Tag Archives for Asian Canadian

“We fed that to the pigs!”: Asian immigrants and Western nutrition

Pork belly stewed with preserved mustard greens (梅菜扣肉), something my grandmother might make once a year. It's not terribly photogenic but it is heart-stoppingly good. Photo: Alpha (Flickr/Creative Commons)

Over the weekend I went to the warehouse store with my mother to pick up some groceries. She doesn’t read English very well, and pointed to a tub of sour cream, thinking it was Greek yogurt. “Your aunt tells me this stuff is really good for you and will help you lose weight. She says it tastes awful but you can mix some stuff in it and you won’t even notice!”

Thankfully, she didn’t show any further interest in sour cream or Greek yogurt. My family’s attempts at trying yogurt over the years have always ended after the first few spoonfuls. “Yuck, how do white people eat this stuff?” I’d usually have to finish off the rest of the tub.

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Prison Dancer: The Musical

If you haven’t watched the first episode of Prison Dancer: The Musical yet, do it!

This new interactive web musical features some amazing Filipino Canadian performers, including Mikey Bustos (Christian) and Jeigh Madjus (Lola). The plot is inspired by the videos of dancing inmates from Cebu that went viral several years ago:

Prison Dancer is the story of 6 Filipino prisoners whose lives are forever changed by the dancing rehabilitation program that became a worldwide viral sensation on Youtube. Using surveillance footage, interviews with inmates inside the prison, and good old fashioned investigative journalism, pop culture journalist Matt Wells uncovers the personal, poignant, hilarious and universal stories of 6 prison dancers whose group dancing turned a maximum security jailhouse into a world stage.

Behind the prison walls, we meet inmates Ruperto Poblador aka LOLA (who along with his gay minions OO OO and NANA, choreographs the first prison dance routines), HOOKAPS, (the prison hustler), SHAKESPEARE (the prison’s resident poet) and CHRISTIAN, (the prison’s newest inmate) and discovers a tale of life, death, dreams, fears and ultimately, redemption.

WLR: Chinese birth tourism and Vietnamese nail technicians

Mainlanders as locusts. Click on the image to learn more about this ad campaign.

“Anchor babies” in Canada

Hong Kong is not the only place where Mainland Chinese mothers are hoping to give birth. Joel of China Hope Live writes about how the influx of “birth tourists” in Canada is changing the country’s health care system’s attitudes towards foreign mothers:

Literally right as I was meeting my parents and daughter at the reception desk when they were coming to see the new baby for the first time, an agent showed up for a 20-minute lecture/interrogation, asking us the kind of questions you get when going through customs: When did you arrive in Canada? How long do you plan to be here? Where is your permanent residency? Etc. [...] She even photocopied Jessica’s passport, even though Canadian border agents don’t usually stamp American visitors’ passports. I get them being all on top of securing Jessica’s insurance info, but what’s her status in Canada have to do with it?

I’m guessing that since Jessica is white and American, she was pestered a lot less than a non-resident East Asian would be. The Canadian authorities are cracking down as expectant mothers are finding new ways to game the system:

The Canadian action comes an investigation by a Hong Kong newspaper found that bogus “consultants” are teaching Chinese women how to hide their pregnancies and how to apply for Canadian visitor or student visas.

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