Touch the Heart: The Making of a Dim Sum Bag

When I was growing up, my mum never struck me as a good cook. We got lost in books together—huddled by the foot of the bed, afternoons dissolved in wondrous worlds—but dinner was often defined by plain spaghetti with a canned soup sauce. Meals were simple, sometimes strange. Instead, our time with each other took shape in the form of passion projects.

In grade three, to satiate a newfound love for calligraphy, I painted the title of an assignment with gothic lettering—an elaborate one day endeavour—only to misspell poems as “PEOMS”. I stood crying with a glittery page in my hands. Mum smiled. She cut the letters out and rearranged them like puzzle pieces.

In grade six, I had to do a presentation on clearcutting. Mum brought me to a park to forage bark and sticks to glue to a poster board until an actual tree seemed to grow from it. My stage fright dissolved in the shadow of our beautiful handiwork.

In grade nine, Mum drove me across town to the fabric store. Curious additions to my closet materialized from these trips. A ruffle skirt for an upcoming band show. A burgundy trench that took days to finish. Dresses, proudly custom made for my classmates.

One day in our kitchen I watched as Mum fumbled with dumpling wrappers. Her fingers moved with more instinct than precision. She filled one, folded, then another, pinched. One had too many pleats, another too little, as if they were trying on different outfits. The kitchen smelled of soy and scallion. “They’re unique,” my mother murmured, unbothered by the asymmetry.

That night, bowls of lopsided dumplings were served. “Dim sum chefs make thousands of these every day,” she defended her creations.

Memories of imperfect dumplings resurfaced when my own creativity led me to create the Dim Sum Bag. The process took four years: sketches stacked like wrappers, fabrics tested then abandoned, seams opened and resewn. The first iteration had a slack shape that did not puff up like a dumpling. The next slung from my shoulders uncomfortably. However, with time, the eighth version was finally ready for launch.

I now see that objects made well require time—a quiet argument against haste. When creations are crafted intentionally, quality and creativity are passed down like family recipes. It is how craft survives. I didn’t know the meaning back then: Dim Sum (點心) is the cantonese word to “touch the heart”. It is devotion, sealed into a dumpling.

Lucky for Mum, my dad eventually discovered his penchant for cooking. To date, we frequent our favourite restaurants to savour perfectly formed Dim Sums for our family gatherings. What my mother had given me was not perfection, but permission to create: to make, to mend, to imagine—with my craft. Continue the story on vestigestory.com/tnq.