Ruby Ho's Life
in Sovana
Ruby Ho lives near Sovana, in a farmhouse in the countryside, where she and her husband Giorgio Merli manage a holiday home, which is also a farm. In addition to hosting guests in a wonderful place with a garden full of plants, flowers, and fruit all year round, they produce extra virgin olive oil, which they sell, and wine grapes for family consumption.
We visited them during the Chinese New Year, a celebration that is very important in China and is also celebrated in many places around the world, especially where large Chinese communities live. Ruby has always celebrated this occasion and decorates her home every year with great care, creating beautiful shapes from red paper.
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Ruby Ho has a garden of many plants, including lemon trees.
When her children were young, they would go to China to celebrate the Chinese New Year. It is traditional to give red envelopes containing money as a good luck wish, and her relatives still exchange these gifts today. This year, Ruby and Giorgio celebrated by cooking dumplings, while waiting to travel to visit their relatives.
In most parts of China, dumplings are prepared on New Year's Eve, but in the south, where Ruby comes from, they make glutinous rice balls with sweet or savory fillings. Ruby mentioned that the filling can be made from sweet bean paste with a piece of brown sugar. The dough is made with cold water and glutinous rice flour, the same type of rice used to build the Great Wall of China.
For the New Year, it is customary for younger people to go and wish the elders well. During the holidays, the family prepares a special tea with pieces of dried fruits such as apricots and jujubes, and toasted rice. They play a version of bingo and traditional table games, and it is the only time of the year when money can be used in games. Ruby explains that the New Year is officially celebrated for four days, and on the first full moon of the new year, there is a big celebration: the Lantern Festival. She explains that in ancient China, women of high rank could not leave the house, and this was the only day they were allowed to go out, which is why it became known as the day of lovers, when men and women could finally meet.
Ruby and Giorgio met in Hong Kong through a mutual friend when he was there on tour with his musical group. Ruby moved to Italy in 1984, at the age of 30, and they married in 1986. Their first daughter was born in 1987, and they initially lived in Sovana, in an apartment above Giorgio's parents' house, but later moved to the countryside.
Ruby showed us some decorations her friend made for her for Chinese New Year - all hand made!
Ruby has always loved cooking. As a child, she watched her mother, an excellent cook, and learned a lot from her. She later deepened her knowledge of Italian cuisine with her mother-in-law, often asking for recipes when she liked something. She had already lived in Italy at the age of 22, when she won a scholarship to the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. At first, she cooked for herself, but soon began cooking for friends, trying to recreate the flavors of her childhood.
Ruby studied opera singing for three years in Hong Kong and two in Rome, but she stopped after meeting Giorgio and moved to Maremma. In the early years, the family ran a piano bar, where Ruby sang and Giorgio, a musician, played. Together, they traveled a lot.
One dish from her childhood that she remembers fondly is meatballs in tomato sauce, which taste very different from the meatballs in sauce that are prepared in Italy. It is a typical dish of her family. The food she misses most are dim sum, a traditional Cantonese dish from southern China. They are small bites usually served with tea, typically savory, with meat or vegetables. Preparing them is difficult, as it requires a lot of skill. Dumplings with shrimp, which are very famous, are also difficult to make, so Ruby looks forward to returning to China to eat them.
Ruby has a garden full of many different kinds of fruits and vegetables that grow year ground.
One Italian dish she loves is lasagna, as it is very different from Chinese cuisine. In particular, lasagna is baked, whereas in southern China, they don't use an oven, instead cooking by steaming or braising. Now, to cook Chinese dishes, Ruby is able to find all the ingredients in Italy, but when she arrived in 1984, she had to bring everything from China, as it was almost impossible to find the right ingredients. She taught her son to cook, and he has a great passion for cooking.
Her dream has always been to live in the countryside. She loves taking care of the garden and cultivating the vegetable garden, and has always had the desire to "dig" the earth. Many of the trees and plants in her garden were planted by her, starting from a seed. She truly has a green thumb.
All the way from Hong Kong, Ruby has since made the Maremma her home.