Chop Suey Nation

by Ann Hui

  But in fact the new newcomers are a diverse set, including middle-class and poor Chinese too. They arrived in Vancouver from all China’s many cities and regions. Suddenly Mandarin took over from Cantonese as the most-spoken Chinese language in Vancouver, and it became as common to hear Fujianese as Cantonese in Toronto’s restaurant kitchens. These newcomers brought with them to Canada great, authentic and diverse regional Chinese cuisines. No longer was it only Cantonese or “chop suey” Chinese. In the past two decades, the strip plazas along Highway 7 in Markham, or along Alexandra Road in Richmond, have suddenly seen all kinds of new restaurants popping up, offering lamb cumin burgers and liang pi, the cold, sesame and chili-drenched wheat noodles I love from the Shanxi province. Or paper-thin xiao long bao, soup dumplings as good as the ones in Shanghai (or so I’ve been told). China-based chains, such as QJD Peking Duck or Dagu Rice Noodle, have opened up Canadian locations too. These companies have an almost entirely Chinese clientele and don’t feel the need to cater to “Western” tastes.

  At the same time, next-generation Chinese chefs—those who grew up in Canada like me—were opening restaurants with their own spin on Chinese. Patois in Toronto tells the story of the Chinese who immigrated elsewhere, in this case, Jamaica, before coming to Canada with dishes like “dirty fried rice” with lap cheong and the “Cajun trinity” of bell peppers, celery and onion. At DaiLo in Toronto, chef Nick Liu riffs off his Hakkanese ancestry with dishes such as pumpkin dumplings with soy brown butter sauce and truffles. That dish is topped with a glaze of White Rabbit candies, the milky, chewy candy ubiquitous in every Chinese household. It’s a dish that reminds me of childhood visits with Po Po, who used to press the little white candies into my palms with a knowing glance. Our little secret, that glance seemed to say.

  In another time, this cuisine might have been described as inauthentic, or worse, dismissed as the f-word, “fusion.” But for these chefs, the cuisine is authentic to their own experiences.

  Still, these cultural mash-ups were a cuisine my dad could never quite understand. “This isn’t mapo tofu,” he said once, grimacing, after I cooked him the classic Sichuan dish. As a Christmas gift, my sisters had gotten me The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook by the Korean-born, Oklahoma-raised chef Danny Bowien, and Chris Ying, and I had been excited to start cooking from it. The mapo tofu was mostly classic, with lots of doubanjiang and Sichuan peppercorns. But the sauce was rounded out with a couple teaspoons of tomato paste and liberal heapings of “angry lady” chili sauce. To my dad, at least on that day, the deviations were a mistake. Authenticity, he seemed to argue, was critical. He knew what it was like before we could find authentic mapo tofu in Vancouver. What it was like before the rest of Canada knew to appreciate it.

  Yet here we were now, eating our roti canai and laksa, created by Chinese immigrants in southeast Asia. After the Chinese began settling in places like Malaysia, they added local ingredients and traditions—such as coconut milk, coriander, cumin and turmeric—into Chinese noodle soup dishes. A new cuisine was born. It was never authentically Chinese, but over time it did become authentically Malaysian.

  And in that moment, as we slurped the noodles swimming in the golden coconut broth, none of that mattered anyway. All that mattered was that the dish was delicious.

  * * *

  About two hours after Anthony and I left Vancouver, it began to snow. In my planning, I had neglected to consider snow as a possibility, so accustomed had I become to Ontario’s generally warm spring weather. I huddled gratefully into my winter coat.

  As we climbed north on the Coquihalla Highway in our impossibly tiny car, big fat snowflakes floated down from the sky, dancing on the windshield before disappearing. In the distance, grey-blue mountains with snow-capped peaks came into focus.

  We climbed higher and higher, the road slowly disappearing under the drift.

  It was a lovely scene, except for the signs that began to appear along the highway.

  “MUST USE WINTER TIRES,” one warned in thick black letters.

  I turned and looked at Anthony. “Hey, do we have winter tires?”

  He blinked. “They’re all-season.”

