As you might have seen, I had an exhilarating and invigorating time blogging for the Wing Luke Museum’s Chinese Heritage Tour of the American West.

If you haven’t read the blog entries, please have a look. The pace was fast – but good- and the investment in time was well worth it. It’s one of those trips in life that you set time aside to take – well, because it’s unclear when you’ll have time to do it again.

The group of 35 people or so returned to the Seattle area early last week. I’ve been resting up and getting caught up on things on the homefront.

That included a great Saturday visiting Top Gun Seafood Restaurant in Bellevue, Wash. One thing I always enjoy is food to bring the mind and belly back to the center.

For me and my family, that has always included delicious dim sum – or dian xin or little bits of heart. Yes, we ordered noodles among other dishes because, well, I’ve liked them since I was a kid.

A few freelance projects remain on, um, my plate. So, I’ll update TofuWatch as often as I can.

One tidbit, as you see below, is that there’s a new Asian market – jingjing – coming to Bellevue. It will be right next to Top Gun.

So, what’s the next best thing after eating a delicious Cantonese meal? Well, shopping for delicious Chinese vegetables and ingredients, of course!

I hope jingjing turns out to be a Chinese market well worth visiting.

Oh yeah, I spotted the Buddha figure at Top Gun and I just liked it. The translation below the figure is about a lucky star hanging in the sky.

Yes, I know the figure and the saying are not little bits of heart. But the saying, in my mind, is something good to hear.

In the past, my family and I would eat dim sum at Tea Garden Seafood Restaurant in Seattle. But on our last visit a month or so ago, the food didn’t hit the taste bud highmark for us. It might have been that visit.

And speaking of Chinese food, John Pai, who was on the Chinese Heritage Tour, told me that he liked eating egg foo young for breakfast.

It’s true: Life really is rich.

Chinese red lanterns - and their soft, alluring glow - are likely to reemerge in creative productions given the emphasis these days on rich colors in online media.

Recent videos on Vimeo have followed the red lantern color path, including ones by the talented crew at UPPERCASE and Ian Lucero.

Recently, when I passed the Legendary Palace restaurant and its lanterns in Oakland, Calif., I stopped – but not purely to produce something for the Internet.

For years, I’ve been interested in them, especially in learning about the Lantern Festival in my language classes and visiting Chinese cities and towns.

One aspect that I like about China is that residents have embraced these glowing orbs for thousands of years. They are soothing to the eye – especially the contrast at night.

As Andrea Spolidoro writes in an essay posted on the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California Web site:

Throughout the history of China, lanterns have been symbols of hope, rejuvenation, and celebration. Lanterns are integral to the most mundane or important rituals of life; in support of communication with the god; for ceremonial purposes; as symbols; and in festivals.

On the one hand, Legendary Palace has what I enjoy in a restaurant: Dim sum, late-night hours (even on a Sunday), history, upturned eaves, lanterns and enough lights to attract customers.

On the other hand, this restaurant has a controversial past in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Social service groups once advocated that the former nightclub be used for low-income residents. The structure apparently was built in 1917.

My uncle, Bill Wong, outlined this episode during a 2006 walking tour for The Organic City. He is an author, journalist and expert on Oakland Chinatown.

Moviegoers will remember the glowing orbs in Zhang Yimou’s classic Raise the Red Lantern, which brought Gong Li into a household with several wives.

The artistic images of softly-lit red lanterns certainly stayed in the minds of Western audiences.

In 2007, the Guardian sent staff photographer Dan Chung and reporter Tania Branigan to Pingyao, a walled city in Shanxi province, to capture lantern images and stories.

They posted an incredibly-rich video about daily life in inland China.

Also, in Beijing, one restaurant district lets potential customers know that it’s open for business by hanging lanterns outside their establishments.

I know traveling in China can be trying at times – given the language gap and how some people might perceive all international tourists as wealthy.

But after seeing this video, it’s easy to see why the place can be so intriguing.

On a side note: Last month, some people mistook the Chinese red lanterns that were used in a wedding in England for UFOs, the Lynn News reported.

That makes it older than the modern version of the hamburger, which started showing up around the 1800s. Yes, Egypt’s pyramids are more senior. But tofu predates the Gutenberg printing press and American-style democracy.

Not bad for food that starts with a roly-poly bean a bit smaller than the size of your fingertip.

As the story from China goes, Liu An, the grandson of a Chinese emperor, lived in Anhui province, which is west of Shanghai. Liu believed in Daoism (Taoism) and sought a long life. So, in 164 BC, he instructed eight of his assistants to discover a medicine, an elixir in a sense, to accomplish his goal.

During this process, the assistants went to the province’s Huainan area, which is north of the capital city of Hefei. There, they used fresh mountain water and soy beans to make milk. They took the milk and added coagulants. They worked feverishly to find the magical formula.

Instead, as the story goes, they created the wiggly mass known as tofu.

Apparently, a farmer entered the picture after the birth of this vegetarian dish. As the story is told, he was the first person to taste it.

Now, was he a cautious but curious bystander who volunteered to eat what was before him? Or did the assistants require this commoner to test it to help prolong the emperor’s lineage?

In any event, he tasted. He digested. And, as I’m sure the assistants noted, he lived. His reaction: It was nice and soft.

Map from the Anhui government

From there, a “bean culture” sprouted. People in different parts of China started experimenting with the food. A Chinese monk is said to have introduced tofu making to Japan.

Many believe it spread there and in Korea, Thailand and other parts of Asia because Buddhism grew in popularity in the region.

Buddhists, as we know, prefer to eat vegetables. In recent years, Anhui province has hosted a regular tofu festival.

In the West, people spell the food as ”tofu.” It’s the popular spelling from Japan. But in China, you’ll run across ”doufu.”

* Sincere thanks to my wife, who helped translate the tofu history, which was written in Chinese.