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Annemarie Evans

Oh, to be a village girl in a Tang clan village. Well, when she was a teenager George Tang would have rather pulled her teeth out. Not for her rustic living amid the farms and old buildings of the Ping Shan Heritage Trail.
No, Tang - known formally as Georginia Tang Tze-yee - hankered for the bright lights of cities such as Paris and London, all the better to further her flourishing career as a model and designer.
"I was interested in anything to do with the beauty business," says Tang, who is now using her design skills for the interior of the Tang house she is renovating.
As a child, Tang would help after school in her family's restaurants, but she never considered cooking as a career.
Now, she's back in Hang Mei Tsuen, the village where she grew up.
"My house is near Kun Tin Study Hall on the Tang Clan Heritage Trail," she says.
A cliché would be to say her life has come full circle, but Tang has acquired both food and cultural knowledge along the way and experienced multiple tragedies.
The first of those was the death of her French fiancé to cancer when she was in her 20s, which left her devastated.
She had by this time started what would be 13 years as a flight attendant with Cathay Pacific. A decade later she was based in Australia for a time and married a Chinese-Australian - for nine months of a terrible marriage. Tang is a frank conversationalist.
"Imagine anything you want, everything you want," she says of her short-lived marriage. "It happened."
She then suffered an injury to her wrist on board a flight, which means that she still has difficulty chopping vegetables quickly and has learned to do it with both hands.
Then just as she was getting her life back together in 2009, she was knocked down by a car here and suffered serious leg injuries.
"I was unable to continue working as a flight attendant," she says.
Barely able to walk unaided, she gained weight and became depressed. She says she didn't leave her flat for six months. Her doctor urged her to move about, warning she would lose the use of her leg, and slowly Tang began to rekindle interest in her own life - through cooking.
She attended a variety of cookery classes and vowed to lose over 13kg in weight in 100 days. She did that publicly, setting up a blog with cooking tips and healthy ingredients, and suddenly found she had a following of people supporting her in her quest.
Tang has been nominated by the Hong Kong Arts Centre for the Overcoming Personal Challenge Award of this year's Spirit of Hong Kong Awards, organised by the South China Morning Post.
Tang went on to set up her own business as executive chef of George Kitchen, then won a regional cooking championship two years later.
"I fulfilled my long-term dream of studying at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Paris, earning the Grand Diplome in French Cuisine and French Pastry," she says proudly.
Back at the Tang clan house, Tang is sorting out second-hand furniture she has bought for the rooms, and planning her kitchen. The renovations should take another six weeks.
She recently married a Canadian writer and painter, so there needs to be room for his studio. She is looking forward to mixing the Cordon Bleu with the Chinese as she offers gourmet cooking classes, sells pastries on weekends and recaptures the traditions of Hakka and Hong Kong food in general.
"At the moment I am taking lessons in the old buildings and how they are constructed. I'm also studying the history of the Tang clan," she says.
"I sold my flat in Happy Valley to finance my studies at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and restoration of this old house.
"These were my dreams a decade ago to restore this old house, dreams of my dad and me. I basically want to teach people classical food."
She also wants to return to her roots "and teach people about the vanishing things".


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Spirit of Hong Kong

Spirit of Hong Kong: how her village roots proved a source of comfort for chef George Tang

George Tang is busy renovating a village house and is looking forward to offering gourmet cooking classes. Photo: Jonathan Wong

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Hong Kong

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Hit hard by numerous setbacks, George Tang has bounced back and is relishing life again and renovating the interior of an old village house