  I didn’t know a lot about cars, but I did know enough to understand those weren’t the same thing. But I kept quiet.

  A few moments later he said, rather unwisely, “As long as we don’t run out of gas, we’ll be fine.” The signs warned that the next gas station was at least 150 kilometres away.

  He must have sensed my tension, because he added, quickly, “We’re fine.”

  This was a usual routine for us. I would worry. He would reassure. And his apparent lack of concern would cause me to worry even more.

  We climbed higher up the mountain, the signs growing increasingly alarming.

  “Steep grade ahead.”

  “Expect sudden weather changes.”

  In my head, I was beginning to run through the worst possible scenario of getting snowed in.

  What kind of clothes were packed in our suitcases? Were they warm enough if we were left stranded on the highway overnight?

  Would the stuff we had in the car—a giant jug of water and a couple of juice boxes—last us until the morning?

  Was my phone still getting reception?

  After a while, the signs were in all-caps lettering, screaming out for our attention. They simply read: “BE CAUTIOUS.”

  “Anthony,” I said, giving him a hard look.

  He turned to look at me, taking in my expression.

  All I could think of was the girl at the rental office and her alarmed reaction. But just as he was about to speak, I realized my ears were popping. We looked out our windows to see that the car wasn’t tilting upward anymore. We were done climbing. We had peaked, and the worst was behind us.

  I exhaled a long, slow breath.

  From the driver’s seat, Anthony shrugged. “See?” he said in a way that he likely thought was calming, but I instead found infuriating. “I told you we’d be fine.”

  * * *

  The next morning we drove south, away from our hotel in Calgary and into a haze of blue sky and golden wheat fields. The entire highway seemed bathed in sun.

  About an hour outside the city, we spotted the first telltale clue of an upcoming Prairie town: a dingy-looking grain elevator, the only structure interrupting an otherwise unbroken horizon. Then, a gas station, a house or two along the side of the highway, and a giant warehouse selling John Deere tractors and farm equipment. And then the welcome sign. At each of the Prairie towns, there was always a sign, welcoming us to Vegreville, or Grenfell, or Boissevain. At the bottom of the sign, hanging off two rusty hooks, a placard would boast of whichever NHL player happened to have grown up in the tiny town. Each time, Anthony would nod knowingly.

  This sign looked a little different. It was made of concrete and scripted in a futuristic-looking font.

  “Welcome to Vulcan,” it said.

  The town itself looked different too. Right beside the sign was a giant floating saucer—a white spaceship hoisted into the air on a pedestal. And right next to it was a space station of sorts, a building painted all white with circular windows, a domed roof and a satellite reaching up into the sky.

  “A space station?” I said aloud.

  Anthony quickly corrected me. “Not a space station,” he said. “A Trek station.”

  I glanced over at him. He was trying to act cool, but I could see a grin spreading across his face. He slowed the car down to barely a crawl in order to take everything in. I’d seen the DVD collection he’d amassed over the years, including multiple Star Trek boxed sets. I’d also seen how defensive he got whenever I referred to him as a Trekkie. But now we were in Vulcan, in the heartland of Star Trek fandom. His glee was impossible to conceal.

  Of the towns on the CP Railway in the early twentieth century, Vulcan had the highest elevation, and railway surveyors assumed it would be the most prosperous. So they named it Vulcan, after the Roman god of fire. For a time,
the name was well-suited. The town’s strategic location—amid fields of wheat and barley, and right on the railway line—made it a hub for the wheat industry. For decades, the town was surrounded by rows of giant wooden elevators. But by the 1980s those elevators began shutting down one by one. The large grain companies replaced them with newer, more efficient designs elsewhere.

  With the economy struggling, the town looked around for new opportunities. By then, Star Trek had become wildly popular, and by coincidence the name “Vulcan” had a special significance on the show. Already, officials had noticed some curious tourists making trips to their town because of it. Star Trek, they thought, might be their opportunity. So all of Vulcan became involved, painting Star Trek murals on street corners, starting Star Trek museums and over time building a town-sized shrine to the television show.

