A Taste of Home by Jennifer

家的味

A TASTE OF HOME

道

STORIES OF FOOD AND MIGRATION

A TASTE OF HOME

STORIES OF FOOD AND MIGRATION

生活

传统

文身化份

历史

灵魂

家 Food. At its core, it is a source of life. A necessity. We cannot survive without it. But food is much more. It feeds the soul. It is a reflection of our culture and who we are. It is an integral part of our histories and our traditions and our celebrations. For refugees and immigrants feeling their way in a new country, food becomes even more important. It is a precious link to the past. A way to feel at home in a place that is not home. SPICE OF LIFE: NEW AMERICANS AND FOOD — NEBRASKA MOSAIC

过去

庆祝活动

CON- 目录 TENTS

THE GROCERY STORE

房

厅

THE KITCHEN

THE RESTAURANT

06 介

绍

114

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION A journey through food, work, culture, love and home.

0 0 0 7

DUC

“[Food] orientation appears to be as ancient as Chinese culture itself. When Confucius was asked about military tactics, he replied, “I have heard about matters pertaining to tsu and tou (meat stand and platter), but not military matters.”"

TRACING IMMIGRANT IDENTITY THROUGH THE PLATE AND THE PALATE — TERESA M. MARES

JENNIFER WEN

“Food is central to the longing for home and the oftenpainful struggle to accommodate to new ways of being in the world — the eating habits or the food practices of a community, region or time period is a vital piece of maintaining a sense of self in a new environment.”

Food represents an avenue to work, community and familial connection for Chinese migrants. For those with limited language abilities in their new homeland, food and restaurant work is a way they can pursue a living using skills they already have. For those seeking a community, the existence of ethnic businesses such as restaurants and grocery stores provide enclaves of familiar tastes, smells, meals and produce, reminiscent of the homeland. Finally, food allows households and individuals to strengthen their familial and cultural connections. Mealtimes provide an opportunity for personal histories to be remembered and also act as an expression of love within Chinese migrant families, where different generations come together to bond. Food is multi-dimensional, multi-faceted, and touches on all corners of the Chinese migration experience.

INTRODUCTION

MIGRATION AND FOOD are always inextricably linked. One of the immediate indicators of displacement is a change in the foodscape. This can be a deeply visceral experience, as food is typically associated with safety or comfort rather than the unfamiliarity that relocation brings. Inherently a disruptive and occasionally lonely process, immigration reinforces the need to maintain cultural practices and customs, in order to preserve precious connections with family and those left behind in the move. Food acts as one of the simplest, yet most powerful ways to summon this sense of connection, community and comfort. This is true for Chinese migrants, in particular, as their migration experience is deeply intertwined with food as a result of their background. The cultural significance of food in China is emphasised through the many lifestyle factors that are tied to it, including health and family, resulting in a society which is very food-orientated. According to K.C. Chang:

If you ever question if life is worth living, you must consider the joy of hot Chinese food on a cold day. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; FRANK WAGNER

01 THE RESTAURANT

FOR THE HUSTLE

1 0

PAYING THE HARVEST BY KATIE SALISBURY

FOR THE FOOD A CENTURY OF FLAVOURS BY TEJAL RAO

THE RESTAURANT JENNIFER WEN

THE RESTAURANT

THE CHINESE RESTAURANT has always represented duality to me. The two contrasting images that come to mind when I think of Chinese restaurants reflects this. In the first, there is a perpetual neon sign, that announces “Open” to anyone who cares to look. Here, the table tops are always vaguely sticky, or wet — the result of being hurriedly wiped down by the waitress wearing a uniform polo as we approach. The walls are a light grey-blue, or an indescribable pink. The floor is tiled and grimy. Tea is served instead of water, from plastic 2L jugs, in off-white porcelain cups. The menu, laminated, has no English translation. In the second image, the floor is carpet, a rich, dark red. The tables are wood and covered by not one, but two tablecloths, often a salmon pink, or white. The waiters are dressed in smart pants and pressed white shirts under black waistcoats. There are chandeliers. They glitter when I turn my head, and reflect off the gold of the chairs. Here, the tea is served in pots, and is routinely topped up with boiling water. These were the restaurants frequented by my family when I was growing up. We would go when we wanted a quick, cheap meal, but we would also go to when we were entertaining family guests or celebrating special occasions. Chinese restaurants embody a lot of things, and not only for migrant diners. Their fluidity is also demonstrated through their origin as a product of discrimination, and exclusionary labour laws, and their transformation to become both a place where migrants can make a living, and also celebrate their culture and cuisine whilst being far away from home.

FOR THE HUSTLE

FOR THE FOOD

0 THE RESTAURANT

PAYING THE HARVEST

His calculation is based off the fact that most employers provide their migrant workers with room and board in the suburban or rural areas outside of New York City. The pay is not quite as low as other service-industry jobs, like those in nail salons. After taxes, most cooks pull in $2,500 to $3,500 a month, making their actual take-home pay closer to $30,000 or $40,000 a year.

KATIE SALISBURY

Still, none of that diminishes the utter exhaustion or tedium workers experience from being confined to a stiﬄing kitchen or making countless deliveries for 70 hours a week. One cook sends me a link to a short documentary on YouTube. Floating Days, as the film is titled in English, was released in 2013 and follows a young Chinese immigrant who works at a takeout shop called China Chen in Syracuse, New York. In it, the dark side of the American Dream emerges: disillusionment, exhaustion, isolation, and a growing sense of frustration and aimlessness. I frequent an employment center on Eldridge Street, hoping to meet workers who’d be interested in sharing their stories. One man responds with exasperation. “What stories?” he sighs. “Every day is the same. I wake up, go to work, come home. Wake up, go to work, come home.” He has lived that reality for 24 years.

KATIE SALISBURY

PAYING THE HARVEST

2 0

“The pay is much better,” he says. “The money you can earn at a Chinese restaurant working as an employee is comparable to someone who earns $80,000 to $90,000 a year.”

1000KM - FUJIAN TO THE UNITED STATES

THE LIFE OF A CHINESE COOK is monotonous and gruelling. Each day begins the same way: workers report to their restaurant around 11 a.m., then spend the next 12 hours prepping ingredients, flash-frying customer orders, and manoeuvring a wok at scorching temperatures until closing at 11 p.m. That leaves just enough time to go home, shower off the kitchen grease, and sleep before doing it all over again the next day. I talk to the son of Fujianese immigrants who have been running a successful restaurant business in Connecticut since the 1980s. Conditions for workers have improved considerably since his father started out in the food industry, he tells me. Back in those days, his dad worked 13 hours a day, 365 days a year.

THE RESTAURANT

I WAKE UP, GO TO WORK, COME HOME. I WAKE UP, GO TO WORK, COME HOME. I WAKE UP, GO TO WORK, COME HOME. I WAKE UP, GO TO WORK, COME HOME. I WAKE UP, GO TO WORK, COME HOME. I WAKE UP, GO TO WORK, COME HOME. I WAKE UP, GO TO WORK, COME HOME. I WAKE UP, GO TO WORK, COME HOME. I WAKE UP, GO TO WORK, COME HOME. I WAKE UP, GO TO WORK, COME HOME. I WAKE UP, GO TO WORK, COME HOME. I WAKE UP, GO TO WORK, COME HOME. 2年

1年

年

22年

18年

19年

23年

年

24年

“Every day is the same. I wake up, go to work, come home. Wake up, go to work, come home.”

