Eating Chinese: Culture on the Menu in Small Town Canada

221 Pages·2014·1.937 MB·English

by  Cho, Lily

EATING CHINESE: CULTURE ON THE MENU
IN SMALL TOWN CANADA
‘Chicken fried rice, sweet and sour pork, and an order of onion rings,
please.’
Chinese restaurants in small town Canada are at once everywhere –
you would be hard pressed to fi nd a town without a Chinese restaurant
– and yet they are conspicuously absent in critical discussions of Chinese
diasporic culture or even in popular writing about Chinese food. In Eat-
ing Chinese, Lily Cho examines Chinese restaurants as spaces that defi ne,
for those both inside and outside the community, what it means to be
Chinese and what it means to be Chinese Canadian.
Despite restrictions on immigration and explicitly racist legislation at
national and provincial levels, Chinese immigrants have long dominated
the restaurant industry in small town Canada. Culturally isolated, Chi-
nese communities in Canada were often strongly connected to their non-
Chinese neighbours through the food that they prepared and served.
Cho looks at this surprisingly ubiquitous feature of the small town
through menus, literature, art, and music. An innovative approach to the
study of diaspora, Eating Chinese brings to light the cultural spaces crafted
by restaurateurs, diners, cooks, servers, and artists.
(Cultural Spaces)
lily cho is an associate professor of English at the University of Western
Ontario.
Interior of Club Café, Chinese restaurant, Innisfail, Alberta, 1927.
Joanne Hui illustration based on image courtesy of Glenbow Archives.
LILY CHO
Eating Chinese
Culture on the Menu
in Small Town Canada
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2010
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
Printed in Canada
ISBN 978-1-4426-4105-1 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4426-1040-8 (paper)
Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with
vegetable-based inks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Cho, Lily, 1975–
Eating Chinese : culture on the menu in small town Canada / Lily Cho.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4426-4105-1 (bound) ISBN 978-1-4426-1040-8 (pbk.)
1. Chinese restaurants -- Canada -- History. 2. Chinese -- Canada –
Social conditions. 3. Chinese Canadians -- Social conditions. I. Title.
FC106.C5C58 2010 305.895′1071 C2010-905445-8
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the fi nancial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to
Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the fi nancial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Contents
list of illustrations vii
acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3
1 Sweet and Sour: Historical Presence and Diasporic Agency 20
2 On the Menu: Time and Chinese Restaurant Counterculture 44
3 Disappearing Chinese Café: White Nostalgia and the Public
Sphere 80
4 Diasporic Counterpublics: The Chinese Restaurant as Institution
and Installation 109
5 ‘How taste remembers life’: Diaspora and the Memories That
Bind 131
Conclusion 157
notes 167
works cited 189
index 203
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Illustrations
Frontispiece Club Café interior, Innisfail, Alberta, 1927 ii
1 N.D. Café, New Dayton, Alberta 5
2 Mr and Mrs Chew 6
3 A & J Family Restaurant, Olds, Alberta, 1999 45
4 Public Lunch Counter, Olds, Alberta, 1914 or 1915 46
5 New Dayton Café menu, New Dayton, Alberta, 1920s 60
6 Club Café, Innisfail, Alberta, 1999 73
7 Karen Tam, Gold Mountain Restaurants 110
8 MacInnes Lumber Camp, Elkmouth, British Columbia, 1905 162
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Acknowledgments
I could not have written this book without the generosity and support of
many people. I am indebted:
To Stephen Slemon. To Karyn Ball, Donald Goellnicht, Vijay Mishra,
and Heather Zwicker, who read all of it the fi rst time around.
To the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada,
the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, and the J.B. Smallman Fund
at the University of Western Ontario.
To Brad Bannon, Allison Hargreaves, Kiel Hume, Cristina Ionica, and
Alia Somani for research assistance that went well above and beyond.
To Richard Cavell, Diana Brydon, David Chariandy, Sneja Gunew,
Smaro Kamboureli, Roy Miki, and Eleanor Ty, who told me I was writing
a book when I forgot.
To Siobhan McMenemy and Ryan Van Huijstee, who believed it was a
book. To the anonymous readers of the manuscript whose thoughtful-
ness and thoroughness made this book better.
To Apollo Amoko, Ian Balfour, Melina Baum Singer, Jesse Brown, Jen-
ny Burman, Eric Cazdyn, Katharine Charlton, Alison Conway, Margaret
DeRosia, Jeff Derksen, Katherine Ensslen, Todd Ferguson, Aaron Han-
kewich, Emily Hill, Camilla Ingr, Joanne Hui, Alice Jim, Greg King, Mar-
tin Kreiswirth, Kinsley Kreiswirth, Larissa Lai, David Lloyd, Sue Malley,
Richard McCabe, Sophie McCall, Mary Helen McMurran, Corey Mintz,
Marni Mishna, Alex Panther, Thy Phu, Joe Rosich, Matthew Rowlinson,
Mia Sheldon, Joshua Schuster, Ken Singer, Kim Solga, Cheryl Suzack,
Karen Tam, Rei Terada, Bryce Traister, Sasha Torres, Pauline Wakeham,
Dorothy Wang, and Keri Zwicker, whose friendship and guidance have
seen me through the hard parts.
To Zachary Green for all the pies, and so much more, which got me
through the home stretch.