POPULAR cook show host Kylie Kwong may be hampered by communication problems with her relatives in China but she easily found the way to their hearts – through their tummies.

The fourth-generation Australian Chinese, who confesses to feeling “terribly embarrassed” by her inability to speak Cantonese or Mandarin with her clansmen, was glad to redeem herself by being able to cook Chinese food.

Stir-fried razor clams with black beans and chilli sauce.

“That was my saving grace and I made it up to my relatives in China by cooking them a banquet,” quips the cheery Sydney-born chef-author-presenter, who made her maiden trip to China in 1998.

Through years of research, she and her relatives in Australia finally traced the ancestral village of her great-grandfather, Kwong Sue Duk, a Chinese medicine trader, to Wong Nai Hang in Guangzhou, Guangdong province (of which Cantonese is the common dialect).

Her insightful journey to rediscover her heritage and touch base (read: cook) with her relations is captured in a new TV series by Discovery Travel & Living. The nine-part Kylie Kwong: My China, which documents her visits to nine destinations, airs on Malaysian television from this Wednesday.

The 39-year-old Australian is in Malaysia for the first time recently to promote the series, an accompaniment to her latest travelogue-cum-cookbook, My China: A Feast for all the Senses. She has three other cookbooks under her apron.

“I’m the 29th-generation of the Kwong family and the first in 90 years to return to my homeland. My great-grandfather left Wong Nai Hang in 1875 for Australia lured by the promise of gold,” Kwong tells the media gathered at a downtown Kuala Lumpur hotel.

“He married four wives and together, they had 24 children, creating what is possibly the largest Chinese family in Australian immigration history.”

Again, all mouths are agape when she announces: “I am the first daughter of the fifth son of the first son of the third wife.”

Tags: amp, australian immigration, black beans, china, chinese family, clansmen, communication problems, cookbook, dis, ela, fir, first daughter, four wives, great grandfather, guangdong province, heart, immigration history, ins, insightful journey, kuala lumpur hotel, levi, promise of gold, relatives, trip to china

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