Changing Perspectives: A Kale of Two Cities

How does growing food differ between Hong Kong and London? And what similar challenges do growers face in both places?

To find out, we interviewed Perle Wong, a food grower who moved from Hong Kong to London during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, Perle founded London’s Vegecoopia, a co-operative growing community that enables people to grow their own food with dignity and autonomy, while bringing Asian vegetables to London communities.

Learn about Perle’s experience, challenges, and her vision for communal growing, plus the MERL object she chose to represent her.

How did you get into agriculture and food production?

PERLE: That’s a really long story!

I moved to the UK in 2020 to study my Master’s degree. But back in Hong Kong, I already paid a lot of attention to agriculture.

I think the situations in London and Hong Kong are fairly similar, thanks to urbanisation and globalisation. There’s less and less agricultural land in Hong Kong – the self sufficiency rate is less than 2%. The majority of the vegetables and some meat are from mainland China.

I used to volunteer in some productive organic farms in Hong Kong, and I did some educational work and environmental education for secondary school students.

When I moved to the UK, it was during lockdown and I didn’t really have the chance to volunteer in community gardens.

After my graduation, restrictions lifted and there were more chances for me to volunteer in small community gardens and rooftop gardens.

The Wimbledon, Sutton, and Kingston area is where Hong Kong migrants are concentrated, so I moved here in 2022. I then met one of the farmers I used to work with back in Hong Kong.

I was quite surprised that he and his family also moved to the UK because farmers in Hong Kong tend to be very attached to the land, and his farm was well-known and made good money.

I decided to learn how to grow food from him, mainly Asian vegetables at first.

Tell us about Vegecoopia, and why there’s a need for cooperative vegetable growing in London and other urban societies?

PERLE: Let me talk about my perception of London because it’s very cosmopolitan.

Some areas are like suburbs of Hong Kong, and others have many more resources.

In terms of land, I was very lucky as we have three allotments which helped me kickstart my food growing journey. Waiting lists are very long and local growers have told me they are very eager to grow their own food, especially during times like COVID when supermarket shelves were empty.

Some public spaces aren’t available for food growing, as councils would rather leave them vacant or undertake other projects, like re-wilding. But that need for food growing is there – for example, for migrant groups like us, it’s a very good way to socialise and feel integrated into British society.

In Hong Kong we don’t have space, as the majority of us live in high-rise apartments and don’t even have balconies.

When I moved to the UK, I realised that we have more space, more capacity.

Allotment space is limited, so I feel like right now what I’ve been doing is to encourage more local residents to grow food in their back gardens, not only to supply our own food, but also to donate to community kitchens.

Do you believe that any garden can become a food growing space?

PERLE: I think so!

Coming from Hong Kong, I feel like having a garden is a luxury. Although I’m living in a flat, I have access to friends’ gardens as well as my allotment.

I take an experimental approach – I understand that some people, such as migrants living in temporary accommodation, may not be able to change the landscape of the ground. But it’s still possible to grow food in pots or raised beds.

I’ve had to think about weather and climate, because the vegetables I used to grow, like some leafy vegetables and squashes, need a very hot climate, so we need better greenhouse infrastructure to grow them. We’re thinking: how can we use limited resources to maximise growth? We’ve also been testing soil – soil in Hong Kong is dryer, soil in the UK has higher clay content.

If you have a window, you can even grow inside small things like herbs in a pot, or leafy vegetables like Pak Choi or Chinese kale. I always encourage people to save their seeds. I give them the seedlings, but then you can experience the whole life cycle. It’s really satisfying for us when people become independent.

Do you consider yourself to be a farmer?

PERLE: I would still call myself a food grower. I think in general a Chinese society  is very hierarchical, because people will think about your experience, background and family history. My parents were farmers in mainland China but moved to Hong Kong in their 20s and changed careers. Hong Kong is so industrialised that calling yourself a farmer demands a certain type of heritage. It’s a title that’s earned, and has a high status, and most traditional farmers would probably be annoyed if I called myself one!

In the UK, when I meet local growers on the allotment, they also wouldn’t call themselves farmers because they feel like they don’t meet the necessary scale of production. For me, calling myself a food grower has another kind of meaning because you’re growing not only food, but also yourself and your community.

How is farming different in the UK and Hong Kong?

PERLE: Being a food grower in Hong Kong takes courage. It’s pretty impossible to make enough money to sustain yourself by just growing food there. In the summer time it’s too hot, and then there are typhoons, rain and flooding.

I didn’t have that courage to be a full-time food grower in Hong Kong, but when I moved to the UK, I felt more positive about taking it on as a career.

Digging deeper, I realised that a food growing career was much more complicated than I imagined.

I found some correlation between the UK and Hong Kong, as the agricultural sector is very exploitative in both places. I’ve become concerned with labour rights and issues of land access. It’s so hard to find space to grow food.

I’ve been contacting the local council and community hubs to see if there is any space big enough for a cooperative or community support agriculture project to be kickstarted. It’s so important to have community farms in different boroughs in Greater London, we just need space.

On the other hand, I’ve been contacting food surplus groups here in Kingston, and it’s so sad to see the amount of surplus food thrown away by supermarkets. This is an issue in Hong Kong as well. Much of this food is imported. Whether I’m in Hong Kong or the UK, I want to help improve local self-sufficiency rates.

What are your favourite things about the work you do with Vegecoopia?

PERLE: In some ways I am a one-man band, but I’m happy that I have more teammates now, in a freelance, part-time or volunteer way.

I’m working with people who are interested in growing their own food, saving seeds and cooking. Also, I’m really happy that I have an allotment and I can experiment with many more varieties of vegetables.

I can get in touch with other growers from other cultural backgrounds and we’ve been swapping seeds and they’ve been teaching me how to grow certain foods and cook them. It’s a different cultural experience because Hong Kong in general is a very Chinese society, but here I can experience other food and growing cultures.

How would you describe the future of food?

PERLE: It’s a mixed feeling, because as I said, it’s sad to see food being wasted.

But on the other hand, I think when we see this kind of challenge, there is opportunity for us to point out the issues in the system, and see how we can use food growing to fill the gap in the food insecurity.

Tell us about the object you’ve chosen from our collections?

PERLE: I’ve chosen the cultivating tool: the hoe.

I couldn’t find one exactly like the one I use because I just ordered mine off Amazon!

I chose this blade because I think it’s the same as the blade of the hoe I use. I use it frequently on my allotment, and I remember one farmer in Hong Kong who said that in Cantonese or Chinese rural society, farmers can use just this hoe to do every task.

Also, when I was learning to use the tool from a Honk Kong farmer here in London, he told me how to use different parts of muscles to control the tool, and that was really impressive as it showed me how versatile the hoe is.

I’ve been carrying this tool with me, travelling to other towns to open up farming beds for my friends’ gardens, and you can easily dismantle it and travel with it. My hoe carries all those memories with it.

This blog forms part of Changing Perspectives in Food and Farming, a series of interviews highlighting the experiences and perspectives of people of colour in rural England today. It extends the work of our previous 2021 series, Changing Perspectives in the Countryside. Thank you to Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Museums Association for funding this work.