I’m here in Sydney! …A lot of typical Australian food, such as the Sunday roast, is originally British.     1    , fast-food     2    , butcher shops, cafes, and restaurants everywhere provide some of the     3     experiences in the world. The influence of Asian cultures, on the other hand,     4     to the introduction of bean curd and Asian herbs, along with Australian versions or foods     5     Chinese-inspired dim sim.

According to some food experts, there are some     1     of culture that people will lose right away, but with food, there are more opportunities to connect to    2    , family and place.     3     is hardest to give up the food that you grow up     4    . Of course, each person’s comfort food largely depends on where they come from---for a Chinese it might be a plate of dumplings with a saucer of vinegar, and for a native of the UK it might be the classic fish and chips, served hot, salty and sour. One mouthful of comfort food takes us back to our cultural roots,     5     us the “taste of home” that we cry out for and relieving feelings of homesickness.

At a     1     the kinds of food-local people     2     tell us     3     they like and do not like. Could we also say, for example, that those who like spicy food tend to have a hot     4    ? Maybe. Maybe not. What we can say, however, is that culture and cuisine go hand in hand, and if you do not     5     one, you can never really know the other.

Certainly, in many ways this seems to be true. Chinese c    1     is a case in point. P    2     to coming to China, my only e    3     with Chinese cooking was in America, with Chinese food that had been changed to suit American t    4    . For example, America’s most popular Chinese dish is General Tso’s chicken, which c    5     of fried chicken covered in a sweet sauce, flavoured with hot red p    6    . This is probably not an authentic Chinese r    7    , however, so it cannot tell us much about the Chinese. On the other hand, it does tell us a lot about Americans. It tells us, for example, that Americans love bold, simple f    8    . And, since the dish was also i    9     recently, it tells us that Americans are not a    10     to try new foods.

G    1     up in England with a British father and a Chinese mother, the author has enjoyed food from both countries ever since she was able to hold a knife and fork — and chopsticks!

Although her dad has come to love some of the food from her mother’s hometown, there are some dishes that he dare not try even after many years of m    2     to her mother. He was even surprised by    3     he saw on the table when he first came to China.

But the author enjoys that sort of food herself. Last week, she went to the butcher’s and asked, “Do you have pigs’ ears?” “No,” the butcher said, p    4    at his own ears, “just these o    5     ones.” It’s because he must have thought she was joking.

Her dad can cook a super “full English breakfast” and also does a t    6    . Sunday roast, but her mum says they’d better not eat too much roast food    7     it may make them suffer from heat inside their bodies, according to traditional Chinese medicine.

When the author first visited China, she came across stinky tofu, which she thought smelt like a b    8     sports shoe, but she g    9     all her courage to take a bite and was amazed to find it wasn’t so bad.

There is a saying that one man’s meat is another man’s p    10    , but the author feels at home with food from both cultures and she believes that there’s nothing better than a cross-cultural afternoon tea of English biscuits and a cup of Chinese oolong tea in a fine china cup.