Craig Au-Yeung has worn the same hairstyle and the same white shirt for years. Only the things he dabbles in keep changing. Chitralekha Basu met the designer who gave Hong Kong its first space dedicated to food culture.

Craig Au-Yeung wears his silver hair, Mohawk style. It's the way his painter father used to cut it for him when he was quite young. Later, his long-time partner would take over the job. Now he has it cut by the barber down the alley for HK$30 or a hairstylist friend who charges HK$ 3,000, if he's in the mood.

The same catholicity of tastes is reflected in what Au-Yeung does for a living. He could be designing a gala dinner on behalf of the German luxury kitchen appliances brand, Gaggenau, where guests who pay exorbitant prices to sit inside mirror boxes where they are treated to a feast fit for a king, and given a guided tour of the history of mirrors. He could, on the other hand, be putting together a minimalist dinner - by assembling only a few items, picked up from the neighborhood wet market and served up with a lot of heart.

He was at work again last weekend at the Open Design Forum at Hong Kong Design Institute. Under his instructions, students from the institute mounted a series of portable, polygonal cardboard tables, stuck together with adhesive tape, in under five minutes each. Circles, big enough to hold largish Styrofoam cups, were cut into the boards. One could dig inside each suspended cup and pull out a typical Hong Kong snack - small egg waffle, dragon-beard (pulled) candy, maltose crackers - wrapped in brown paper. Needless to say, the sweet surprise inside the envelopes went down very well with delegates who came to attend the conference from different corners of the world.

Earlier, at lunch, each of the dining tables had been served only a limited selection of the dishes. "The only way to enjoy the entire course was by walking around and exchanging the food served at one's own table with one's neighbor, find lunch-mates in the process," said Au-Yeung. He believes "food is essentially about making communication", right from the moment one starts sourcing the ingredients to that in which one shares it with fellow consumers. As they say, a shared meal makes friends of strangers. And in this case, the sharing, between people from China, Thailand, South Korea, Sweden, Belgium, Japan, the US and UK, was as multi-cultural as it could get.

"This way students can get feedback on their own creations from academics and professionals who work in design. It's like going to a lecture, only in a different form," said Au-Yeung.

Satire without politics

Craig Au-Yeung took his degree in visual communication and philosophy at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in the early 1980s, but took up the unlikely profession of a radio jockey. He looks back on those days of "sitting alone in the studio at the dead of the night, pretending you're talking to someone" somewhat wistfully. On hindsight, it seems whatever he has done since then - as founder-editor of the glossy magazine Cockroach, starting his own immensely-popular comic strip brand, "Comix", writing newspaper columns, directing advertising campaigns, playing image doctor to some of the local pop singing sensations - are, in fact, related to each other, components of a grand design, if you like. All the vocations he has held, some of them simultaneously, inform and contribute to his still-evolving identity as a creative artist.

Although the "Comix" series is commonly associated with a dark, surreal, even poetic humor, Au-Yeung himself claims to be "quite humble and down-to-earth" a person. "I am not really edgy," he says, "but I do try to keep pushing the form, stretching its limits." As a satirist, Au-Yeung's work is more about striking a chord with fellow citizens rather than going overtly political. "I try to make light of the general heaviness that has set in (Example: a police sergeant telling his colleague: "Does your boss know you're a vegetarian?" suggesting if you don't eat meat, you are unfit to be in the police force). But then my work is also about letting people cry. Humor to me is not about entertainment. It carries a very heavy sense of responsibility."

The open kitchen

Hong Kong's first Taste Library, which will soon open in PMQ - the erstwhile married quarters for the military, off Hollywood Road, now gentrified and turned into a space for promotion of the local arts - is Au-Yeung's brainchild. "It's a kitchen in a public space, a platform of communication," says Au-Yeung of the set-up where visitors can taste, cook and read about food. He wanted to expand its ambit beyond the strictly culinary. "I wanted dancers and musicians to come and perform, have book readings, chefs share their experiences. And food experiences are not always very cheerful and pleasant, mind you. I wanted all aspects of a kitchen represented in the library," he says.

It's a stylish place, spread out across 2,000 square feet. The walls are lined with over 3,000 books and magazines about food, donated from Au-Yeung's personal collection, and accessible to anybody with a day pass. "Food, design and passion are the three key concepts driving the idea of this space," says Au-Yeung, "in other words, the three fundamental ideas informing human existence."

He's been wearing only white shirts (a self-designed line, expectedly) for the last 30 years or more. "That's one worry less every morning," he says, smiling through the bamboo-frame retro glasses, amused, apparently by his own decision to cut out unnecessary junk from his life and leave more room for creative thought. When I tell him Steve Jobs gave the same logic when he chose to stick to his black polo-neck tees and jeans, Au-Yeung almost winces, as if he considers the comparison blasphemous. "I'm only a small person compared to Steve, you see. Maybe I'm just lazy."

Doubtless, no one will take that self-deprecating comment at face-value. For Au-Yeung's hyper-active imagination and restless spirit is already at work on expanding the ambit of the Taste Library and turning it into a food museum.

"Come to think of it, Hong Kong itself is like a food museum. We were exposed to local, Oriental and Western food in a very early age. We can demonstrate a hybrid food culture like no other," says Au-Yeung.

All he needs now is a space to work on, sanctioned by the government. "Hong Kong totally deserves it," says the man who has a blue-print ready in his mind, for his ambitious and one-of-a-kind project.

Contact the writer at basu@chinadailyhk.com

Craig Au-Yeung with delegates and students at the lunch he designed at the Open Design Forum at Hong Kong Design Institute. Provided to China Daily

Au-Yeung's "Comix" series, he says, is not about entertaining readers. In fact, it might make people cry.

(HK Edition 12/04/2014 page7)