  I realized I had no idea what “Vulcans” even were.

  “Vulcans are a species, and the place where they’re from—a planet,” Anthony said, explaining as he drove, taking us farther into town. “It’s where Spock was from.”

  I was still confused.

  He rolled his eyes and added, “Pointy ears.”

  “Oh, those.”

  We drove slowly down Centre Street, past gas stations and parking lots. There was a Legion on the right, just before the railroad tracks, and temporary-looking buildings separated by large parking lots. There was a liquor store, a Home Hardware and neat-looking homes with vinyl sidings.

  But every few blocks, there would be another reminder of the TV show. A giant mural on the side of a hair salon. A Star Trek museum, where we would later pop in to find a lone employee guiding a small tour group through a room filled with costumes and memorabilia (the museum has since closed and moved to Drumheller). And at one street corner, in front of a set of hedges, a bronze bust of Leonard Nimoy dressed as Spock. It was a memorial from the time the actor paid a visit to the small town. Beneath it was his handprint pressed into bronze, fingers spread in the “Vulcan salute.”

  Every few minutes, Anthony stopped to take a photo. “What?” he said sheepishly when he caught me smirking. “I just want to send the pictures to my friends.”

  Finally, we found ourselves in front of the New Club Café. This was the real reason we were here. I wanted to see what a Chinese restaurant (that, according to Google, sold both chop suey and pizza) looked like in the middle of this Trek-obsessed town. But as we moved closer, my heart sank. The lights were off. There was a “Closed” sign at the door. A bucket and mop sat abandoned near the entryway.

  I looked at Anthony, who grimaced. “Too bad,” he said. He looked genuinely sad. “It looks so cool too,” he said in a quiet voice. It did. The sign had a retro look to it. On the left was the restaurant’s name and logo, printed in blue and red. And on the right, in thick yellow lettering, just two words: “STEAK” and “PIZZA.”

  I knocked on the door, pressing my face up to the smeared glass in case there was someone in the back. No one answered.

  We paused there for a few moments, figuring out what to do.

  “Do you want to go to the next town?”

  I sighed. I’d had high hopes for the New Club Café. I had developed a long list of restaurants along our route weeks ago. Because we were travelling by car and didn’t yet know when we’d be arriving in each town, I hadn’t called most of them ahead of time. I’d wanted to be flexible. But the downside was that I didn’t always have a backup plan. A few doors down, another restaurant caught my eye. So I suggested we get some coffee and regroup there.

  As soon as we walked in, the waitress, a younger woman with dark hair and an easy smile, showed us to a table. As we waited, I thumbed my phone, trying to figure out whether there were other towns and restaurants nearby that might be worth trying. The waitress returned to take our order and I couldn’t help but ask, “Do you happen to know the owners of the New Club Café?”

  She shook her head but seemed curious. I explained why we were there.

  “Well, you can always just go to the other Chinese restaurant,” she said after a moment.

  Other Chinese restaurant? The population of the entire town was around 1,700, roughly the number of students at my high school back in Vancouver. The fact that it had even one Chinese restaurant had surprised me. Now she was telling me there were two?

  She smiled and pointed back in the direction of the highway. “It’s called Amy’s,” she said. “The owners just moved here not too long ago from China.”

  “I’m not an expert,” she said, shooting me a nervous glance. “But it seems, you know—authentic.”

  * * *

  It turned out we’d passed Amy’s on our way into town, not even noticing it. And no wonder. The restaurant was on a service road just off the highway and next to a gas station. It was built with red brick, with a familiar pavilion-style roof. I suspected the building may have lived a previous life as a pizza restaurant. The green sign said, “Amy’s—Family Restaurant.” There was no mention of Chinese food.

  I pulled open the glass door to find a large dining room with wooden chairs and dark green tables. Country music was playing from the speakers. A group of seniors sat around a large table having their lunch, their walkers just a few feet away. On the other side of the dining room, a middle-aged couple—a woman with glasses and a man in a flannel shirt—sat with plates heaped with spring rolls, and beef with broccoli.