KATIE SALISBURY

15年

14年

20年

10年

9年

13年

17年

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AMERICAN DREAMS IN A CHINESE TAKEOUT

1000KM - FUJIAN TO THE UNITED STATES

5年

8年

12年

11年

21年

3年

7年

6年

4年

THE RESTAURANT

I mention this to O’Neill, that everything I hear about the Chinese restaurant industry makes his life as a cook sound xinku, bitter. He responds matter-of-factly because he knows the trade-off he has made. “If the U.S. dollar depreciated to the yuan equally, presumably nobody would come to the United States!” O’Neill says, preferring to message me in English, though I suspect he is doing so with help from Google Translate. With an exchange rate of 6.88 Chinese yuan to 1 U.S. dollar, an uneducated or low-skill worker without resources or high-powered guanxi back in China can make a killing in America, frequently earning double the average salary in cities like Beijing and Shanghai. “Life is not perfect,” O’Neill declares. “Life in the United States is both good and bad! Have to pay the harvest!”

FOR THE HUSTLE

0 2 6

When I ask what “have to pay the harvest” refers to, he clarifies that this is a Chinese idiom that essentially means, “no pain, no gain.”

The unease around immigration often stems from a fear of people who are different from us. The unfamiliar can sometimes be disorienting, or even threatening. Because we live in a winner-takes -all world, there is no room for compromise in the gulf between us-versus-them. You’re either with us or against us, even though in the back of our minds we all know we or earlier generations of our families weren’t always a part of the “us.” Assimilation is a comforting ideal for mitigating the fear that comes with the constant flux of immigrants seeking opportunity and asylum in the U.S. But assimilation, even for those eager to adapt, is not easy. The great irony of working in the restaurant industry as a Chinese immigrant is that your labour plays a direct hand in preserving an iconic, much beloved staple of U.S. culture — Chinese takeout. Yet you are almost wholly excluded from American life due to your inability to communicate. There seems to never be enough time to learn English, and they have few resources and connections available with which to navigate mainstream society.

LIFE IS NOT PERFECT. LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES IS BOTH GOOD, AND BAD. HAVE TO PAY THE HARVEST. The Chinese gained a reputation for being a 'coolie class' that could be exploited beyond modern comprehension. The thinking became that no civilised white man could compete with their inhuman levels of endurance.

0 THE RESTAURANT

“They had little capital, yet wanted work that would avoid dependence on either white employers or workers,” the late sociologist Peter Kwong wrote in his book Chinatown, New York: Labor and Politics, 1930-1950. “Service jobs — as laundrymen, domestic servants, and workers in Chinese restaurants — fitted these requirements. Once the first Chinese began working in these areas, others followed, and they became ‘Chinese’ trades.”

0 2 8

Today, the majority of workers at Chinese restaurants, in New York and elsewhere, come from Fujian.

One day, a couple of months into our conversations over WeChat, O’Neill invites me to join him and some friends for a KTV outing. At KTV, you can carry on like kings with your closest friends — if for only one night. O’Neill and I make plans for the Sunday since the majority of his friends, who all work together at the Cottage, a Chinese restaurant near Union Square, have Mondays off. I have to take two trains to reach Legend KTV in Sunset Park’s Chinatown, a neighborhood where Fujianese immigrants can conduct their lives almost as if they are still in their homeland. I arrive at a quarter after 11 and wait in the lobby for O’Neill. The moment he walks through Legend’s doors is the first time we meet face to face. We chitchat briefly on the velour couches. Then, O’Neill disappears into a labyrinth of private rooms to see whether he can find his friends; he returns with Jack, a delivery worker in his mid-40s, who welcomes me to the party in confident English. He tells me he learned to speak English from the American girlfriend he lived with for four years in North Carolina. He seems to be the master of ceremonies for the evening. A couple is singing a duet in Chinese when we enter. Two glass coffee tables are crowded with halfdrunk bottles of Corona, plates of fresh fruit and black melon seeds, and plastic containers of bing fan or 'ice rice' — a concoction of shaved ice served over white rice, topped with chunks of watermelon, peanuts, fruit jellies, and cloud ear fungus. A giant glass appears and is filled with red wine before I can refuse. Cigarette smoke circulates the windowless room as people take turns belting Chinese

2 0 9

KATIE SALISBURY

A loophole in immigration legislation allowed a limited number of visas to be granted to Chinese who qualified as a special merchant class. Some immigrants pooled their money to open upscale chop suey palaces, taking turns running the establishments and bringing family members to the U.S. under the guise of working at the restaurant. By 1930, 84% of the Chinese working in New York were employed by restaurants or laundries.

Some enter the U.S. as refugees claiming asylum from China’s one-child policy (which relaxed in 2013 before being fully abolished in 2016) or fleeing the communist government’s religious intolerance. But many more workers come with the help of snakeheads, human smugglers who promise safe passage to the U.S. for $60,000 or more. Like their predecessors, the Fujianese arrive in the U.S. saddled with twin responsibilities: paying off the debt they owe to the snakehead and sending money home to relatives in need. The economic reality of their situation, the fact that they must work nonstop under these immense pressures, is accepted as a given, without complaint. Have to pay the harvest.

PAYING THE HARVEST

FOR THE HUSTLE

The rise of Chinese restaurants in the country can be traced back to a legacy of exclusion. The first Chinese were lured to the U.S. by the gold rush in California, but when that opportunity dried up, they found work building the Transcontinental Railroad. Chinese laborers, who were almost entirely men due to a wide variety of forces that discouraged or hindered Chinese women from immigrating, were willing to work for lower wages than most any other group and did some of the most dangerous labour, such as digging tunnels or blowing up mountainsides. The Chinese gained a reputation for being a 'coolie class' that could be exploited beyond modern comprehension. The thinking became that no civilised white man could compete with their inhuman levels of endurance. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, effectively placing a 61-year moratorium on Chinese immigration to the U.S. The law would not be repealed until 1943, when China garnered sympathy as a U.S. ally in World War II against the Japanese. As a result of discrimination and exclusionary practices, the Chinese were all but squeezed out of the regular labour force.

“This is how we enjoy ourselves, to have happy life. Tonight we have happy life.” At around 2 a.m., the songs finish, and the lights are flipped off. An LED disco ball transforms the room into an impromptu dance floor as Chinese techno throbs through the walls. Everyone is on their feet, jumping and sweating and twisting their bodies to the beat like there’s no tomorrow. By 3 the group has expended the last of the frenetic party energy, and people start to go. I leave the karaoke with O’Neill, his childhood friend Aaron and Jack; all three of them share the same hometown in Fujian. Staving off early-morning hunger pangs, we walk a few blocks into the heart of Sunset Park’s Chinatown in search of food. We sit down at a Fujianese restaurant where the three friends delight in having me try the dishes and flavours that remind them of home: bowls of noodles bathed in a subtle, fish-based broth; delicately folded, miniature wonton dumplings; savoury, fried doughnuts speckled with green onions.

We finish eating, and I start to order an Uber home. Instead, Jack calls a Chinese taxi service to pick me up. O’Neill accompanies me for the ride to Crown Heights even though he’ll have to double back to Sunset Park, where he lives. The car is quiet compared with the last several hours inside the Legend KTV. We talk about the diﬃculties of being far away from home — in my case a five-hour flight from California, in his case an entire continent away from China. When the driver stops at my building, I say goodnight and go into my apartment. It is almost 5 a.m., and the birds outside my window have begun their morning song. I climb into bed smelling of cheap cigarettes and start to drift off to sleep. My phone pings with a message from O’Neill: “I hope you are happy tonight.”

KATIE SALISBURY

The three friends delight in having me try the dishes and ﬂavours that remind them of home; bowls of noodles bathed in a subtle, ﬁsh-based broth; delicately folded, miniature wonton dumplings; savoury, fried doughnuts speckled with green onions.

