Through food memories and new flavours, #MyChinatown bolsters Vancouver’s historic neighbourhood
Ordering takeout or delivery from Chinatown restaurants is one way to support the vital community that’s been hit hard by COVID-19
Jade Dynasty Restaurant in Vancouver’s Chinatown is famous for its salty egg-yolk lava buns. Photo by Chinese Restaurant Awards
LEE MAN HAS vivid memories of shopping trips to Vancouver’s Chinatown with his mom when he was little—picking up fragrant herbs, fresh produce, and Asian spices; sometimes ending the afternoon with a kung fu double feature at the Golden Harvest or Shaw Theatre; and occasionally getting lost, a nearby shopkeeper inevitably seeing the panic on his face and soothing his tears with some White Rabbit candy until his mother returned.
Chinatown is also what first sparked Man’s interest in food.
“The Cantonese obsession with fresh ingredients meant shopping for live seafood, locally grown vegetables, and the best poultry—preferably killed right in the shop,” says Man, judging chair of the Chinese Restaurant Awards. “There was always something delicious to eat: the apple tarts at Hong Kong Cafe, dim sum at Ming’s, and family banquets at the New Diamond Lounge. The deeply ingrained values of seeking out the best quality, ideally at the best price, remains with me still.”
A living piece of Vancouver’s cultural identity, Chinatown has quieter than usual ever since the pandemic took hold. According to the City of Vancouver, 17 percent of Chinatown storefronts were empty compared to the city-wide average of 10 percent as of October 2020.
#MyChinatown is a new effort to help counter that troubling decline, to aid the neighbourhood not simply survive but bloom again. Lee is co-initiator of the campaign along with Emma Choo, aka Vancouver Foodie. Although the Chinese Restaurant Awards doesn’t represent Chinatown, it’s supporting the effort in partnership with Chinatown Foundation.
The project encourages people to rediscover the neighbourhood and support its small businesses, to help bolster its future while preserving its history. Suggested ways to get involved are by shopping there once a week; spending a day as a tourist in your own town; ordering takeout or delivery from Chinatown restaurants; and sharing your #MyChinatown moments and memories via social media.
“It was Chinatown that provided a sense of community and familiarity when my parents first immigrated to Vancouver in the 1960s,” Man says. “While they adjusted to life thousands of miles away from Hong Kong, Chinatown eased their entry into life in Canada, providing their first steps in building a life for their family.
“Chinatown was not just a community but a refuge, a safe space for long-standing Chinese families to build businesses and find their full expression of life,” Man says. “It’s not something Vancouverites like to think about, but racism is a constant undercurrent in our city, one of the ugly truths that COVID has unmasked. There’s a reason why Chinatown is located in the outer edges of the downtown waterfront, pushed away from the genteel neighbourhoods of Vancouver.”
However, Chinatown is not dead; it remains alive and generous, Man says, welcoming newcomers and providing real food for many residents of the Downtown Eastside. Its charms have never been about being an exotic tourist attraction but rather being firmly rooted in daily life. The way he sees things, it can still be part of everyone’s daily life if you scratch below the surface, whether you’re revisiting dining spots and grocery stores you haven’t been to in a while or trying them for the first time, discovering new flavours along the way.
Dollar Meat Store. Photo by Chinese Restaurant Awards
“Delicious baked goods continued to be churned out at Maxim’s, the preserved meats at Dollar Meats are truly world class, and the overstuffed steamed baos are still bought by the boxful at New Town Bakery,” Man says. “Head into one of the dry goods stores to purchase beautiful lustrous lentils, robust spices and the freshest Sichuan peppercorns around, and delicate teas.
“This is why #MyChinatown was started: to help people shop and explore this neighbourhood that is so deeply embedded into the history and fabric of Vancouver,” Man says. “To do so is to understand the truth of our city, in all its complicated glory.”
Another way to get behind the effort is to sign a petition that would eliminate street-parking fees in Chinatown. It’s available at the Museum of Vancouver exhibition A Seat at the Table, which explores Chinese immigration (and the history of discrimination in B.C.) through food and restaurant culture.
For Choo, Chinatown was a major part of her upbringing. Her grandmother and uncle used to run a media store in the area, and her mom would take her and her older brother there to hang out and eat. There was a lot of afternoon snacking together. Choo remembers going to Park Lok for dim sum and dinner up on the second floor, the Boss Bakery and Maxims Bakery for their set meals, Ba Le Sandwich Shop for Vietnamese subs, and to the Chinatown Plaza food court.
“#MyChinatown is an initiative to encourage everyone and anyone who has a piece of Chinatown in their hearts and lives to tell their stories as a kid or grown-up, to show that it is a place worth fighting for,” says Choo, a fourth-generation Canadian. “For me personally, it’s to help preserve a neighbourhood that helped me understand and embrace my ethnic identity of being a Chinese-Canadian and for our future generations that will also need its presence to help them see that, too.”
Choo and Man have created a guide to Chinatown’s restaurants and food businesses for people to explore. While the list is not exhaustive, some of Choo’s favourite places to eat include the Boss Bakery (for its Hong Kong-style milk tea, set meals, chicken and salted fish fried rice, and beef chow fun); Maxims Bakery (baked pork chop on rice or seafood rice set meal); Chinatown Plaza’s Ming Fong Fast Food (beef chow fun, Singapore vermicelli, and chicken leg); and Jade Dynasty Restaurant (House Special chow mein, salted egg-yolk lava buns, siu mai).
She loves the cold-cut sub at Ba Le and the Four Treasures Chef’s Plate at Chinatown BBQ (with barbecued pork, soy sauce chicken, roasted pork, and half salted egg on rice), and she also visits Kent’s Kitchen and Gain Wah.
“My hope is that we will have a plethora of stories that are then woven together to uphold ‘Our Chinatown’,” Choo says. “With each person sharing their #MyChinatown experiences, it will help revitalize our memories and reinforce us to walk the walk. It truly takes a village.”
Emma Choo outside the Boss Bakery and Restaurant. Photo by Chinese Restaurant Awards
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