Feasting & Family

Benjamin Li’s Chinese-Indonesian Restaurant project offers a rich starting point for a Christmas gathering that thinks through food, migration, ritual, and cultural hybridity.

We close At Sally’s Rituals Season with a shared Chinese-Indonesian Christmas dinner accompanied by a conversation with Benjamin about the histories and personal experiences embedded within the project. Drawing on the tradition of people gathering in Chinese, Indian, or fast-food restaurants on Christmas Day, whether due to migration, religion, family structure, labour patterns, or simply the desire to create alternative forms of celebration outside the conventions of a “traditional” Christmas. In this context, the restaurant becomes a space where different communities, faiths, and cultural identities overlap, producing new rituals of togetherness.