3 0

PAYING THE HARVEST

THIS IS HOW WE ENJOY OURSELVES, TO HAVE HAPPY LIFE. TONIGHT WE HAVE HAPPY LIFE.

pop songs. O’Neill insists on speaking English to me despite his limited vocabulary, and, though I can barely decipher his accent over the music, I manage to make out one phrase that he repeats throughout the night:

THE RESTAURANT

A CENTURY OF FLAVOURS

0 ON HER 99TH BIRTHDAY, Cecilia Chiang wore a print silk shirt and black trousers, slipped on two thick, glittering cocktail rings, and met her granddaughter for an early lunch at Yank Sing. But before she could put in an order for her favourite dish — juicy pea-shoot dumplings — a halfdozen servers in burgundy visors dropped by to say hello, and several diners crossed the room, crouching by her table, leaning in to be heard above the clatter of steam trolleys as they said,

3 0 5

“Happy birthday!”

A CENTURY OF FLAVOURS

1000KM - FUJIAN TO THE UNITED STATES

In 1961, Ms. Chiang opened the Mandarin, a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco that rejected the American clichés of thickly sauced stir-fries served in pseudoexotic settings. She built her reputation exalting regional Chinese cuisine, often guiding diners toward the unfamiliar and the delicious. Using a glamorous dining room as her platform, she worked to undo decades of anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States and broaden the understanding of Chinese culture. She made that work seem effortless. But it wasn’t. Racist landlords tried to discourage her as she worked to open a larger location. Diners accustomed to inexpensive Chinese food complained about the prices. Ms. Chiang was a woman in her 40s, starting her business in a new country, in an industry dominated by men. But under her command, the Mandarin thrived, becoming one of the nation’s most influential restaurants of its time. “I didn’t know I had a talent, I didn’t know I had a palate,” Ms. Chiang said during her birthday lunch on September 18th, gripping a pair of disposable chopsticks. She finds them easier to handle with her arthritic hands than the fancy kind, which are too slippery.

0 36

TEJAL RAO

Today, she lives alone in a penthouse apartment, filled with Chinese art and photos of her family and friends alongside the chefs she has mentored.

TEJAL RAO

“If I hadn’t come to the United States, I’d probably be a housewife.”

THE RESTAURANT

“I love my life,” Ms. Chiang said, beaming. “You can probably tell that I’m a very happy person.” Every day, Ms. Chiang checks email on her phone and reads a hard copy of the newspaper, then takes the elevator down to do her stretches in the park across the street. Though her favourite cleaver has become too heavy for her to manoeuvre, Ms. Chiang still cooks. A regular dinner for one involves a small, whole bass tucked under a disposable shower cap — she has collected so many over the years while travelling, and doesn’t like to see them go to waste. For her shortcut to Hangzhou-style fish, she stuffs the belly with raw ginger and scallion whites, dribbles Chinese wine and soy sauce around the fish, then zaps it in the microwave until it’s cooked. The shower cap comes off, and the fish is ready.

FOR THE FOOD

More often, though, she goes out for dinner. At new restaurants in the Bay Area, she recognizes diners who came to the Mandarin. Ms. Chiang remembers their faces, their names, their favourite tables, their drink orders, their allergies. She remembers it all. “But I think something is going on with my short -term memory,” she confided to her granddaughter Siena Chiang. “The other day, I went into a room in my apartment, but then I couldn't remember why.”

A GENTLE BUT REVOLUTIONARY INSTRUCTION: IMAGINE YOU ARE A CHINESE FAMILY.

Her grand-daughter tried to reassure her, “That happens to me, that happens to everyone! That’s never happened to you before?” Ms. Chiang shook her head, “Never.”

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Her memory is a treasure, precise and expansive, reaching back to Beijing in the early 20th century, to places and flavours that no longer exist. Ms. Chiang had never worked in a restaurant before she ran one herself. She wasn’t a home cook, either. Growing up one of 12 coddled children, in a stylish, upper-class home in Beijing where servants did all the work, she wasn’t even allowed into the kitchen. But her memories from around the table are clear and vivid, at dinner parties and festivals at home, where the family employed two full-time cooks, and out in the city’s grandest restaurants, which served

She built her reputation exalting regional Chinese cuisine, often guiding diners to the unfamiliar and the delicious. She encouraged American diners to learn and adapt to an immigrant cuisine and its traditions, rather than the other way around.

0 THE RESTAURANT

specialties from every province. Ms. Chiang remembers her mother’s version of raw freshwater shrimp dipped in peppery bean curd, and her siblings’ favourite snacks after school: dark, shiny buns filled with lamb, and fried bread dipped in hot goat’s milk. Without notes or photos, she can recall complex 12-course banquets she ate as a child, from the first bite of fresh almonds and plum wine, to the last piece of cut fruit.

These memories have guided Ms. Chiang in the kitchen. When writing her first menu at the Mandarin, she introduced San Francisco diners to Mongolian lamb, and beggar’s chicken, a whole bird wrapped in lotus leaves and cooked in clay. It wasn’t just the food itself that was unusual at the time. The menu began with:

“It tastes like a Japanese dish,” her grand-daughter said, approvingly.

3 0

“No, no,” Ms. Chiang said, “this is a Chinese dish. The Japanese got this from us!”

A week earlier, Ms. Chiang was at work in Yank Sing’s kitchen, informally consulting. She walked through the technique for that tofu, tweaking the sauce with pickled mustard greens, noting how much sesame oil should come through. This was her life’s work, and it didn’t end when she sold her restaurant, or when she stopped being able to prep ingredients with a cleaver, or when she turned 99. Ms. Chiang could still teach dishes exactly as she remembered them. And if only one more person could cook one more piece of this vast cuisine, then maybe the flavours of Ms. Chiang’s childhood could outlast her memory of them.

FOR THE FOOD

This was a gentle but revolutionary instruction: she was encouraging American diners to learn and adapt to an immigrant cuisine and its traditions, rather than the other way around. In the first week of service, she scribbled in blue ink all over the menu, taking notes based on conversations with her diners, on how to more clearly explain dishes. Dishes that weren’t popular enough, or didn’t really stand a chance (like a time-consuming three-bean dessert) were simply scratched out.

*Ms. Chiang passed away on 26 October 2020, aged 100.

驾鹤西归

A CENTURY OF FLAVOURS

“Imagine that you are a Chinese family.”

Vale,

In the 1990s, Ms. Chiang sold the Mandarin, and the restaurant closed in 2006. By that time, many of the dishes she had helped to popularize had become standards at other Chinese restaurants. She did her best to take it as a compliment. At lunch, she slid a bowl of cool, fresh bean curd across the table to her grand-daughter.

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It was new on the menu at Yank Sing, and Ms. Chiang had played a hand in getting it there. “What do you think?”

Cecilia.

TEJAL RAO

“Try the tofu,” she urged.

THE RESTAURANT

TEJAL RAO

4 0

A CENTURY OF FLAVOURS

FOR THE FOOD

PEA-SHOOT DUMPLINGS / WHOLE BASS / HANGZHOU-STYLE FISH / RAW GINGER / SCALLION WHITES / CHINESE WINE / SOY SAUCE / RAW FRESHWATER SHRIMP DIPPED IN PEPPERY BEAN CURD / DARK, SHINY BUNS FILLED WITH LAMB / FRIED BREAD DIPPED IN HOT GOAT'S MILK / FRESH ALMONDS / PLUM WINE / CUT FRUIT / MONGOLIAN LAMB / BEGGAR'S CHICKEN / THREE-BEAN DESSERT / FRESH BEAN CURD / TOFU / PICKLED SESAME OIL / MUSTARD GREENS

THE RESTAURANT

1. Wash the fish and dry well, then cut into slices. 2. Mix the egg white, cornstarch, and salt into a batter. 3. Coat the fish slices with the batter. Heat the oil to very hot. 4. Add the fish and stir-fry until cooked. Remove and drain. 5. Reheat the wok, add scallions and garlic. Fry until fragrant. 6. Add the fish and sprinkle it with the rice wine. 7. Add the rest of batter. Tip the wok to swirl everything together. Once golden, remove from the wok. 8. Enjoy the dish!

