March 28, 2013
I have become like my parents where, when I’m in a city in some other part of the world, I have to visit Chinatown, if there is one. In case you were wondering, Chinese roast duck looks and tastes the same just about everywhere — London, Paris, Vancouver, Manchester, and after this weekend, Liverpool.
Since England has sort of become my second home it feels important to learn about the Chinese immigrant experience here.
May 1, 2011
One time, when my mom asked what I wanted for dinner and I said “noodles.”
“We’re Cantonese. We eat rice for dinner.”
My mom would have been happy to have had pizza or meatloaf for dinner, but noodles for dinner? Oh no, that’s a line she will not cross. So I threw me in a temper tantrum (and this was me as an adult, visiting my parents only a few years ago).
Food laws feel like the most oppressive thing to me — I don’t care about cultural rules or allergies, my values and auto-immune response will not win over my right to eat tasty things.
So even though my people are traditionally rice farmers, one morning I committed the ultimate betrayal — I made my own noodles.
April 1, 2011
There’s a Chinese joke that goes like this:
E.T.’s spaceship crashes in China. The different regions can’t agree what to do with him. The Beijingers, being very academic and intellectual, figure, “We should study him in the name of science.” The Shainghainese people, being very money-oriented, disagree, saying, “No, we should put him in a zoo and charge people admission to see him.” The Cantonese are like, “Why don’t we just eat him?”
You can say what you want about these inter-Chinese stereotypes, but one thing’s certain: my appetite has definitely dictated some of my major life decisions.
January 3, 2011
This has been one of the coldest and wettest winters in LA history.
Winter solstice was the on the 21st and because we don’t have Stonehenge or hippies in China, it’s Chinese tradition to celebrate the first day of winter by making and eating soup dumplings called “tang yurn” (which literally translates into “soup balls”).
They are nothing of the Shanghainese xiao long bao dumpling variety. It’s a very basic food made of rice flour and water, which is why even the poorest of people in China (or at least in Canton) will eat this on the coldest of nights. My dad said back in his village in China, daikon was the only other thing they had to put in the soup.
December 9, 2010
When I was a kid and any one of us complained of those initial body ache symptoms of flu — my mom would make this tea for us to drink:
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