Kit Chan On Coming Home & “That Dragon Playground”

After being away from home for such long periods, what do you miss the most?

Food is always the first! It’s so much easier to visit a place in your mind, but food is a torture to visit in your mind! That’s not a very nice thing to do!

And it has to be local food – the hawker stuff. Chicken rice, mee goreng, nasi padang. [Grins]

What’s your favourite childhood memory?

I only realised when I grew up that my childhood was very different from other people’s. For example right, there’s this dragon thing – do you know that I’ve never seen that in my life?

Chan’s manager: The dragon playground? You’re going there later for a photoshoot.

Chan: No way. I only realised this dragon thing when I was working as a creative consultant with the Ministry of Defence and Nexus, and they’d be talking about this dragon thing, and I’m like, “What’s this?” People may think I had a very privileged background and never went to HDBs but that’s not true!

But I didn’t really go to playgrounds as a kid because I had a huge playground that was Chinatown… I had fantastic memories in the old Chinatown of the 70s and 80s – the [old photographs] you see in national archives and books? That’s the Chinatown I remember.