州

1/2 ts salt 1/2 ts mashed garlic 2 ts cornstarch 1/2 ts rice wine

TEJAL RAO

4 0

A CENTURY OF FLAVOURS

HANGZHOU-STYLE FISH

FOR THE FOOD

杭

3 1/2 oz skinned fish fillet 4 tb vegetable oil 1 egg white 1/2 ts scallions

THE MIGRATION OF CHINESE FOOD TO SYDNEY

How has Chinese food entered the mainstream public imagination?

食物喂

XIAO LONG BAO CHANGZHOU

SYDNEY

饺子

DUMPLINGS CHINA

SYDNEY

BRAISED 红烧 EGGPLANT 茄子 SICHUAN

SYDNEY

炒饭

FRIED RICE CHINA

SYDNEY

7997km

9156km

8750km

9156km

麻MALATANG 辣烫

DIM SUM 点心

WONTON

云吞

北PEKING 京 DUCK 烤鸭

SICHUAN

SYDNEY

GUANGZHOU

SYDNEY

GUANGDONG

SYDNEY

NANJING

SYDNEY

8750km

7497km

7422km

8073km

椒盐鱿鱼

CHICKEN FEET

凤爪

& EGG蛋番TOMATO 茄炒

SWEET & SOUR PORK

SALT & PEPPER SQUID GUANGZHOU

SYDNEY

CHONGQING

SYDNEY

CHINA

SYDNEY

咕噜肉

GUANGZHOU

SYDNEY

7497km

8434km

9156km

7497km

油條

BLACK BEAN NOODLES

炸酱面

GREEN 干煸BEANS 四 &季PORK 豆

CHOW MEIN

YOUTIAO HANGZHOU

SYDNEY

7837km

SHANDONG

SYDNEY

8487km

SICHUAN

SYDNEY

8750km

炒面

TAISHAN

SYDNEY

7443km

锄禾日当午汗滴禾下土谁知盘中餐粒粒皆辛苦 — UNKNOWN

02 THE GROCERY STORE

FOR THE COMMUNITY

5 0

THE UNSUNG HEROES OF IMMIGRANT LIFE

BY LOUISE HUNG

FOR THE FOOD

ALL HAIL THE ASIAN SUPERMARKET BY CATHY ERWAY

THE GROCERY STORE JENNIFER WEN

THE GROCERY STORE

THE CHINESE GROCERY STORE was, and still is, one of my favourite places to shop for food. I am always hit with a rush of excitement, like a kid in a candy shop, when I enter. The bright fluorescent lights. The aisles of fresh green produce that I only know by taste and sight, but not name. The shelves of brightly-packaged snacks, waiting to be tried. As a child, I regarded the Asian grocery store like a foreign and exciting land. It was no Woolworths, or Coles with their neatly organised shelves and clear signage. It was an entirely different beast, one that had not been scrubbed of personality â&#x20AC;&#x201D; instead bursting with migrant charm. They didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stock the regular KitKats that I would usually nag my mum for, but had flavours like green tea or sakura. The women working the checkout counters wore aprons and finger-guards to count money with. The fridges were full of curios like fish balls and pandan soy milk. We would spend half an hour there each Saturday and leave, arms weighed down with kai lan, king oyster mushrooms and wagyu beef. Ethnic grocery stores are a cornerstone of the migrant experience, even for 2nd generation kids like myself. In them, we connected to our roots and found a sense of belonging through things as simple as a pack of QQ gummies. For my parents, it was a way to keep alive the taste of home and to give their children food that they themselves grew up on. They are the reason why I have grown up knowing what authentic Chinese cooking tastes like, even if I have been raised in a small Sydney suburb 7497 kilometres away from mainland China. They may be small corner stores, or hole-in-the-wall shopfronts, but they have tethered migrants to a sense of familiarity and community, and for that, their presence is gargantuan.

FOR THE COMMUNITY

FOR THE FOOD

If she caught me staring at her, she’d say, “You know, this was my McDonald’s chicken nuggets when I was your age. It’s so good!”

5 0 9

It was the closest I got to seeing my aunt as a human being, not just the woman who told me I had to brush my teeth more often. Us kids were allowed to basically run rampant in the store — much to the chagrin of the grocery store employees. It was one of the very few places that my mum felt safe letting us disappear for a bit. We would gravitate to the candy aisle where chocolate biscuits in the shape of cheeseburgers and koala bears, little spheres of chewing gum packaged in tiny square boxes, rice paper candy, Haw Flakes or saan zaa beng (pressed wafers made out of Hawthorn Fruit), and almond cookies were. We would load up our hands to then negotiate with our parents over what to add to the basket.

I always marvelled at how much more social my parents, aunt, and uncle became at the Chinese grocery. My aunt would stop to talk with the fishmonger about what was a good way to cook the recommended fresh fish that day; my mum would address the women who worked there familiarly, casually chatting with them in Cantonese, and even complimenting their hairstyle or 'how young' they looked; occasionally, my dad would even strike up a conversation with the elderly store manager about some random topic like public transportation in Hong Kong or the best seafood shop in Sai Kung.

LOUISE HUNG

SOMETHING about going to the Chinese grocery put me at ease as a kid. Walking into the harshly lit store, with no-frills Chinese-language displays, and aisle upon aisle of fermented fish or bean pastes, it seemed as if my whole family unclenched. When my mum would find a sweet from her childhood in Hong Kong, she’d call my uncle over and for a moment, they’d laugh over some inside joke from their youth. It was like watching them grow young again. My usually stoic aunt would purposefully walk the aisles stocking up on noodles, rice, and various seasonings, sauces, and pastes. Every now and then, she’d come across a favorite treat — an indulgence she rarely afforded herself — and she’d smile as she tossed it into the cart.

THE UNSUNG HEROES OF IMMIGRANT LIFE

THE GROCERY STORE

0 Sometimes the conversations would get heated, lapsing into the kind of rapid, complicated Cantonese (translation: cursing) that I couldn’t quite understand. I’d think my dad and the manager were arguing, and then, just when I’d really start to sweat, they’d explode in laughter. If I caught the tail end of that laughter, that was my cue to head over, and sometimes the manager would give me a free book mark or cookie. The manager would ask if I could understand Cantonese or speak it, and my dad would explain that I could understand but I was shy. The manager would then say kindly, but with no less gravity, “You must know your language, where you came from. It’s so important. You are Chinese.”

The burden of assimilation, being 'more American than America' usually falls on the immigrant. However, at the Chinese grocery store, my family felt like they could shed one part of their American persona: the foreigner.

LOUISE HUNG

As accepting as 1980s Seattle was, some people still had a hard time hearing beyond my family’s accents or bridging the cultural gap. They still do. Because of this, the burden of assimilation, being 'more American than America' usually falls on the immigrant. Being a migrant can be akin to always 'sucking in your gut' when you are out in the world. But at the Chinese grocery store, we could just be. My family could finally exhale. This experience is not unique to only my family. In recent years, Asian grocery stores have gained popularity as places to buy inexpensive and 'unusual' foods and goods. However, before Asian and ethnic markets were 'discovered' by foodies and hipsters, they were helping immigrants to feel a little less strange in an unfamiliar land. For many immigrants, trying to forge their own way into American culture with little to no help, ethnic grocery stores, department stores, and markets were, and continue to be, a bridge to American culture. These stores act as places where immigrants find help, or the conduit through which help is found when adapting to a new life and culture.

THE UNSUNG HEROES OF IMMIGRANT LIFE

FOR THE COMMUNITY

We’d pay for our goods at the front of the store, with the unsmiling and eﬃcient check-out person, then head back out to our American lives. The smell of fish would cling to our clothes for a while, and my family would leave a little more buoyant. At the Chinese grocery store my family felt like they could shed one part of their American persona: the foreigner.

SUCH STORES PROVIDE BELONGING AND A FORM OF CULTURAL TRANSLATION FOR IMMIGRANTS.

