Museum probes link between Chinese restaurants and small-town Canada

August 24 2010
Posted by: sarchibald

By Katherine Laidlaw

 

Karen Tam still remembers the smell of smoke mixed with chicken balls emanating from her parents’ chop-suey restaurant in east-end Montreal. She sat upstairs alone at six years old, practising piano so her parents could hear her from the baby monitor downstairs in the kitchen, where they worked 14-hour days to support their life in Canada. She recalls the stained-glass lanterns with red tassels that hung from the ceiling, and the egg rolls and won-ton appetizers served to francophone customers in the 1980s at Restaurant Aux Sept Bonheurs.

“You always have certain essentials. Lanterns, red, dragons or phoenixes, all these little clues that tell the customers they’re entering this imaginary China. It’s a bit of exoticization,” the 32-year-old said.

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