، مستند یا فیلم صامت میشد خیلی قشنگتر بود و بیشتر لذت میبردم.
نمیدونم قدر تونستم منظورم رو برسونم.🤡
یه حس دوگانهای نسبت به این کتاب دارم.
از خوندنش لذت میبردم ولی لذت نمیبردم.
کتاب راجع به غذاهای چینی، فرهنگ و مراسمها و زبان چینی هست.
برای علاقمندان به آسیای شرقی میتونه کتاب زیبایی باشه ولی شاید یه مقدار زیادیه. یعنی مثلا من خیلی کِیف میکردم که خودم رو جای نویسنده میذاشتم که توی بارون بستنی میخورم و توی صف نونوایی برای نونهای آناناسی وایمیسم و غذاهای جدید رو توی رستورانهای مختلف تست میکنم (مخصوصا الان که دوست دارم جای هر کسی باشم جز یه ایرانی) ولی به نظرم این محتوا مناسب کتاب شدن نبود و اگر تبدیل به یه فیلم کوتاه، مستند یا فیلم صامت میشد خیلی قشنگتر بود و بیشتر لذت میبردم.
نمیدونم قدر تونستم منظورم رو برسونم.🤡
November 7, 2020
This book was like a warm hug.
February 25, 2023
yum… so hungry… my favorite subsection was spring onion oil noodles, when NMP describes the downpour of rain as turning shanghai into an “underwater city”—really too magical! also loved the addition of seasonal fruit beneath every section; spring is: “season of soft strawberries, grapes, nashi pears, papaya” and so ofc the best one imo. this small book is essentially one year in the student life, eating like an emperor on a limited budget, i’m seriously jealous…! delicious.
January 28, 2025
esse livro é uma preciosidade! bonito, melancólico e bastante descritivo, a autora vai narrando sua experiência na China junto à mudança das estações e as comidas que conhece (e passa a amar). muito bonito de ler!
March 2, 2022
the summer of 2012 in shanghai was the worst period of my life - to this date. i was in shanghai on exchange to further my mother tongue at fudan university; like powles, i stayed in the foreign students dormitory (even though my family lived in wujiaochang and nanjinglu) with a tiny kitchen that was hardly functional for cooking. the smells from street hawkers selling food wafted up to my window all day long, but i could hardly eat a bite because i had such terrible nausea. i was heavily depressed, alone, sick, and hungry in this city that i call my second home.
in tiny moons, powles evokes one of the most powerful memories anyone can have, the experience of food - each little essay is a perfectly bite-sized piece of memory. i could mentally picture all of the little eateries and the cafeteria booths she frequented, and i could almost taste all the flavours and textures she was describing. the food in shanghai saved me from my loneliness, even if i had no one to share it with. reading tiny moons felt like i had stepped back in time and relived those moments, even if they weren't the happiest, but the food has power to change a bad memory into a good one.
in tiny moons, powles evokes one of the most powerful memories anyone can have, the experience of food - each little essay is a perfectly bite-sized piece of memory. i could mentally picture all of the little eateries and the cafeteria booths she frequented, and i could almost taste all the flavours and textures she was describing. the food in shanghai saved me from my loneliness, even if i had no one to share it with. reading tiny moons felt like i had stepped back in time and relived those moments, even if they weren't the happiest, but the food has power to change a bad memory into a good one.
Read
March 22, 2020Nina is so good at writing about food, this book made me feel lots of emotions but the main thing it made me was hungry
June 18, 2023
A short and sweet call and response to Crying in H Mart!!!
September 26, 2024
I love reading books about food, even if they make me viciously hungry. The book kind of has to do that, though, otherwise what's the point? Would you want to read a book about food with descriptions that DON'T make you drool? Yeah, I didn't think so.
"Tiny Moons" succeeds in all that. The food is lovingly described and it all sounds mouthwatering-ly good (shut up, it's a word, because I said so); the descriptions of Shanghai are just as evocative, and I really liked the look into the author's dual nationality.
The book's one fault, and the reason it's 4 instead of 5 stars, is that it's a bit boring. It's a rewarding experience, but I wasn't scrambling to pick the book back up again when I put it down.
