Yesterday I received a package in the mail that absolutely floored me.

I didn’t think I needed any more miniatures: my collection is already quite substantial for someone who’s turning 27 in two days. But, as it turns out, more miniatures were exactly what I needed. And not just so I could set a new record for age-inappropriate hobbies.

For weeks now, I’ve been stalling on a writing project. Not on the writing of it–the material is pretty much there, the research is beyond thorough–but on the sign-off. Every day I find a new way to reproach myself, a new way to reshape the text so that it becomes a parody of my voice. With each reproach, I have drifted further and further away from my original motivation. Two nights ago, I finally said out loud, “I can’t remember why I am writing this.” (This was followed by “I need a drink.”)

Yesterday afternoon, the postman brought me a much-needed and totally unexpected reminder.

When I was a very young girl, there were two stories I returned to again and again: Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, and The Enormous Apple Pie by Diana Ross (not a Supreme.) Alice needs no introduction, but I’d like to tell you about Miss Pussy, the monkey Jackanapes and the enormous titular pie.

Miss Pussy is expecting company, and a freshly-baked apple pie is cooling on her windowsill. A curl of cinnamon-spiced steam wafts through the open window, tickling the nostrils of Miss Pussy’s nemesis, Jackanapes. When no-one is looking, the evil monkey scarfs down the apple filling, crams the shell full of live frogs and reseals the top! Far from ruining Miss Pussy’s tea party, however, Jackanapes’ malicious act transforms the pie into a portal to another world. (Let’s not get into the quantum physics of it all, ok?) Miss Pussy and her guests tumble through the gutted pie onto a grassy knoll, where a lavish picnic of peeled shrimp, quivering blancmanges (I remember the blancmanges particularly) and all manner of tarts and sandwiches await them.

The story obsessed me. I depleted countless felt-tip markers drawing every item mentioned in the epic afternoon tea. And when I’d drawn it all, I’d start again. Some of these masterpieces are saved in folders my father called “Classic Books”; when I’m back in Hong Kong I like to look at them and trace the development of my blancmange depictions.

Then, as now, I have a powerful need to bring the food and drink of fiction into the realm of the concrete. Ever since Alice, I see the exhortations “EAT ME” and “DRINK ME” in every literary food passage. Whether it means making meticulous diagrams of a storybook picnic or hoarding impossibly tiny pastries, I do what I can to make the fantasy real.

Without letting the cat out of the bag entirely, this is linked to what I’ve been writing about. And the simple charm of a microscopic biscotti jar reminded me that, in between all the self-flagellation, I actually like my subject matter.

The miniatures my mother sent me for my birthday are several cuts above the Re-Ment I’d been buying for myself. The jars and saucers are real china, and the pastries are hand-molded from clay. The most intricate of the lot were made or sourced by a lady named Loi, with whom my mother made a private appointment. (Loi does some exquisite work with Cantonese savory dishes, too.)

Perhaps best of all, there’s a glass cabinet with a properly hinged door that opens with a tiny but just graspable knob. Two of the six cakes it houses are marked “Happy Birthday”.

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