Chop Suey Nation

by Ann Hui

  Yes, the restaurants were connected, he said. He was the connection.

  One of the first Chinese restaurants he worked at in Nova Scotia was The Chow Family restaurant. There, the owner at the time had taught him everything he knew. So when Mr. Huang opened his own Chinese restaurant years later, Huang’s—that second, green-and-yellow pagoda-shaped restaurant we’d seen in Sydney—he applied what he’d learned, right down to the decor.

  They’re not exactly the same, he said. “It’s just almost the same.”

  * * *

  That night, we pulled into the Sydney ferry terminal to take the seven-hour, roughly 180-kilometre journey to Channel-Port aux Basques, NL.

  After passing our reservation details to the woman in the ticket booth, she pointed us to the giant waiting area, where cars and trucks were parked in rows, ready to board. It was still early and many of the lanes were empty. But the lanes on the edges designated for trucks were full. The giant container trucks were lined up, one by one, filled with food, household goods, electronics—everything Newfoundlanders couldn’t otherwise get on the island province.

  The ferry service was run by a provincial crown corporation. Because of this, we’d expected it to look something like the ferries in BC, comfortable but bland. But once we boarded and surfaced onto the passenger deck, we were surprised to find a cabin decorated in bright pinks, purples and lime green. With the polished floors and thick, round columns, it was like a floating nightclub in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

  We walked across the rest of the main passenger level, taking in the cafes and cafeterias, a gift shop and multiple seating areas. Then we made our way downstairs.

  The cabins, where we’d splurged on a sleeping bunk, were on a separate deck. The hallways were stark white, and the entrance to each cabin marked with a citrus-yellow door. We pulled open the door to ours. The entire cabin was maybe two and half metres wide, with a single bed on each side and a narrow walkway in between. There was a tiny bathroom in the corner with a toilet, a sink and a shower that was so small I couldn’t possibly imagine using it.

  As I tucked into my bed for the night, it reminded me of those summers working as a flight attendant. On the long-haul flights from Toronto to Hong Kong, we’d have our crew rest in bunks like these, tiny single beds. Here, as there, we buckled ourselves into bed with seatbelts before drifting off to the sound of safety announcements over the PA. The same waves that had terrified me and Anthony the night before were now rocking us gently to sleep.

  I slept soundly that night, better than at any of the hotels we’d stayed at on previous nights.

  But the next morning, Anthony wouldn’t stop yawning over breakfast. I was surprised when he told me he hadn’t been able to sleep. I asked him why.

  “The rocking back and forth didn’t bother you?”

  “I didn’t feel a thing,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrow. “I don’t know, it was pretty bad.”

  A crew member—a middle-aged woman with blonde hair—walked over to clear the table next to ours.

  Anthony turned to her. “Last night was a real rock polisher, eh?”

  She turned to face him. “Excuse me?”

  “The turbulence last night,” he said. “A real rock polisher.”

  She looked at him and nodded vaguely.

  He pressed on. “On a scale of one to ten, how bad would you say it was?”

  She let out a small laugh that may have actually been a snort. She gave it a moment’s thought.

  “I’d say—about a two?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Abbotsford, BC.

  1977

  Mom and Dad found an apartment on Pauline Street, just around the corner from the Legion.

  On their first day at the restaurant, they arrived at eight in the morning. The previous owner, a man named Mr. Cheung, greeted them. He’d agreed to stay on for the first week to show them the ropes. Mr. Cheung was just slightly older than Dad and wore his hair in a deep side part. He was originally from Hong Kong and had moved to Canada with his parents. But now they were elderly, and neither one spoke English. This meant he’d had to run the restaurant more or less on his own—taking orders and waiting tables out front, and then jumping into the kitchen to help with cooking too. He was burnt out and ready to go back to collecting a paycheque.

  The first thing Mr. Cheung did was show Mom and Dad how to make coffee. This, he told them, was the most important thing he could teach them. It was 1976, before the proliferation of Starbucks or Tim Hortons. When people wanted coffee, they either made it at home or bought it at cafes like his. Many of the regulars would only be here for the coffee, Mr. Cheung told them.

  He showed Dad the refrigerator, and how to organize the vegetables and meats on their own shelves. He also showed him his supplier lists, and how to put in his order at Fresh Pak, which would deliver all his fresh fruit and vegetables each week.

