This is a piece I first created back in 2018, to celebrate the birthday of a dear friend of mine whose diet consists of learning languages and eating xiaolongbao - otherwise known as soup dumplings.
Soup dumplings have been the pinnacle of connection for my oldest group of friends for as long as I can remember.
For two years straight we saw each other once a week to discuss our lives, our celebrations, our losses, and our loves, over soup dumplings, because that’s the space this food has been able to hold.
The art of the soup dumpling is something I continue to appreciate every single time I’m presented with them.
I am often adamant about only eating at restaurants that serve food that I can’t or don’t make myself - and since I don’t have a Chinese grandmother to show me her ways, you can catch me at Shanghai Heping more often than I’d like to admit.
I chose the colors red, yellow, and green as the accent colors, specifically because of what they mean in Chinese culture.
Red signifies joy, luck, and happiness. Green represents wealth, growth, and eco-consciousness. And yellow represents power, royalty, and prosperity.
My hope is that the energy of those colors permeates through this illustration and can be felt when this piece is hanging in your home.
I revisited this piece just last week as I was preparing to pick another Print of the Week, and made a few minor edits to this piece and the triptych as a whole.
This is the first illustration in the triptych titled Xiaolongbao.
