Double Double & Donuts. Hey. We’re in Canada. We all know that means. But what’s a Double Double and Donuts – Richmond style? Well, let me tell you. It’s something entirely different. Please join me in my latest video as I visit Richmond’s Double Double Restaurant, have some congee and Chinese donut. Then I hop on over to the nearby Aberdeen Centre for some Asian … Continue reading Double Double & Donuts – Richmond Style
Happy New Year! Chinese New Year, that is. Welcome to the Year of the Monkey in 2016. My celebrations included a visit to Aberdeen Mall in Richmond the week before. However, they were only setting up and the “flower market” wasn’t really open yet. The displays, though, were already all up. We were thinking of joining the countdown last night, but we had food and dog in tow. So we couldn’t go to the mall.
Here’s a neat video I came across while reading about East Van Market Gardens tour done by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation. It’s a 22-minute video that talks about the history of how Chinese immigrants farmed much of the area. This agricultural history all used to take place right in the middle of the city. Continue reading Covered Roots: The History of Vancouver’s Chinese Farms – Video
Cumberland is one of the last places I would have ever thought of visiting. I never heard of this little Vancouver Island town until I heard that my wife would be working for a while in Courtenay. Cumberland is up and away from the east coast of Vancouver Island. It’s a quick drive past the Inland Island Highway from Courtenay to Cumberland. For me, the … Continue reading Cumberland – Chinese and Mining History in a Small BC Town
Part 1 of “Cultural Identity among Chinese” introduced the idea that there is more than one Chinese cultural group. In fact, there are a whole host of sub-cultures within the larger one. Part 1 introduced us to three larger umbrella groups within Chinese culture – Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. What is each group’s identity? When it comes to identity, the three groups are … Continue reading Cultural Identity Among Chinese – 2
Questioning cultural identity seems to be a strange exercise for people who are clearly “Chinese” to an outsider, but Chinese is very much an umbrella term. Somebody may think of Chinese as one big, monolithic, homogenous culture. In reality, it is quite heterogeneous. Recent events and a new academic survey have highlighted differences in identity of Hong Kong Chinese and Mainland Chinese. There now seems … Continue reading Cultural Identity among Chinese
Continuing our Chinatown Historic Tour put on by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, we headed back east along Pender Street. We walked under the Millennium Gate that marks the entry into Chinatown from Downtown. Almost every Chinatown in North America has a similar gate. We just didn’t get ours until the turn of the millennium. We walked past our starting point at Pender and Carrall towards … Continue reading Chinatown Walking Tour – East along Pender
Back in June, I went on another walking tour put on by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation and lead by none other than Maurice Guibord. These tours are always so much fun. We met up at the corner of Pender and Carrall. We started looking at the building on the northwest corner of the intersection. Maurice pointed out that the building had two different facades. One … Continue reading Chinatown Walking Tour – Pender and Carral to Shanghai Alley
Back in 2008, I wrote up a short series of posts about the Chinese language. Because I had recently posted about Chinese Village Kinship, I had a tangential question regarding classification of Cantonese as a language or as a dialect. I think my previous posts will help to answer that question. So I’ve linked to all my previous posts below. Chinese Language Written Chinese The … Continue reading Re-post: The Chinese Language Series
Happy New Year to all those who celebrate the Lunar New Year. Some of you who do celebrate may adhere to some of the more interesting traditions like cleaning on the 28th day of the last month of the year and having a year end dinner with family on the Lunar New Year’s Eve. Almost of all us do the red pocket giving and receiving … Continue reading Happy New Year – Welcoming the Year of the Dragon
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