This project explores the influence and feedback of social systems and economic environments on local cuisine through the inversion of paper and textual contrast. Based on twelve recipes from my grandparents, it develops versions from the 1970s and 2010s through my own recollections and those of my parents. By employing paper of varying textures, fading text, and irregular page layouts, it studies how to challenge the meanings conveyed by conventional cookbooks. At its core, the project explores the potential of recipes beyond mere food transmission, encompassing historical documentation, reflections of social conditions, and ceremonial significance.

To demonstrate this, I collected twelve recipes for the project, employing opaque paper to symbolise the present and translucent paper to represent the past. As one flips through the layered sheets, the intention is to traverse different eras, revealing through fading and blanked-out text how life in Southern China's region evolved from scarcity to abundance.

The entire recipe book is bound with red silk thread, connected in an irregular sequence, allowing readers to freely select chapters to browse. This simulates the workings of memory; not linear, but cyclical, leaping, and recurring. This process challenges the traditional sequential reading approach of cookbooks and other books, embodying how flavour is not linear; it often revisits the past, overlaps, is triggered, and reactivated. This transforms the book into a time machine rather than a static object.