You Say You’re from China?

I was once at a lunch with colleagues when a remarkable revelation hit me. No, the meal at our downtown Toronto Ethiopian restaurant Queen of Sheba was not that enlightening. It was that everyone at the table was Chinese.

___Here in Toronto, that alone will not a single eyebrow raise. With five distinct “Chinatowns” here, one may view wide swaths of Toronto with nary a white or non-Chinese face. A packed Chinese mall with the rare Laowai is common, and he might be the janitor. Or lost.

___At our lunch two friends were Chinese from Jamaica. One was Chinese from Malaysia. Two friends were Chinese from the Philipines. One friend was Chinese from India. One was Chinese from Singapore. The last two were Chinese from…China. The oddballs. Go figure?

___My Chinese-Malay friend spoke Malay, English, Cantonese and Mandarin. My Chinese-Phillipino friends spoke English, Cantonese and Togalog. My Chinese-Indian friend spoke English and some Indian dialect (she’s very secretive). My Singapore friend speaks English and Mandarin. My Chinese-Jamaican friends spoke English and very poor Jamaican English (patwa). My Chinese-Chinese friends spoke English and Mandarin. Describing them as Chinese-Chinese made them cringe.

___As I traced their ancestral roots from China to wherever to Canada, I was struck by the feeling that they all thought I was crazy. In their view it is unimportant where we all came from, and where our families waylayed before arriving on our Canadian shores. For me, each one of our unique Chinese migration patterns colours us a very different and varied shade of yellow. Most perturbed where my Chinese-Chinese friends, who were really feeling a little left out. Their direct route from China to Canada was the least interesting on our table.

___Around the 1920s or so, there was a huge famine in Middle China followed a decade and a half later in 1937 by the Japanese invasion of China, that left many areas of Southern China without food. Yes, it was starvation and the thought of not getting killed that pushed many families to get on rickety boats and risk their lives to sail over dangerous oceans to get to their newly adopted countries. As a result there are Chinese enclaves in India, Asia, South America, the Caribbean and other far out places, all trying to eek out a living. Might this be an explanation of the ubiquitousness of Chinese food worldwide? It is ironic that what pushed our forefathers to leave the Motherland also brought us together for lunch: Food.
___It is curious that many far flung Chinese families, at one point or another, turned their collective compasses north and headed to Canada. Here in Canada we offer cold weather, snow, igloos, parochialism and a tinge of racism. While Chinese were used as slave labour to build the Canadian Railway in the 1880s, today you’ll need no less than a university degree and other high credentials to migrate here, thank you very much. Lots of money will also suffice. Yes, China, we will take your university educated talent for free. But I digress.

___When I walk down the street and see a Chinese person, it is very difficult to determine their origins. China, Malaysia, India, Singapore, Hong Kong and Brazil are all possibilities. These different flavours are what makes living in Toronto all the more interesting. Ganbei!