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0 THE GROCERY STORE

Mrs. Chen told The New York Times in 2015, “We are probably one of the few pioneers that does that in Chinatown — I’m proud to say that. Most of Chinatown, everything is in cash. In that

And employees do stay. Wilkie Wong started to work for the Chens in 1982 as a part-time employee and a recent immigrant from Burma. Decades later, he has now worked his way up to vice president. Lapyan Ng worked for Pearl River for over 20 years, having started after moving to New York from Hong Kong. Indeed Pearl River has long been a place where migrants not only get their start, but can also sustain a life in America.

Such stores provide belonging and a form of cultural translation for immigrants. This can be found in the gleaming displays of Pearl River Mart or the crowded, harshly lit aisles of a Chinatown grocery like the one from my childhood. Whether they are literally making life possible by giving people a way to earn money and make a living, or simply making the transition to life in America a little less lonely or daunting, Asian grocery stores serve a vital purpose to immigrant communities. Even as a kid who just wanted to dash for the sweets aisle, I somehow understood — in my family’s behaviour, in the way my mum scanned the bulletin board, in how the store felt like a gathering place rather than just a supermarket — that the Chinese grocery store bolstered my family to keep plugging away at American life. A taste of home, gave them a sense of hope.

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LOUISE HUNG

Pearl River Mart in New York has been providing not only a connection to home, but also much needed jobs to Chinese immigrants for decades. Opened in 1971 by Ming Yi and Ching Yeh Chen, the department store started not only as an attempt to somewhat de-mystify mainland China in America, but also to supply Asian-Americans with some familiar comforts. Starting with items like soy sauce from back home, the store has expanded to sell other Asian and South Asian products, as well as typical Chinese items like lanterns, fans, and tea sets. However, Pearl River Mart, now run by the Chens’ daughter-in-law, Joanne Kwong (now at its fifth location in Manhattan since opening), also carries exclusive teas and traditional special occasion items that aren’t always readily available in mainstream shops. The store seems to strike a careful balance between authenticity and mainstream demand. For many of Pearl River’s employees, working at the store was their first job after they immigrated to the U.S. Not only could they work in a place where both Cantonese and Mandarin were spoken, but Pearl River was a place where they could receive health insurance. In the landscape of businesses or shops that primarily employ immigrants, health insurance and a fair pay is a rarity. More so, Pearl River has even helped some of its employees gain green cards.

sense, we are pretty fair, and people will stay here long enough.”

THE UNSUNG HEROES OF IMMIGRANT LIFE

FOR THE COMMUNITY

Not only can immigrants find their comfort foods and goods from back home, but they also have a chance to communicate, in their own language, with people who may have been in the country longer than them and can share some insight into assimilating. Just being able to get a newspaper written in your mother tongue can be a relief. And never underestimate the power of a bulletin board or “community corner” that has postings in various languages, offering everything from English classes to multilingual real estate agents. Some Asian grocery stores even host events recognising festivals from their clients’ native countries, whilst others have community outreach arms that work to unite and advocate for the immigrant community.

LOUISE HUNG

THE UNSUNG HEROES OF IMMIGRANT LIFE

1000KM - FUJIAN TO THE UNITED STATES

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THE GROCERY STORE

ALL HAIL THE ASIAN SUPERMARKET

As we got older, my brother and I would wander the aisles independently, ogling at the colourful landscape of Japanese and Korean candies. Sometimes we got to take these treats home — like cookie sticks dipped in chocolate, fruit-flavoured jellies in plastic cups, and rolls of hawthorne berry flakes. Sippy boxes of guava juice were the pride and joy of school lunches the week after we went to the Chinese supermarket. Other weeks, it might be starfruit. Or sometimes, instant ramen with elaborate flavour packets.

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CATHY ERWAY

WHEN MY MOTHER MOVED to New Jersey in the early 1980s, it was the first place where she couldn’t shop for food like she’d done all her life. Having lived only in large cities like Taipei, San Francisco, and New York, her everyday produce, meats, and pantry staples like rice and sauces could be purchased in small shops or stands you’d travel to by foot. When I was a toddler, she’d often take me in her hand-me-down Buick station wagon to a place I would regard with the same delight as Disneyland: the Asian supermarket. While she loaded up for the next couple weeks, I had a shopping cart child-seat view of the action: Around one corner, blue crabs rustling from wooden baskets threatened to poke anyone who came too close with their outstretched claws. Silvery whole fish were netted from tanks, killed, and gutted, while clams and abalone lay on ice in their pearlescent shells. At the butcher counter, mountains of ground pork were scooped up beside mahogany lobes of pork liver, translucent sacks of honeycomb tripe, and black chickens wrapped in cellophane. Meanwhile, other aisles reeked of dried seafood. Cuttlefish snacks — a stringy, fishy jerky that my mum would devour in front of the TV — and dried shiitake mushrooms were always dropped into the cart. In the produce section, the pungent smell of fresh scallions, bundled like towering green haystacks, overwhelmed leafy greens, elongated gourds, and fresh bamboo shoots that resembled a mythical beast’s horns filled the aisles. This wasn’t the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ride at Disneyland, but Kam Man Foods of East Hanover, New Jersey, a branch of a small chain that was founded in 1972 in New York City as the first Chinese supermarket on the East Coast, according to their website. Every trip there held exciting new thrills.

ALL HAIL THE ASIAN SUPERMARKET

1000KM - FUJIAN TO THE UNITED STATES

EVERY TRIP THERE HELD NEW THRILLS. EVERY TRIP THERE HELD NEW THRILLS. EVERY TRIP THERE HELD NEW THRILLS. EVERY TRIP THERE HELD NEW THRILLS. EVERY TRIP THERE HELD NEW THRILLS. EVERY TRIP THERE HELD NEW THRILLS. EVERY TRIP THERE HELD NEW THRILLS. EVERY TRIP THERE HELD NEW THRILLS. EVERY TRIP THERE HELD NEW THRILLS. EVERY TRIP THERE HELD NEW THRILLS. EVERY TRIP THERE HELD NEW THRILLS. EVERY TRIP THERE HELD NEW THRILLS. IVER

KL POR

GOURDS

S BLUE CRAB

RICE

HOOTS BAMBOO S

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DRIED SH

IITAKE

SCALLION

CLAMS

TTL

ENS BLACK CHICK

INSTANT

RAMEN

GREE LEAFY

EFI

FRUIT-FLAVOUR

ED JELLIES

B TRIPE

HONEYCOM

SILVERY FISH

UIT

STARFR

HAWTHORNE BERRY FLAK

THE UNSUNG HEROES OF IMMIGRANT LIFE

NE ABALO

COOK IE

JUICE GUAVA

DIE

A place I regarded with the same delight as Disneyland: the Asian supermarket.

ND ROU

PORK

LOUISE HUNG

CAN

STICK

THE GROCERY STORE

0 “America post-1965 brought a wave of people that were here to settle and make kids,” says Jennifer Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. She explains that the first wave of Asian immigrants were mostly men who were here to work, send money home, and eventually move back to Asia. Then came anti-immigration laws and limitations on what work immigrants could do in America. Eventually, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 eased restrictions on immigration from Asia. “This suburban Asian-American experience is much more common after the 1960s and ’70s. It’s sort of the boom in Asian immigration,” says Ellen Wu, the director of Asian-American studies at Indiana University.

FOR THE FOOD

“What you are getting are people from Asia who are working tech jobs or STEM jobs,” she says.

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“You could just grab it oﬀ the shelves? You could steal it? That was my first impression,” he says.

Despite how stringent, or American it is compared to in Asia, I always felt that the Asian supermarket was a markedly different experience than going to the local American supermarket. Different products aside, it was more visceral to the senses — especially the scents.