  Then he walked Dad through the menu. He explained what a “special of the day” was—basically whatever he had extras of. And he explained why it was important to have a soup as a special every day. It meant getting rid of leftovers. Whatever happened to be in the refrigerator could be repackaged as soup. Leftover chicken became chicken noodle. Leftover turkey became cream of turkey. And leftover ham became split pea with ham.

  Dad jotted down notes as quickly as he could while Mr. Cheung spoke. Cream of turkey? he thought to himself. Split pea with ham? They sounded so foreign.

  When it was time for Mr. Cheung to teach Dad how to roast a turkey, he did a double-take at the bird that came out of the freezer. He had never seen or even heard of a turkey before. The smooth, hairless surface was wrapped in plastic. And it was huge. It looked nothing like the fresh chickens he had eaten growing up. Once roasted, Mr. Cheung taught him how to debone the bird: how to save the bones and giblets for soup and slice the breast for sandwiches.

  “When people order a chicken sandwich, you can just give them turkey,” Mr. Cheung instructed him. It would help to get rid of the turkey meat quicker, and customers wouldn’t know the difference. “A turkey is just like a bigger chicken, right?”

  Dad nodded yes, even if he wasn’t sure he agreed.

  Mr. Cheung taught him how to make hamburgers, then showed him what ketchup and mayonnaise were, and how much of each to use. He squirted a dime-sized amount of ketchup onto a spoon, and then a bit of mustard. He had Dad taste each, so he’d know the difference. “Ketchup—sweet,” he said. “Mustard—sharp.”

  He worked his way down the menu, showing Dad how to make crispy fish and chips, sirloin steaks with a charred crust, bubbling tomato soup and veal cutlets. Most of these were foods Dad had never even tasted, let alone cooked. Dad tasted them, one by one, taking note of the flavours—sweet, salty, crispy, oily. They were so different from the ones he was used to. Mr. Cheung handed him a grilled cheese and ham sandwich, fresh off the grill. Dad took a bite. The melted cheese stretched into long strings. The cheese was piping hot and creamy. The ham was salty and sweet. He almost fell over.

  Anytime Dad asked too many follow-up questions, or asked Mr. Cheung to repeat himself, the cook would only wave dismissively. “Most of the customers around here are farmers and labourers,” he said. “They aren’t gourmets.”

  “The most important thing is that it’s cooked,” Mr. Cheung told him. “As for the taste, well, there’s salt and pepper on the table.”

  * * *

  On the third day, Mr. Cheung switched to the other side of the menu. The “Chinese” menu.

  “I already know how to cook Chinese food,” Dad told Mr. Cheung. He’d spent the past year cooking it.

  But this wasn’t Chinese food, Mr. Cheung told him. This was chop suey Chinese. “The people here—they won’t eat the food you cooked in Chinatown.” He showed him sweet and sour pork, one of the most popular items on the Chinese menu. Sure, it was similar to gu lou yuk, a classic Cantonese dish, he explained, but there were key differences. He showed
Dad how to make the sauce out of sugar, vinegar and ketchup, then build a batter out of cornstarch, egg and flour. “Be sure to make a thick batter to sop up more sauce,” Mr. Cheung told him. Once the dish was done, Dad bit into the pork. It was crispy from the batter, and sweet and tangy all at the same time. The cubes of pineapple exploded between his teeth with salty, sweet juice. It was so sweet it tasted like candy.

  “This is Chinese?” Dad asked.

  Mr. Cheung nodded, grinning. “Chop suey Chinese.”

  Then Mr. Cheung taught him how to make chop suey. It was exactly what it sounded like, he explained.

  Chop suey—dsap sooy. Assorted scraps. Bits and pieces. This and that.

  In other words, whatever happened to be lying around.

  The basic ingredients were always the same, Mr. Cheung said. There were always bean sprouts, onions and carrots. From there, you add whatever is available. For beef chop suey, some roast beef from the sandwiches. For chicken chop suey, the chicken, or turkey. And for vegetable chop suey, peppers and mushrooms, or whatever else had arrived in the Fresh Pak order that week.

  Then soy sauce, sugar and salt.

  “At the very end, always add a sprinkle of MSG. This is important,” he said, turning to face Dad.

