Come What May

Since the beginning of April, little care packages of handmade dumplings, neatly tied with twine, have been delivered to more than 50 bars and restaurants around Hong Kong. Each parcel is personalised with an encouraging message painted on a haphazardly torn piece of art paper, almost still damp with its swaths of glorious watercolours, many depicting the fond little details that remind Imelda Ng, their author, of the recipients: a cheerful trio of tropical fruits for Max Traverse, owner of Hong Kong tiki bar Honi Honi; on the parcel marked for Duddell’s, a woman in a jade-green cheongsam enjoying dim sum. In just over five weeks, Ng, the assistant bar manager at Caprice Bar in the Four Seasons Hong Kong, has made more than 2,200 dumplings for her peers in her spare time. What started as a single act of kindness to offload extra dumplings from experiments in her own kitchen has since turned into a much bigger project to inject the city’s bar scene with positivity and human connection. Its name, “Meowmo”, is inspired by Ng’s three cats, as well as the after-hours Nepalese momo