So, not manual laborers but high earners. They were not just settling in the suburbs of coastal cities:

“It’s a comforting sort of smell to me,” says Wu, who grew up in Indiana with parents from Hong Kong and Taiwan. “Even in the newer, modern [groceries], you’ve still got the smells.”

“Think Houston and Dallas, places in New Jersey or the suburbs of Chicago.”

And in a land that is far away from home, something as simple as a scent can be transformative.

ALL HAIL THE ASIAN SUPERMARKET

She attributes the rise in suburban Asian-American living during this period to the changing U.S. economy and immigration patterns from Asia.

The concept of one store where you could purchase all kinds of food products — meat and seafood, dry goods and sauces, produce — all under one roof is a unique experience for many Asians arriving in America. The concept of bargaining for groceries is big in many Asian countries, while here it is not. For Jason Wang, the chef-owner of Xi’an Famous Foods, grocery stores in America held a different kind of novelty and amusement:

Much has been said about the first Asian-American restaurants and how they sprang from anti-labour acts and a predominantly male population without families. But once Asian families were able to come to America, a new food-business genre took off. Families need a place to buy groceries — the limited 'international' aisle at the typical American supermarket just doesn’t cut it for many immigrants.

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CATHY ERWAY

“You always have to figure out, where do you get good soy sauce?” Lee observes, noting that some brands of Asian food products in America have fake or random characters that are there for appearances and to only create the illusion of authenticity. Therefore, the products are not really intended for immigrant consumers.

THE GROCERY STORE

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LOUISE HUNG

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THE UNSUNG HEROES OF IMMIGRANT LIFE

1000KM - FUJIAN TO THE UNITED STATES FOR THE FOOD

BLUE CRABS / SILVERY WHOLE FISH / CLAMS / PORK LIVER / ABALONE / HONEYCOMB TRIPE / BLACK CHICKENS / DRIED SEAFOOD / CUTTLEFISH SNACKS / STRINGY FISH JERKY / DRIED SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS / FRESH SCALLIONS / ELONGATED GOURDS / LEAFY GREENS / FRESH BAMBOO SHOOTS / JAPANESE AND KOREAN CANDY / COOKIE STICKS DIPPED IN CHOCOLATE / HAWTHORNE BERRY FLAKES / FRUIT-FLAVOURED JELLIES / GUAVA JUICE / STARFRUIT / INSTANT RAMEN PACKETS

THE GROCERY STORE

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It’s nearly mid-autumn. I spy the tins at the Asian grocer—gaudy red peonies unchanged for forty years. Of course I buy the mooncakes with double yolks:

here in Australia, yolk or no yolk, they cost the same. I should wait for you, wait for the full moon, light some lanterns and try to make out the lunar rabbit, the Chinese fairy, but I don’t. I cut the mooncake into quarters and spoon out the deep orange yolks, leaving half-round cavities in the sweet

已近中秋，我打量着亚洲超市里，花哨的红牡丹铁盒，四十年未变。月饼，一定是双黄的才好。

THE UNSUNG HEROES OF IMMIGRANT LIFE

1000KM - FUJIAN TO THE UNITED STATES

lotus paste. Eaten on their own, the yolks are creamy, almost too salty. A continent away, my mother in her kitchen would be slicing through shell and briny white, my father would be scraping duck eggs into rice porridge. They always saved me the yolks. My bowl, a cradle of bright congee full of the gold of the mid-autumn moon.

在澳洲，有黄无黄，都卖得一样贵。那一轮中秋圆月，我应该等等你。点上灯笼，试图辨出玉兔和嫦娥，但我没有。将月饼切成四块，挖出金黄的蛋黄，留下半圆缺口，在香甜莲蓉中。

只吃蛋黄，奶油般丝滑，稍咸了几分。隔着一个大洋的距离，母亲这时该在厨房，

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而我别离的碗中，映着中秋月之金。

— EILEEN CHONG

LOUISE HUNG

切开鸭蛋壳，露出咸蛋白，父亲会将蛋黄碎放入白粥，他们总是把蛋黄留给我。

03 THE KITCHEN

FOR THE LOVE

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HAVE YOU EATEN YET?

BY LANCE TRAN

90 BY JACK CHANG

PASSED DOWN THROUGH GENERATIONS 99 BY JACKIE WONG

RICE IS A HIGHWAY

FOR THE FOOD

THE KITCHEN JENNIFER WEN

THE KITCHEN

THE KITCHEN IS THE HEART of the home. Whilst this may not be the case for some, it is definitely true for me. Amongst migrant families, especially Chinese migrant families, food is the clearest way to express your care and affection for others in a culture that otherwise practices emotional stoicism. For generations, food has been used to bridge divides and find common ground. For Chinese migrants, the kitchen and ritual of cooking allows you to stay connected to your roots whilst also embracing a new homeland. And for the children of migrants, food is a way to understand a culture that you belong to, but don't necessarily understand. My family’s love language does not use words, but meals. My household revolves around dinner time. In the morning, before my mother departs for work, she will select the produce and protein for dinner that night, and leave them out for preparation. My brother and I take over the washing and chopping of veggies later on in the afternoon, to get the raw ingredients ready for cooking. And when my father returns from work, he starts cooking that night's evening meal. Dinner is always an eclectic affair — East meets West each day on the plate. Chinese broccoli is served alongside chicken parmigiana and bowls of white rice, and after, vanilla ice cream is topped with black sesame sauce and tang yuan. The food we eat is a strange hybrid that is not ‘authentic’ to any culture, but speaks uniquely to our Chinese-Australian tastebuds. It is food born from my brother and I’s love for Western flavours, tempered by my parents’ traditional Eastern palates to form a happy medium. Each bite I take at dinner, I can taste the 20 years my parents have spent in this country, adapting and assimilating. And although it is rarely said aloud, each bite tastes of love.

FOR THE LOVE

FOR THE FOOD

HAVE YOU EATEN YET?

“HAVE YOU EATEN YET?” is a common greeting among the older Chinese generation from times when food was not so abundant, as a way to say hello and also ask, 'how are you?' I realized not too long ago that almost every time I speak to my grandmother on the phone, this is the first question that she asks me. It’s funny how much my family talks about food: my mum or dad will often call just to ask what I’m eating, what I’ve been cooking. They’ll tell me about the dishes they’ve recently cooked or send pictures of new foods they’ve tried. I grew up in a restaurant family and ‘helped’ my parents prepare food before I could even count to 10, learned the ins and outs of the kitchen before I graduated 5th grade, and started waiting tables in middle school. I’ve always been surrounded by food, and feel at home in a busy kitchen during dinner rush. This love for food runs in my family, but I’ve been thinking more about why food means so much to me, and why people feel so strongly about it. It’s mundane, it’s constant, it’s sometimes boring. It’s there when we share heated arguments over Thanksgiving turkey, or chatter over hotpot in the cold winter, or kick back over barbecue. But food has so much meaning because it often carries a story.

LANCE TRAN

During the Cultural Revolution, my grandfather spent years in a labour camp where food was hard to come by and family visitations were allowed only every once in a blue moon. When a visit was allowed, my grandmother would hurry to cook up some hard-to-come-by flour with sugar and send it with my five-year old mother, making her promise not to eat any and to save it for my grandpa. However, upon receiving the sweet treat, my grandpa would share it with my mother anyway. Years later, my aunt as a young girl would be sent to live in the rural villages as part of Mao's Up the Mountains, Down the Countryside Campaign. My grandmother would cook food especially spicy to fend off any potential thieves, in the hopes that her daughter could eat more. Whenever my grandpa heard that somebody was visiting from the village my aunt was in, he would rush home to knead some dough, and steam some buns to send for her to eat.

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HAVE YOU EATEN YET?