"Tiny Moons" succeeds in all that. The food is lovingly described and it all sounds mouthwatering-ly good (shut up, it's a word, because I said so); the descriptions of Shanghai are just as evocative, and I really liked the look into the author's dual nationality.
The book's one fault, and the reason it's 4 instead of 5 stars, is that it's a bit boring. It's a rewarding experience, but I wasn't scrambling to pick the book back up again when I put it down.
February 6, 2021
I feel like this book was written for me. A girl from Chinese heritage moves to Shanghai for a year and adores the food - I mean this felt like I was reading something straight from my mind.
The tastes, the smells, the sounds - this tiny little book brought it all back to me and had me feeling quite emotional. Someone get me on a flight back to Shanghai ASAP because I haven’t eaten food as delicious since I left. 我要牛肉面！
The tastes, the smells, the sounds - this tiny little book brought it all back to me and had me feeling quite emotional. Someone get me on a flight back to Shanghai ASAP because I haven’t eaten food as delicious since I left. 我要牛肉面！
February 2, 2022
Beautifully written pieces about food, living and eating (alone) in a big city, family and heritage. Perfect.
September 14, 2025
All the class and sophistication of a literary biography with mouthwatering and evocative descriptions of food. Steeped in nostalgia for childhood comforts and an appreciation for seasonal eating, this book made me CRAVE a steaming bowl of wonton noodle soup this yummy cold and rainy September.
December 6, 2025
This was lovely and made me want to cook Chinese food. It is short, though, so if you like the writing, read Powles’ Small Bodies of Water as well.
January 23, 2022
this was a short read but i took so much out of it. as an asian person who grew up eating predominantly chinese food, i’d always fantasise and romanticise every bite i’d have of this cuisine. reading tiny moons instantly brought to the surface all of these feelings.
the book displayed the power taste can have on relationships, and on memory. it importantly discussed the history of the food, showed a glimpse of the language while emphasising its beauty, but most crucially, it made my tummy rumble.
the book displayed the power taste can have on relationships, and on memory. it importantly discussed the history of the food, showed a glimpse of the language while emphasising its beauty, but most crucially, it made my tummy rumble.
June 7, 2025
Made me tear up and immediately try to call my Popo— so a wildly subjective 5 stars. Maybe a 4 star read for anyone who’s not specifically also a half white and half Chinese ~woman~ who feels that food is the strongest tie to a heritage that sometimes feels like it’s slipping away.
September 17, 2023
A beautifully written work that transports you to the smells and tastes of Shanghai. Powles captures the power that food holds over our memories as she eats her way through a year of study in Shanghai. From dining alone in her local hole-in-the-wall eateries, to sharing in cooking classes with friends, Powles’ journey into nostalgia and identity through food is a cultural awakening or, rather, reaffirming.
My only criticism is that this menu made me constantly hungry and it had a side of repetitive imagery. But I could still taste every word. This book is like a warm hug filled with the comfort and love you get when devouring a meal made by someone with such care and heart.
My only criticism is that this menu made me constantly hungry and it had a side of repetitive imagery. But I could still taste every word. This book is like a warm hug filled with the comfort and love you get when devouring a meal made by someone with such care and heart.
November 16, 2024
3,8
richtig schönii, ich vermisse jetzt meine Mama und das Essen zu Hause
richtig schönii, ich vermisse jetzt meine Mama und das Essen zu Hause
June 9, 2023
what a special book! i was trying hard to savor this because it’s so so meaningful to me and continues to solidly my thoughts about food as a medium. i’m in this huge phase where i’m so obsessed with food/cuisine (both because it tastes good -obviously- and also because it connects us with our ancestral heritage and the people we’re sharing it with) also obsessed with the idea of categorizing food by the time of the year and the different themes that come up during each season. read this at the perfect time, especially because i’m abroad alone and relate very hard!!!!
