Mama Cheung

Mama Cheung (born 1957/1958; ), known as Lee Wai-ji and Tessa Cheung, is a Hong Kong YouTuber who makes videos about cooking Cantonese dishes.

When she first got married, Mama Cheung was not experienced in cooking, so she learned how to cook from her mother-in-law. After having been a housewife for around 40 years, Mama Cheung initially had no plans to become a YouTuber. Her children uploaded a video of her making to YouTube in 2014. Upon seeing that the video was viewed several hundred times and had positive viewer feedback, she began making more cooking videos. In 2015, she collaborated with fellow Hong Kong cooking YouTuber Uncle Bob, who runs the Bob's Your Uncle channel, which increased awareness of her channel, allowing it to grow from several hundred subscribers to more than 10,000 in a year. She makes cooking videos about main dishes, dim sum, and desserts. One of her most viewed videos was about her using a rice cooker to bake a cake, which received over one million views. In 2020, Mama Cheung ranked among the top 12 Hong Kong YouTube channels that teach cooking.

Early and personal life Mama Cheung was born in 1957 or 1958 and is Teochew. Her Chinese name is Lee Wai-ji , and she is also known as Tessa Cheung. When she was growing up, her family operated a grocer. When she had spare time, her mother would collect eggs and flour to make a steamed orange sponge cake for her. Their collaboration helped raised awareness of her channel which had until then had several hundred subscribers. Kung Pao chicken, and siu mai. and papaya, peanut, and fish tail soup. Desserts she made include put chai ko, Mama Cheung made a video about how she had created sesame shrimp toast using bread that had been refrigerated for a few days.

Mama Cheung receives help from her family members to make the videos. Her husband filmed her videos and to better showcase her cooking, he purchased a camera, a tripod, and lights. He initially did not support her YouTube venture, feeling that she was ignoring him. She was spending a substantial amount of time using her phone to respond to viewer comments and spent less time on housework and with him. Her husband warmed to her YouTube work after observing the joy she felt in making the videos, in becoming a great conversationalist, and in accumulating a lot of knowledge from her online browsing. She returned to studying and graduated from a Le Cordon Bleu culinary school, after which she worked in United Kingdom and Hong Kong restaurants. Kaman began helping Mama Cheung with directing, editing, and marketing the cooking videos, as well as adding the videos' Chinese and English subtitles. Mama Cheung and Kaman started a new segment on the channel called "Mother Daughter Kitchen" . Viewers were initially dismissive of the segment, viewing Kaman as an interloper but warmed to her within a year of her appearing on the channel. The mother and daughter made a video about pumpkin soup and travelled to Tokyo to make videos.

Reception The Apple Daily said that the Mama Cheung channel "looks out of the ordinary in the increasingly fancy YouTube ecosystem, without exquisite post-production and novel ideas" Hong Kong Economic Times said that "Mama Cheung's strength is her attention to detail" and that "Mama Cheung is like fans' mothers because she really attentively teaches everyone how to cook and hopes everyone will succeed". Jenny Leung wrote in Timeout, "Teaching you how to make simple, home-style dishes that most Hongkongers would regularly see on the dinner table, Mama Cheung's recipes are all about authenticity." Another Timeout reviewer, Sam Evans, said, "Creator of all the Cantonese dishes you could ask for ... Mama Cheung (aka Tessa Cheung) is like the Chinese aunty who you wish would cook for you every Sunday." Faye Bradley of The Loop HK called Mama Cheung "reminiscent of traditional Hong Kong favorites that we'd probably only see grandma or 'mama' cook with their years of generational learning" and praised "its easy-to-follow video tutorials" that allows viewers "to master local delicacies".