She talked about the various regions of China and how the climate, terrain and growing potential influenced the food and styles of cooking. For example, while rice is the staple of southern China because it could be easily grown, Northern China dealt mostly in wheat products including breads and dumplings. The most interesting part of her talk revolved around her mother Jean Lumb, who fought to save the initial Chinatown when land was being expropriated to build the New City Hall. Jean was the first Chinese female to win the Order of Canada for this and numerous other community contributions. The evening ended with a tastings of Chinese delicacies and a discussion about how fortune cookies and chop suey are not really Chinese food!
The book is about a family immigrated from China to small town Irvine Ontario, trying to make a living as the only Chinese family in town while running a small restaurant. The book deals with themes of unhappiness, isolation and loneliness, familial duty battling against personal dreams and desires. The author paints a vivid picture of what the life was like for Chinese immigrants in small towns in the 1960s. She draws you into this world through in-depth details mined from her own immigrant childhood growing up in Acton, Ontario where her family owned a laundry.
The story is told from the point of view of Su-Jen, the young daughter of the family. She is caught between the old customs, superstitions and the importance of saving face of her family versus the new western ways of her friends and townspeople, which she is quickly adopting as her own. Through her eyes, many secrets and plot points are innocently foreshadowed before coming to fruition.
Although my family came to Canada around the same period, my own childhood in downtown Toronto was quite different. I was too young to remember much about Hong Kong so I never experienced the family's feelings of alienation. We first moved into the Chinatown area in Toronto, so in my early school days, the little white boy was the minority in my class. However I did recognize many of the particulars and traditions described in the book, which had a very authentic and sometimes almost stereotypical feel. Rich is currently also reading the book so it will be interesting to hear his perspective as a Caucasian reader. Had he read it prior to meeting me, the cultural shock would have been greater, but so far he still has gained much insight into "what it feels like to be a stranger in a strange land".
Judy Fong Bates is a vivacious speaker and spent most of the book club meeting fielding questions both about the plot of the book, as well as questions about her life in contrast to the heroine in the book, her writing processes and career. She is a gifted story teller and told many amusing anecdotes during the Q&A. She explained that she didn't start writing until her 40s because as a young girl without any other Chinese role models, she did not feel what she had to say was interesting or worthy of sharing. While the book is not autobiographical, she did claim to relate to many of the themes explored.
She wrapped up the meeting with a reading from the book. While she spoke English with absolutely no accent, when she read phoneticized Chinese dialogue from the book, she easily switched to perfectly pronounced Chinese village dialect that was obviously her mother tongue.
Project Bookmark Canada celebrates Canadian writing by placing bookmarks across Canada that mark real locations featured in fictionalized stories and poems. There are two more bookmarks in Toronto (Anne Michael's Fugitive Pieces at the corner of College and Manning, Ken Babcock's poem "Essentialist" across from St. George subway) as well as ones in Ottawa, Owen Sound and Kingston. There is currently a call out for readers to find locations in Vancouver and hopefully this is just the start of many more to come across Canada.