January 15, 2025
Read this years ago but I still remember how much this book resonated with me. Although we spent our university study abroad programmes in two different cities, her in Shanghai and me in Beijing, there were still so many similarities in our experiences. She writes about the great food, travel and stimulating city life she found in Shanghai but also her language barrier struggles, issues with body image and isolation in such a huge place, and does so incredibly evocatively.
Once during a uni break when everyone goes home for the holidays she spends two weeks not talking to anyone apart from the cook at a restaurant and I almost wanted to scream saying "ME TOO!!"
Once during a uni break when everyone goes home for the holidays she spends two weeks not talking to anyone apart from the cook at a restaurant and I almost wanted to scream saying "ME TOO!!"
Want to read
March 31, 2021why I want to read it: gkreads spoke about it in her haul and also I've lived in Shanghai! So I want to see what's different.
September 27, 2021
I adored Nina Mingya Powles' first full-length work of memoir, Bodies of Water, when I read it in the summer of 2021. Afterwards I was, of course, very keen to read her small, and previously published book, Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai, and my library very kindly purchased a copy on my behalf. Published by The Emma Press, the physical book is a vibrant thing of beauty, and features several illustrations by Emma Dai'an Wright, The Emma Press' founder.
Tiny Moons is a 'collection of essays about food and belonging', and it encompasses many of the expanded themes which can be found in Bodies of Water. Here, Powles moves between China, Malaysia, and New Zealand, all three countries in which she grew up. On this journey, she was particularly interested in tracing 'the constants in her life: eating and cooking, and the dishes that have come to define her', in order to try and 'find a way back towards her Chinese-Malaysian heritage.'
In Tiny Moons, Powles has focused on the city of Shanghai, as the title reveals. She moved there from New Zealand with her parents when she was twelve, and attended an international school on the outskirts of the city. In her early adulthood, she returns to take up a Chinese government scholarship to study Mandarin for a year. Here, as she reacquaints herself with a city which has changed so much, food becomes a real comfort. It allows her to ward off homesickness and loneliness, however briefly: 'I order my noodles and eat them in peace and, for a little while, I feel less like an outsider.'
Powles reveals throughout how removed she has often felt from the Chinese part of her culture. In her introduction to the volume, entitled 'Hungry Girls', Powles writes: 'But there came a time, when I was about five, when I started to hate my weekend Chinese classes... None of the other kids looked like me. None of their dads looked like mine. The languages and dialects they spoke with their parents sounded familiar to me, and I recognised a few words, but I wasn't able to join in... Eventually my mother stopped using Chinese at home, so maybe I just stopped listening. Words vanished, along with the sounds.' She goes on to demonstrate that preparing food and eating gave her part of this connection back: 'I starved myself of language, but I couldn't starve myself of other things. Wonton noodle soup, Cantonese roast duck, my mother's crispy egg noodles and her special congee.'
Powles also explores her place within the world, and the wider context of what it means to be a woman. She writes: 'It is tiring to be a woman who loves to eat in a society where hunger is something not to be satisfied but controlled. Where a long history of female hunger is associated with shame and madness... To enjoy food as a young woman, to opt out every day from the guilt expected of me, in a radical act, of love.' Bound up with this is the way in which food, and the act of eating, makes her feel. In a dumpling shop in Shanghai, she tells us: 'I take a bite and my worries melt away. I'm here and also far away from home, in one bite.'
I really admire the way in which Powles speaks about her own identity. She writes: 'Sometimes I feel like I have no right to claim any part of my Asian-ness, given that I mostly look and sound white. Living and travelling through Asia as a half-Asian woman means moving between different versions of myself: Western tourist, foreign student, writer, language learner, a person trying to understand more about her heritage. I now know there are many different ways of travelling through the world. Some of us are more prone than others to leaving bits of ourselves behind.'
Tiny Moons has been split into five sections - 'Winter', 'Spring', 'Summer', 'Autumn', and 'Winter Again'. Each separate, short piece within each chapter is titled with the name of a specific food item, from 'Pineapple Buns', to 'Chinese Aubergines'. The structure works incredibly well, and I appreciated the glossary which has been included, allowing one to compare the Chinese characters and Chinese and Mandarin translations of particular foods.
