@msquebanh Did you ever read "Chop Suey Nation" by Ann Hui? She started with a two part article in the Globe and Mail, then wrote a book with the same name. She talks about the migration of Chinese from west coast to east.
It's really fascinating and gave me a new respect for Canadian Chinese cuisine.
@msquebanh@CStamp It's fascinating. She travels from the oldest Chinese restaurant in the country, on Vancouver island, to the easternmost, in Labrador IIRC. She's trying to find the answer to two questions: what is this "Chinese food" that's served in restaurants and why does it bear NO resemblance to that her family actually eats, AND what do we mean when we say "Chinese restaurant" here in Canada (and the US, but her study is Canadian)? I loved it.
@justafrog@OrionKidder@msquebanh@CStamp
Same is true for Indian food, Thai food, and even pizza really.
Plus that the menus can seem as coordinated as McDonald's.
I'd say there's been diversity added here in Stockholm in the last 20 years as we've grown more diverse ethnically.
Best Chinese food in town imo used to be at my local food court, just pick a random one from the menu that was actually in Chinese.
@Gurre@justafrog@msquebanh@CStamp That's it exactly! Chinese families in Canada will sell their restaurants to they other Chinese families, and they'll trade menus and recipes with families that want to open a restaurant. It's like an organic, cultural franchise, right down to techniques for running the business (eg, child labour).
@Gurre@justafrog@msquebanh@CStamp In that sense, immigrant-owned businesses are all a form of "Chinese restaurant." The Thai government even formalized this process as a way of promoting their culture on the world stage.
@Gurre@justafrog@OrionKidder@msquebanh Canada is a huge country. A lot of us have grown up in small towns that had a Chinese restaurant. How these expanded eastwards is a remarkable piece of Canadian/Canadian-Chinese history. We do not have the connection to other types of food. I had never had Thai or Indian food until coming to the big city, though that is starting to change. Even pizza is a fairly new thing & has its own history and it wasn't about Italians fighting racism & stereotypes.
@Gurre@justafrog@OrionKidder@msquebanh Chinese history here goes back to early Canada. The government was happy to have Chinese working on the railroad that opened Canada, tied the east to the west. After it was built, racist laws were put in place to put a check on immigration. The restaurants were part of the Chinese establishing themselves and creating futures and job opportunities for their kids and others in their community.
@msquebanh@Gurre@justafrog@OrionKidder After "It is estimated that three Chinese workers died for every mile of track laid. While white workers were paid $1.50 to $2.50 per day with their provisions provided, Chinese workers were paid only $1 a day and had to pay for their own gear and food."
@msquebanh@Gurre@justafrog@OrionKidder Also, Canada was actively recruiting settlers for the prairies & the west as recently as the early 1920s. But offers of land & citizenship were advertised in Europe and US, they wanted white settlers, not "those" people.
@CStamp@Gurre@justafrog@OrionKidder Free land plots were offered to many European & overseas white folks. Land that was stolen from Indigenous peoples. Indigenous forced onto reserves, POC were used like slaves, many put into internment camps, beat/killed for not being white, etc.
Canada was/is a racist colonial corporation, built upon theft, genocide & exploitation of BIPOC.
@msquebanh@Gurre@justafrog@OrionKidder And it was and is a land of opportunity to those Chinese immigrants and others who did make lives for themselves here.
@CStamp@msquebanh@Gurre@justafrog It was advertised as "opportunity" but practiced as exploitation, and the reason so many labourers from China and India came here is bc of economics and politics where they lived, so they went from one shitty situation to another, IMO. One was perhaps less shitty, but that doesn't excuse the conditions we made them work in. We didn't treat them like new Canadians. We treated them like a convenient source of cheap labour, and we still do.
@OrionKidder@CStamp@Gurre@justafrog "We treated them like a convenient source of cheap labour, and we still do." - this is why I continue to do work with grassroots groups who have relentlessly fought for migrant workers/foreign labourers, in Canada - specifically in BC, since that's the region I live in.
@msquebanh@CStamp@Gurre@justafrog Absolutely. The "guest worker" system is just more of the same. Dangling PR in front of people has turned out to be a very efficient labour exploitation strategy for Canada. (I teach university.)
@CStamp@Gurre@justafrog@OrionKidder I read Mom this thread & she says: Chinese peoples are in almost every pocket of the world. We get around. From big metropolitan cities, to urban & suburban communities, to rural small towns & to wilderness remote off grid places too. When Chinese people settle in foreign places, they bring their traditional foods & other cultural aspects with them & share with others. Chinese peoples have always been very entrepreneurial & also known for hard work ethics.
@CStamp@Gurre@justafrog@OrionKidder Yes - even when family ties are temporarily severed because many migrant workers cannot afford to do many family visits overseas - the connection is still strong. They work, almost around the clock, to earn to help support family.
@justafrog@CStamp@Gurre@OrionKidder For me, personally, Asian helping thing goes beyond my own family. I feel empathy for many different #SouthEastAsian communities & have always tried to help them, when they're suffering huge crises. I remember ppl asking me if I was Filipino, because I was trying to help typhoon victims overseas. No, I'm Teochew but I want to help them because they're part of larger, global Asian community.
When my little town in Sweden caught the attention of a certain Chinese businessman some 20 years ago, he brought in a number of workers from China (and several fellow businessmen) in order to modify a couple of buildings according to his specifications - and the perhaps two or three Swedish-Chinese restaurants in town quickly developed what appeared to be a semi-secret menu that you might have needed to speak Mandarin in order to see.
@PratarPersilja@justafrog@msquebanh@CStamp Yeah, this is broadly true of Chinese restaurants. Off-menus times that Chinese patrons know about. Fair enough, IMO. They want to eat actual Chinese food instead of this fake stuff invented to satisfy white customers.
@OrionKidder
There was a change at that time, which might be an indication of how how many actually Chinese people lived in that town prior to the late '90s.
Let's just say that I don't think that even all the 3 (or however many) Chinese restaurants in that town were run by people who had ever set their foot in China. There was at least one which was, and that's the one that extended their menu - but I'm told that they had to travel quite @justafrog@msquebanh@CStamp
Rotterdam has a huge chinese supermarket (wish I lived near it!) and there's another chain of stores which delivers ingredients like red tofu and dark soy sauce, as well as fresh chinese vegetables.
There are simply enough chinese people that it's profitable to target them.
@justafrog@PratarPersilja@msquebanh@CStamp We have a chain where I live, T&T Market, that carries all that stuff. You can see plain old rice stick for $5 at the regular store and then ¢99 at T&T.
@msquebanh You can get a glimpse with the globe and mail piece. She begins with being amazed that there is a Chinese food restaurant on Fogo Island, then travels back across the country through the tradition of the food.
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