One Moon: “Have You Eaten Yet?”

"Have you Eaten Yet?"

COLUMN | ISSUE SEVEN | MATARIKI

Written by y Priscilla Zhang (she/her) | @p.zhangxy | Columnist

Illustrations by Sophia He (she/her) | @meoskyan.art | Graphic Designer

Every time my mother calls from China, she asks the same question within the first two minutes:

“Have you eaten yet?”

For many Chinese people, this question carries a weight that has very little to do with hunger.

Conversations happen around dining tables. Friendships begin over shared meals. Festivals are remembered through taste before almost anything else. Care, in Chinese culture, is often expressed indirectly. Parents may not always say “I love you” out loud, but they will ask whether you are eating properly, sleeping enough, or wearing enough clothes when the weather gets cold. In this way, food becomes part of the emotional language itself.

Perhaps that is also why Chinese festivals are so deeply tied to eating.

As June approaches, my mother has already started asking what I plan to do for the Dragon Boat Festival, or more specifically, what I am going to eat.

“Aiya,” she said over the phone, “even if you can buy zongzi from Asian supermarkets, I don’t even know if you can get used to the flavour there. We Shanghainese could never eat the sweet ones!”

Every year, families across China continue the same debate. Northern families defend sweet fillings like red bean paste and jujubes, while southern families insist salted egg yolk and pork are the only correct answer. Entire regional identities somehow become emotionally invested in sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves.

When I was younger, I found these arguments unnecessary. Now that I’m living overseas, they feel strangely comforting.

During my first year in Auckland, everything felt new all at once. Lectures. Bus routes. Flatting. Learning how to make groceries affordable as a student. Learning how to exist within a completely different rhythm of life.

There was always something more urgent to focus on, and I think that urgency delayed homesickness. I was too overwhelmed by adjusting to fully notice what I missed.

Now, in my second year at AUT, life has become quieter. Stable and balanced enough, perhaps, for smaller emotions to finally catch up with me.

The morning after my mother’s call, I woke up at 5 a.m. to go to the gym.

As soon as I stepped outside, I smelled breakfast from home.

Not café coffee or toasted bread.

Shanghainese breakfast.

The smell of soy milk, fried dough, scallion pancakes, and hot oil sizzling in the cold morning air.

It felt so real that I froze for a moment just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

Of course, it could not have been real. Not at 5 a.m. in Auckland.

But somehow, my senses believed it.

I think that was when I realised something:

I don’t just miss the food itself.

I miss the warmth surrounding it.

In Chinese, there is a phrase sometimes used to describe freshly cooked food: guo qi. Literally, it refers to the heat and breath produced by cooking over a hot wok. But I’ve started to think the phrase means something much larger than that.

It is steam collecting on winter windows.

It is waking up to the sound of someone already cooking in the kitchen.

It is my sight of my parents moving around the house preparing dinner before I even realise I am hungry.

It is being told, after a long day, to sit down and eat something hot.

In New Zealand, life often feels quieter. More spacious. More individual.

The food here is good, and so is life. But occasionally I realise I’ve spent an entire day without catching the smell of garlic sizzling in oil, the bubble of soup nearby, the fragrance of cooked rice drifting from somewhere down the street.

Back in China, those smells were everywhere. They were so ordinary that they almost functioned as clocks, quietly reminding you that somewhere nearby, someone was preparing a meal. And perhaps it was time to head home, too.

Maybe that is why homesickness arrives so strangely overseas.

Not dramatically. Not all at once.

Sometimes it appears through very small things: a voice message from your parents, a festival you almost forgot about, or the sudden desire for something hot and familiar on a cold morning.

And sometimes, without warning, you realise that what you miss is not only home itself

—but the feeling that life was always, warmly, happening around you.