"Chop Suey Nation" by Ann Hui
I really enjoyed this book. Hui drove across Canada to try to answer two questions: Why is there a Chinese restaurant in every small town? And who are the families who run them? She ended up learning about that her own family had run a Chinese restaurant and weaves her own family story into the book. She begins at Don Mee's in Victoria and ends up with a woman who runs a restaurant alone on the very remote Fogo Island in Newfoundland.
It was mainly necessity as the Chinese weren't welcome in many jobs so had to create their own work. The long hours and sacrifices weren't a surprise to me but I had no idea how adaptable these restaurants became in creating their "fake" Chinese food. It wasn't real Chinese food but adapted to the tastes of Canadians and very local tastes like the "Chinese pierogi" of Alberta and "Newfoundland chow mein" made with strips of cabbage since that was what was available.
We still enjoy our fake Chinese food that is available at the Food Court nearby. One thing that remains the same about this Chinese food is the value. We share one three item plus noodles or rice for $10 and it's more than enough. In the 80's, Jim''s parents frequented a Chinese restaurant on Victoria Drive called Seto's and often took us there when we were visiting Vancouver. Like many Chinese restaurants, they had a lot of "Western" food. They always got liver and onions for $1.95, I got the Chinese buffet which I think was around $4, and Jim got a T-Bone steak dinner which was about $10 or possibly less.
And the best deal of all was the On On Garden in Vancouver's Chinatown. In the mid 60's when I was at UBC, I would go there with my friend, Judy (who was Japanese), and her Chinese friends. You would pretty much have to go with someone who spoke Chinese since the menus were in Chinese and I never did hear English being spoken. Her friends would order all these different dishes and the bill would be $3.00 for the four of us...75 cents each. It was "fake" Chinese food. It was a while before authentic Chinese food came to Vancouver.