LANCE TRAN

吃

FOR THE LOVE

Food history offers an understanding of what we eat in a broader context of migration patterns and cultural exchanges. These dynamics matter, and help explain why some cuisines are seen as cheap and destined for take-out and others are expensive and seem to belong on white tablecloths. It matters because it’s such important part of people’s culture, identity and agency. It’s why people feel so upset when seeing their food misrepresented, misconstrued, exploited or disrespected. So when someone chooses to share their home food with you, appreciate it for what it might mean to them. Many Asian parents don’t always say 'I love you,' or 'I miss you,' or 'I wish that I could see you.' But when my family asks if I’ve eaten today, I know what it means.

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Food brings back memories and comforts, and for that reason, we choose to share. It is a way to connect to our culture and home.

LANCE TRAN

IT'S MUNDANE, IT'S CONSTANT, IT'S SOMETIMES BORING... BUT FOOD HAS SO MUCH MEANING BECAUSE IT CARRIES A STORY

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HAVE YOU EATEN YET?

THE KITCHEN

I think about how these are the very same buns that they made for me when I was growing up, and I can’t help but feel guilty for ever wasting a bite. My grandma loves to share her recipes with me, and when I ask, every recipe comes with a different story. The cha siu bao I love is the same my mother discovered in Hong Kong. The curry I cook is the same my grandmother learned to make from her childhood in Myanmar. The cheung fun I enjoy is the same my father cooked whilst finding his way in Kansas City. The Hakka food I dream about while cramming for mid-terms is the same my ancestors shared in China. Food brings back memories and comforts, and for that reason, we choose to share. It is a way to connect to our culture and home. And through the relationship between our foods and our cultures, food acts as a means for achieving agency and self-expression.

THE AFTERNOON SHADOWS LENGTHEN in my grandparents’ living room in southwest San Jose, and like a sacred ritual, preparations begin for that night’s dinner. Pork morsels sizzle in a pan while my grandfather slices chicken with a cleaver on a wooden block. The scent of hard-boiled eggs simmering in soy sauce fills the kitchen as does the fragrant aroma of rice steaming in its cooker. Over it all, floats the dialogue of a Chinese soap opera playing on the TV and my grandmother’s voice talking in her flat central Chinese accent to one of my aunts. I spent years’ worth of lazy afternoons in that apartment sharing family gossip, while enjoying the kind of Chinese home cooking only offered to family and close friends. As natural cooks, my grandparents prepared throwbacks to the unfussy food that people ate nearly a century ago on the banks of the Yangtze River or in the Pearl River Delta, where they grew up. Some days, my grandmother would toil in the kitchen for hours shredding turnips and then shaping the flakes into a pork-flecked loaf that she would slice and then fry, turning out their version of turnip cakes, a dim sum favorite. Other days, their small home would bubble with the aroma of pork belly steamed in soy sauce on a bed of preserved mustard greens. The pork was cooked so tenderly, it would dissolve into pure flavour on my tongue. I recently dined in a Sunnyvale restaurant with a couple I know, and the wife brought along her father, who is from Beijing. When I ordered that same dish of pork belly and mustard greens, the father laughed. “I haven’t had that for so long,” he said, amused that I had chosen a home-style dish like that in a restaurant.

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PASSED DOWN THROUGH GENERATIONS

It didn’t stop him, however, from eating slice after slice of the savoury pork, chased down with rice and clumps of salty greens.

JACK CHANG

Both of my maternal grandparents died last year, first my grandmother in February at age 96 and then her husband nine months later at 100. My memories of them, however, survive in the lingering flavours of braised beef with orange slices, now shared among the remaining family. Both grandparents barely survived World War II and the Chinese Civil War before fleeing to the island

1000KM - FUJIAN TO THE UNITED STATES

KATIE SALISBURY

They put together their food from memory like how people speak their native languages.

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AMERICAN DREAMS IN A CHINESE TAKEOUT

THE RESTAURANT

FOOD MEANT LOVE AND FAMILY AND MEMORY. LIKE A FAVOURITE SONG OR MOVIE, FOOD CAN TAKE US BACK IN TIME. COOKING THESE DISHES KEEPS THEM ALIVE, LONG AFTER THOSE LOST TO US HAVE JOINED THE IRRETRIEVABLE PAST.

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“How exactly do I make that? In what order do I prepare everything? And with how much of each ingredient?” Rather than cups or tablespoons, she used her own lingo in those jotted-down recipes. For the pork belly, she advised cutting the meat into mahjong tile-sized pieces. The soy sauce was measured using Chinese spoons — those porcelain or plastic implements that restaurants bring with hot and sour soup. For some of the spices, I had no idea how to translate the names into English and asked her to write the words down in Chinese instead. Her handwriting still marks the pages of my old journal. When I tried making her Lion’s Head pork meatballs, I was surprised by how simple the recipe was or how flavourful the dish turned out. The recipe didn’t call for any other seasoning on the ground pork but salt and soy sauce. It was just the heartiest dish she could make with the ingredients she had at hand when she had to feed a house full of hungry kids. Now, tasting those meatballs, I can’t help but think back to my grandmother picking through mustard greens, while insisting that I eat another piece of chicken. I remember how lunch used to start with my grandfather emerging from the kitchen holding a baking pan of steak, which he proudly set in front of me. Like a favorite song or movie, food can take us back in time. The flavours and smells belong to those lost to us who knew the power of the food they were preparing. Cooking the dishes keeps them alive, long after they’ve joined the irretrievable past.

JACK CHANG

When I was young, my grandfather would try to please his American-born grandson by broiling a steak as I waited on the white leather couch and watched soap operas with the sound turned down. Only after insisting repeatedly that I preferred Chinese food over tri-tip did he instead concentrate on dishes such as Zhajiang noodles prepared in a thick savory black bean sauce and shredded chicken stir-fried with hot peppers. They put together their food from memory, like how people speak their native languages, and came up with the night’s repertoire by searching their refrigerator stuffed full of Chinese green beans, baking soda, a whole chicken and, for some reason, always a white gallon jug of Tropicana orange juice. My grandmother was ruthless when eating at Chinese restaurants around the Bay, spending half the meal trashing the food or service, only occasionally admitting that one dish or other was done right. She knew that whatever they ordered, they could make it better at home. The message was clear, no matter the dish: food meant love, and serving a mediocre lunch was tantamount to family betrayal.

I’m glad now that I had the foresight to sit down with my grandmother in 2003 and have her detail for me how to cook some of my most beloved specialties. She often had to stop and think in the middle of remembering:

PASSED DOWN THROUGH GENERATIONS

FOR THE FOOD

of Taiwan following the Communist takeover of the mainland in 1949. They both worked as schoolteachers there until they joined their children in the South Bay in the 1980s and settled in theirmodest two-bedroom home in a senior complex. On some of the afternoons I spent with them, my grandmother would tell me stories of how she suffered the indignity of going without food during the war. Separated from her family and bouncing among refugee schools, she subsisted on ground corn cob boiled in hot water, she said with livid embarrassment. So I understood, she described in detail how farmers delivered the corn cob meal in filthy sacks and how passing children would taunt her and her friends as “the Corn Cob Gang” when they saw them eating. In comparison, my grandfather grew up in a wealthy southern Chinese family and inherited that region’s love of dancing and feasting — steamed fish, homemade char siu sausages and, of course, dim sum. His family owned a swathe of land in the Guangdong province worked by tenant farmers, and that love of the soil stayed in his blood. Even after settling in California, he grew herbs and dried sausages on his tiny, fenced apartment terrace.

THE KITCHEN

JACK CHANG

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PASSED DOWN THROUGH GENERATIONS

FOR THE FOOD

PORK / CHICKEN / HARD-BOILED EGGS SIMMERING IN SOY SAUCE / RICE / PORK-FLECKED LOAF / TURNIP CAKES / PORK BELLY / PRESERVED MUSTARD GREENS / BRAISED BEEF / ORANGE / GROUND CORN COB / GRUEL / STEAMED FISH / HOT AND SOUR SOUP / HOMEMADE CHAR SIU SAUSAGES / DIM SUM / HERBS / STEAK / ZHAJIANG NOODLES / TRI-TIP / BLACK BEAN SAUCE / HOT PEPPERS / GREEN BEANS / BAKING SODA / TROPICANA JUICE / SPICES / PORK MEATBALLS

RICE IS A HIGHWAY

"¡HOLA!" MY GRANDFATHER WOULD HOLLER as my brother and I stepped through the side door of the garage with our mother, dropping us off in the morning on her way to work.

