Tag Archives for Chinese Canadian

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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Westernized Chinese food and Westernized Chinese people

The Montreal Gazette published an article last month about “vintage Chinese restaurants” in that city, meaning the “dying breed” of restaurants that served Canadian Chinese cuisine. These days, writing on Westernized Chinese food (see my review of Banquet and The Fortune Cookie Chronicles for some good book-length examples) often points out how foreign this cuisine is to Chinese people:

“When I first saw the menu, I was like, ‘What’s that? And what’s that?’ I was really curious,” he recalls. “Everything was sweet and sour, everything was battered and fried, tastes that in China we don’t do so much.”

New cooks coming from China had to be taught the fundamentals of Can-Chi cuisine, he says. “Like chicken balls with cherry sauce; you just don’t see this in original Chinese food. It was made for Western people. We prefer steamed and stir-fried foods, and to taste the actual flavour of the ingredients.”

“Taste the actual flavour of the ingredients”? That’s revolutionary.

My dad has a nickname for Westernized Chinese food: aak gwai lo tsaan (呃鬼佬餐), Cantonese for “food for swindling white people [into thinking that this is what Chinese people actually eat].” This moniker pretty much sums up my family’s attitudes towards this type of food. Living in the San Gabriel Valley, one of the top places to go in North America for “authentic” Chinese and Vietnamese food, we never went to Americanized Chinese restaurants (of which there were very few, usually situated next to Wal-Marts or Mexican supermarkets). Why would you, when you have hundreds and hundreds of “real” Chinese restaurants to choose from? Continue reading →

Link roundup: the Asian American 99%, Philly bullying victims, Invisible Australians, and Chinese Canadian Stories

I usually do this on Wednesdays, but this Hyphen post about the Asian American 99% is likely to spark a good amount of discussion before then:

The College Admissions Debate & the Asian American 1% – Hyphen

For the past three months I have been in New Orleans, supporting the youth leaders and organizers at the Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association (VAYLA). It’s striking to me that while social media is blowing up with questions of anti-Asian bias faced by the Asian American 1%, the debate is rather irrelevant to the community with which I work. Not one VAYLA youth member or staff member has had a conversation, even in passing, about the latest anti-Asian admissions policy uproar.

While so many people wring their hands and beat their war drums to make the Ivies accept more Asian Americans from the pool of highly qualified applicants, the youth at VAYLA are fighting for basic educational resources. Like textbooks.

I’m very glad that someone is bringing this to the spotlight. The model minority stereotype hides the fact that many Asian Americans, particularly Southeast Asians living in high poverty areas, are still struggling. This is a good segue into the next story:

Philadelphia Story: Voices of Asian American Bullying Victims – New America Media

On a cold December day in 2009, just weeks before Christmas, 15-year-old Trang Dang was walking home from school with her sister and eight friends, all recent Vietnamese immigrants. Also part of their group: the principal of their school.

Dang, who is 5’9” with a medium build and a dimpled, contagious smile, asked the principal to accompany them because she and the others were terrified by the intense bullying and violence against Asian students that had taken place earlier that day at their school, South Philadelphia High School. Midway through the walk, the principal, LaGreta Brown, disappeared, Dang said. “She walked to the corner with us and then we didn’t see her anymore,” Dang said. They debated whether to stay or continue walking. “Our friends said if we stand here, we’ll get in trouble,” Dang said. So they opted to try to make it home that day on their own.

They never did.

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