Tin & Bamboo
8" diameter, 13 3/4" long handle
Kowloon, Hong Kong

Deep, deep in a book from 2001 I found a reference to Mr. Lo Ho-Kee. Master weaver! He was described as a 74 year old working in Central Hong Kong; given that the text was likely written in 1999 / 2000 that made the master fairly old. Also given that Central has been so heavily developed in recent years I assumed we would never find him and yet we tried. It was Marco who had high hopes and persisted, I threw in the towel after 10 minutes of pacing the block, then Marco pointed to a shed down a flight of stairs. It was only our second day in Hong Kong and frankly, at that moment, it looked a little scary. Low and behold it was the Master's workshop. The sad news is he spoke absolutely no English so conversation was less than limited but hand signs worked and we got to watch him in action for a bit. The good news is we were able to support his craft by buying the few frying tools he had on hand. Sure they look very, very close to the manufactured ones in the market but somehow knowing about him and where they are coming makes them of course feel like something else. I don't do much frying so instead I use mine for taking eggs out of water as they can go right into running cold water, for rinsing vegetables instead of using a traditional strainer and as a steamer basket solution.