  In the centre of the room was a long buffet table with heat lamps hanging from the top. Chafing dishes were filled with perfectly round golden chicken balls, bright green pieces of broccoli stir-fried with thinly sliced carrots, and crispy-looking meat coated in deep-fried batter. All of it glistening under the light. At a separate, shorter buffet table were desserts, quivering cubes of red Jell-O and pre-cut squares of cake.

  A Chinese teenager, about fifteen, walked toward us. He seemed startled when he took me in. A few of the seniors eyed me quizzically too. I guessed from their reactions that the restaurant didn’t see many Chinese customers.

  The teenager seated us in the far room, near the middle-aged couple, then left us alone with the buffet.

  By then, it was around noon, so we approached it greedily. Anthony piled his plate high with chow mein, fried rice and a few onion rings. From across the buffet table, he grinned happily. This was what he’d been waiting for. He’s not Chinese. And, as much as he was always game to trek out to whatever latest Shanxi-style noodle shop or Taiwanese hot pot restaurant I became obsessed with through the years, the chicken-ball-and-fried-rice Chinese still held a special place in his heart. This was the Chinese food he grew up with. It was what he still craved from time to time, turning to me every few months to say, “Can we go get some good fake Chinese?”

  I circled the buffet table carefully, choosing just a few items—some broccoli, a small tangle of chow mein and a couple strips of fried fish. We still had over a week and a half of travel ahead of us, and likely dozens of Chinese restaurants to visit. I wanted to pace myself. We sat down and dug in. The broccoli was perfectly cooked, still crunchy and bright green. The chow mein had been fried in a fiery-hot wok, and had wok hay. The noodles had been cooked properly, with a fiery-hot wok and the perfect amount of oil, so they neither stuck together nor dripped with grease. And though the fish had likely come from frozen, the strips were crispy and hot, fresh from the fryer. This was the good “fake Chinese” Anthony was always asking for.

  When my plate was almost empty, I spotted the teenage server across the room and signalled to him. I asked if the restaurant’s owner was around. He looked puzzled, but nodded and disappeared behind a door. A few minutes later, a young woman with glasses and long, straight hair pulled back into a ponytail approached our table. She looked no older than thirty and had smooth, pale skin. She introduced herself as the manager.

  “You’re the owner?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her English was clear but hesitant, so I switched to Mandarin, the language of most Mainland Chinese, and one I�
��ve learned through the years but am far from fluent in.

  “You’re from Beijing?” It was a guess, based on her accent.

  “Bu shi,” she said. No. She introduced herself as Qin Lin and told me she was from Guangdong.

  She sat up tall in her chair as she spoke. Each time I asked her a question, she paused thoughtfully before answering. She had a polite, easy manner, the air of the star pupil in school, bright and eager to help. As we spoke, Anthony kept eating, oblivious to what we were talking about. Not that he seemed to mind. He had gone back for seconds when we first started talking.

  Back in China, Ms. Lin’s job had been to print logos on T-shirts, she said. From morning to night, she worked in the Guangdong factory, her husband working alongside her. At the end of each day, the shirts would be packed in plastic and shipped in boxes to countries all over the world. They would go home. And the next morning, they’d arrive back at the factory to start their work all over again.

  But then she had Cindy, her daughter. No longer were they just thinking about their own lives and their own futures. They had her future to think about too.

  Ms. Lin had originally grown up in Kaiping, a county near Toisan. Like Toisan, Kaiping was one of the siyup counties, or “four counties.” It was an especially poverty-stricken area in southern China near Guangzhou that, during decades of drought, flooding and famine, was slowly drained of almost all of its young people. Most of them went overseas, eventually sending money back to their hometowns.

  Ms. Lin’s husband had an aunt who had gone to Canada, to a city called Winnipeg. She offered to help settle them there. Ms. Lin and her husband did the mental calculation. They were two factory workers with little education. Their fates had already been decided in China. And to Ms. Lin, that meant Cindy’s too. In China, Ms. Lin said, “It’s all about guan xi”—relationships and family connections.