Wok Hei Is Vanishing From Hong Kong. My Mom Wanted to Taste It Again.

She was born in Guangzhou, China, and moved to Hong Kong as a teenager in the late 1960s.

She lived in a small apartment in the working-class neighborhood Kowloon, where she worked in sweatshops and factories. The hours were long and difficult.

She would often get off work late and go straight to a dai pai dong for a cheap dinner. When I was a kid, she would wax poetic about the impeccable sear and char of the dishes.

In 1974, she moved with my father to New York.

As she told me: “Wok hei is so difficult to find in America. If you want the perfect texture and taste of the char, it lives only in Hong Kong.”