Editor's note:

No matter where you end up in life, the flavors of your favorite childhood dishes are sure to bring up sweet memories. Even if you've traveled a million miles from home, one bite of a hometown dish brings you right back to where you started, if only for a moment. Even after sampling and enjoying the cuisines of so many different countries and peoples, the foods that you miss the most are the ones your mother used to make. In celebration of Spring Festival 2024 and the start of the Chinese Year of the Dragon, Hainanese living abroad have poured all their homesickness into their cooking, lovingly crafting their favorite hometown Hainan dishes and inviting friends from their host countries to try them. Let's join these Hainanese home cooks all around the world as they share their cultural roots and the best flavors of Hainan.

The Hainan International Media Center and Hainanese all around the world invite you to enjoy the flavors of 'Cooking up Hainan'.

Lin comes from Wanning. This year she will spend the New Year alone in a foreign country. This year, she invited a local British friend, Martin Wright, to visit her home and make a traditional Hainanese New Year snack: Ding'an Caibao. It is said that eating Caibao during the Spring Festival has a very special meaning!