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" ¡Hola, Jackie! ¡Hola, Michael!" he'd say. And then, in Cantonese, the familiar question: "Have you eaten yet?"

RICE IS A HIGHWAY

This greeting is more widely exchanged among members of his generation than 'how are you?' and it recalls a time when food was scarce in China during Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, an era that caused such unprecedented devastation that its original five year rollout was cut off at three. During those diﬃcult years, Mao's Communists took everything. They took crops from farmers, causing millions of people to starve to death. They took the jewellery my grandfather had given to his wife. It had begun in 1958, the year he turned 30 and she, 28. They had been married for 11 years by then, and had a baby girl. They worked as farmers and eventually in a pharmacy in Macau, the last familiar place they would live, before fear for their future and black market passports for Lima, Peru enabled them to leave Mao's destruction behind. In Lima, they feigned Roman Catholicism, learned Spanish, and started a general store under a new family name — still mine, taken from the illegal passports they'd obtained to get out. Decades and oceans later, my grandparents on both sides would begin every conversation and phone call with the same question: "Have you eaten?"

JACKIE WONG

To us lucky grandchildren, this question seemed to be rhetorical, especially if we were in their house. Just around the corner, there was surely a pot of congee on the stove, or an extra helping of stewed tomatoes and beef over rice in the fridge. But the daily need to measure wellness and survival this way was constant for them, even with full pantries in Canada. They always saved bones, stems, and scraps to reuse whenever they could. My grandmother and grandfather decorated their Vancouver house with knick knacks from places they'd called home. In the front entranceway, they erected a small shrine with incense, a hanging lantern,

THE KITCHEN FOR THE FOOD

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and small sculptures of Fu, Lu, and Shou — the Sanxing, the three stars — deities of prosperity, status, and longevity. On some mornings when I was six, I would follow the smell of smoke and spy my grandmother praying to them by herself. Upstairs, on a shelf, they assembled a collection of fabric llama figurines, Inca plates, and Peruvian dolls from Lima, where my dad was born, where they named one son Fernando, and where they followed the locals and served their four kids bowls of black coffee before sending them to a school where the nuns were scary. There, they learned how to make lime-licked ceviche and peppery anticucho — favourite items, cooked years later at summer barbecues.

My grandparents spoke to us in Cantonese, Spanish, and English, often pulling phrases and words from each language into the same sentences. Their food and cooking likewise carried a spirit of affectionate panoply. After they had attended to the other duties of the day, they'd reunite in the kitchen to work side by side through Vancouver's rainy afternoons. They would simmer stock for corn and chicken soup with egg, or stand at the sink cleaning shrimp and smelt to deep-fry and serve with a ketchup-and-Miracle-Whip dressing alongside gai lan braised with oyster sauce. For Saturday lunch, they'd make papa rellenas with a Cantonese twist, by rolling the Peruvian stuffed potatoes in rice flour to make them extra crispy when they fried them. On Sundays, they'd pull a Rockwellian roast beef and baked potatoes from the oven, or stand at the stove to stir a batch of sopa de mondongo, a slow-cooked Latin American stew of tripe, tomatoes, and bell peppers.

Every single meal — regardless of whether potatoes or noodles or some other carb was already in the works — was anchored by steaming bowls of white rice. In a stout pot on the kitchen counter, rice was always there. It was enough to serve all twelve of us on Sundays, or more when we grew up and brought partners and first kids. The fine white grains stuck to our bellies, to our Beaver Canoe sweatshirts, and to the bottom of our white 90s sport socks.

RINSING AND COOKING RICE WAS A DAILY RITUAL AS ORDINARY AND COMFORTING AS BREATHING. Rice stretched out a meal. It was a predictable, invisible constant. In a life that had delivered so much chaotic newness and upheaval, rice was the comforting glue that held things together.

1 Rinsing and cooking rice was a daily ritual as ordinary and comforting as breathing. It stretched out a meal. It was a predictable, invisible constant. In a life that delivered so much chaotic newness and upheaval, rice was the comforting glue that held things together. Rice got my family through when everything seemed unfamiliar, which it was for so many years in Lima, and finally in East Vancouver, where Chinatown was just a bus ride away and they could talk to people in a language that felt like home.

"We made it. We're still here." My grandparents welcomed many influences into their lives, most explicitly in the kitchen, where they seemed to invite the whole world in.

JACKIE WONG

Vancouver was a place where my family could cook to celebrate. They'd simmer corn and chicken soup with egg, or stand at the sink cleaning shrimp and smelt to deep fry and serve with a ketchup-and-Miracle-Whip dressing alongside gai lan braised with oyster sauce.

RICE IS A HIGHWAY

Vancouver was a place where my family could cook to celebrate. They would braise abalone and shiitake mushrooms over bok choy for Chinese New Year. My grandmother made grand batches of barbecue pork buns we would eat after school. At Christmas, they'd roast a crispy-skinned turkey that held a secret inside, my favourite: sticky rice stuďŹ&#x192;ng flecked with salty-sweet lap cheong and mushrooms. It was as though the rice within the Christmas turkey was saying,

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JACKIE WONG

RICE IS A HIGHWAY

FOR THE FOOD

THE KITCHEN

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My mother is bad at giving love eat more 饺子 she says but you always tell me to eat less, I said. So she says 妈妈教你 Mama will teach you 怎么做 How to make dumplings Fold it here Nip in here Squeeze it tight Be careful it's not too big They should be able to stand up.

— MICHELLE YANG LI

My mother is bad at giving love I said But I was bad at receiving it. 妈妈教你怎么包 Mama will teach you How to bao How to hug How to envelop something with love How to wrap it safely to pass down How to protect so they can stand on their own Eat more 饺子 she says I crossed an ocean to give them to you.

弦

“Chinese food is not produced in a vacuum, it is always situated: culturally, historically, spatially and temporally. Think about Chinese food as a construction, a fabric that is woven from overlapping, entangled and loose strings.” CHINESE FOOD IN AUSTRALIA: DIASPORA, TASTE AND EFFECT —ANNE TONG

A TASTE OF HOME draws attention to the significant role of food in the experience of migration. Migration itself is frequently an uncertain, terrifying process — experienced by all in some form or another, but especially amplified for those who leave behind their homelands and cross the seas in search of new lives. For these migrants in particular, food provides a small, comforting link to familiarity. In its specific articulation of Chinese migration narratives through the lens of food, this book reveals the connections between food, work, community and family. As a fundamental part of Chinese culture, the importance of food is reinforced through the migration process, making it not only a link to work, community and family, but also identity, home, comfort, tradition and history. All these facets ultimately renders it a significant aspect of the Chinese migration experience. The next time you visit a Chinese grocery store, or a Chinese restaurant, reflect on the lives of those behind the shopfront or the plate. Look beyond the surface. Maybe even wonder what they are being driven by — what anxieties or dreams do they nurture at night and work to absolve or make reality during the day? Ask yourself, are they serving or selling food for the hustle, for the community or for the love? Food is never just food. It is physical sustenance, but also emotional, economic and cultural sustenance. It is comfort and familiarity. It is history and home. Food is informed by stories of people and place and that’s precisely what makes it so special.

JENNIFER WEN

工

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CONCLUSION

CON-结 CLU论施 -SION

的方

式

一种

觉

在非家

FOOD IS A WAY TO FEEL AT HOME IN A PLACE THAT IS NOT HOME

到家

中

感