At the risk of sounding like someone who always brings up study abroad, the first time I had tomato and egg on rice was when I studied abroad in Beijing my junior year of college. The program was language-intensive; we all stayed in a school building, had local students for roommates, and weren't allowed to speak any English. We also ate lunch in the cafeteria every day.
Honestly not much at the cafeteria was that good. Bad dumplings, wan greens, fried rice. But tomato and egg is pretty uniformly decent, no matter the context or scale, as long as it's fairly fresh. As an activity, one of the school cooks taught us all how to make it, and I've been making it ever since.