I had a feeling that I would love Tiny Moons, and I did. It encompasses just 86 pages, but each reveals so much, and has a great deal to share. Despite its brevity, Tiny Moons goes rather deeper than merely a 'food diary', as it is called on the back cover; it is rich, and culturally fascinating. Powles is an excellent writer, and I was struck throughout by the sensuality and opulence of her highly evocative prose. So much of her writing here resonated with me, and this is a volume which I will definitely be purchasing in future, and treasuring each time I reread it. Tiny Moons is a tiny work of art, one to really savour.
Tiny Moons is a 'collection of essays about food and belonging', and it encompasses many of the expanded themes which can be found in Bodies of Water. Here, Powles moves between China, Malaysia, and New Zealand, all three countries in which she grew up. On this journey, she was particularly interested in tracing 'the constants in her life: eating and cooking, and the dishes that have come to define her', in order to try and 'find a way back towards her Chinese-Malaysian heritage.'
In Tiny Moons, Powles has focused on the city of Shanghai, as the title reveals. She moved there from New Zealand with her parents when she was twelve, and attended an international school on the outskirts of the city. In her early adulthood, she returns to take up a Chinese government scholarship to study Mandarin for a year. Here, as she reacquaints herself with a city which has changed so much, food becomes a real comfort. It allows her to ward off homesickness and loneliness, however briefly: 'I order my noodles and eat them in peace and, for a little while, I feel less like an outsider.'
Powles reveals throughout how removed she has often felt from the Chinese part of her culture. In her introduction to the volume, entitled 'Hungry Girls', Powles writes: 'But there came a time, when I was about five, when I started to hate my weekend Chinese classes... None of the other kids looked like me. None of their dads looked like mine. The languages and dialects they spoke with their parents sounded familiar to me, and I recognised a few words, but I wasn't able to join in... Eventually my mother stopped using Chinese at home, so maybe I just stopped listening. Words vanished, along with the sounds.' She goes on to demonstrate that preparing food and eating gave her part of this connection back: 'I starved myself of language, but I couldn't starve myself of other things. Wonton noodle soup, Cantonese roast duck, my mother's crispy egg noodles and her special congee.'
Powles also explores her place within the world, and the wider context of what it means to be a woman. She writes: 'It is tiring to be a woman who loves to eat in a society where hunger is something not to be satisfied but controlled. Where a long history of female hunger is associated with shame and madness... To enjoy food as a young woman, to opt out every day from the guilt expected of me, in a radical act, of love.' Bound up with this is the way in which food, and the act of eating, makes her feel. In a dumpling shop in Shanghai, she tells us: 'I take a bite and my worries melt away. I'm here and also far away from home, in one bite.'
I really admire the way in which Powles speaks about her own identity. She writes: 'Sometimes I feel like I have no right to claim any part of my Asian-ness, given that I mostly look and sound white. Living and travelling through Asia as a half-Asian woman means moving between different versions of myself: Western tourist, foreign student, writer, language learner, a person trying to understand more about her heritage. I now know there are many different ways of travelling through the world. Some of us are more prone than others to leaving bits of ourselves behind.'
Tiny Moons has been split into five sections - 'Winter', 'Spring', 'Summer', 'Autumn', and 'Winter Again'. Each separate, short piece within each chapter is titled with the name of a specific food item, from 'Pineapple Buns', to 'Chinese Aubergines'. The structure works incredibly well, and I appreciated the glossary which has been included, allowing one to compare the Chinese characters and Chinese and Mandarin translations of particular foods.
I had a feeling that I would love Tiny Moons, and I did. It encompasses just 86 pages, but each reveals so much, and has a great deal to share. Despite its brevity, Tiny Moons goes rather deeper than merely a 'food diary', as it is called on the back cover; it is rich, and culturally fascinating. Powles is an excellent writer, and I was struck throughout by the sensuality and opulence of her highly evocative prose. So much of her writing here resonated with me, and this is a volume which I will definitely be purchasing in future, and treasuring each time I reread it. Tiny Moons is a tiny work of art, one to really savour.
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