  MSG, or monosodium glutamate, is the ubiquitous ingredient in every Chinese kitchen all over the world. It made everything taste better. But it was a controversial ingredient—a controversy that food historian Ian Mosby traces back to the 1960s, when a medical researcher posited in the New England Journal of Medicine that a variety of symptoms he was experiencing (numbness, weakness and heart palpitations) were due to MSG. This bolstered pre-existing suspicions of Chinese cuisine as “unclean” or “unsafe,” and quickly became known as “Chinese restaurant syndrome,” despite the fact that MSG is used in a variety of foods, including cheese and baby food. And though the idea of MSG-caused discomfort has since been dispelled by science, many mistakenly continue to believe the ingredient is harmful.

  But not Mr. Cheung. He encouraged Dad to use the ingredient liberally, to make up for any shortcomings in flavour otherwise.

  He repeated himself for emphasis. “Don’t forget the MSG.”

  * * *

  The next week, Mr. Cheung was gone. He’d taught Mom and Dad as much as he could. Now they were on their own.

  That morning, Dad stood in the kitchen, giddy with anticipation and nerves. The first few orders had gone by smoothly enough. Mostly coffee, toast and a couple of ham-and-egg sandwiches.

  Then Mom walked up to the window to call an order. “Fried egg sandwich,” she said.

  He asked her to repeat herself.

  “Fried egg sandwich,” she said again.

  Dad nodded, straight-faced. He picked up the menu, scrolling down the pages until he saw it: “Fried egg sandwich.” There was no description. Mr. Cheung had never mentioned a fried egg sandwich. He definitely hadn’t gotten around to teaching it.

  So Dad walked over to the griddle. He pulled out two slices of bread, buttered one side of each and placed them down on the hot surface. Then he took an egg out of the refrigerator and cracked it over the griddle. It hissed and sizzled, the edges quickly crisping and hardening into a lace skirt.

  With the easy part done, he had to take a moment to think.

  Fried egg sandwich.

  Surely there was more to it? Who would pay for two slices of bread and an egg?

  So he ran through all of the other sandwiches on his menu. The most popular sandwiches, the ones that Mr. Cheung had taught him, all had another thing in common. They all had lettuce. The BLT, turkey, and chicken salad sandwiches all had a piece of crisp iceberg lettuce inside. Mr. Cheung had told him that texture was important in Western cooking—that lettuce could add that extra bit of crunch.

  So Dad walked over to the refrigerator and grabbed a head of lettuce. He scrunched his brow, then laid two lettuce leaves atop the fried egg before covering it with the second piece of bread.

  Mom took the plate out and Dad followed her into the dining room. He pretended he was checking on something behind the counter. He watched as the man picked up his sandwich. But just as he was about to take a bite, something stopped him and he put the sandwich back down on the plate.

  The man lifted up the top piece of bread. A puzzled expression spread over his face. He picked off the lettuce with his fingers, tossing it aside on the plate. Then he closed up the sandwich and took a big bite. Within minutes, he’d eaten the whole thing.

  Dad quickly disappeared back into the kitchen.

  “Fried egg sandwich,” he repeated to himself. “Toast. Fried egg. No lettuce.”

  He was learning.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Deer Lake, NL.

  Spring 2016

  We drove off the ship, past a small cluster of homes painted blue, red and yellow. From the Trans-Canada Highway, we took in the snow-covered rock that seemed to stretch on forever. It felt like we were the only ones on the island. There was only our car and the highway.

  About three hours into our drive, we stopped in a town called Deer Lake, about thirty minutes past Corner Brook. It was time for lunch. Just off the highway, sandwiched between an A&W and a Subway, was a white trailer-style building. The word “CANTON” was painted in big block letters in red on the side of the building. Next to it, the Chinese simplified characters for “Guangdong.”

  Anthony needed another break from Chinese. There was a pizza place down the road, he said. He’d wait for me there. As I pulled open the door, a handmade sign caught my eye. “Chow mein on our menu is cabbage,” it read.

  Inside the Canton Restaurant, a middle-aged man greeted me from behind the counter. He looked about fifty. Despite the stained apron around his waist, he had a professorial look to him. His hair was neatly trimmed, and he wore a smart-looking zip-up vest over his plaid shirt. He introduced himself in Cantonese as Richard Yu, the owner of the restaurant.

  The way he spoke, as if he gave thought to every word, reminded me of Dad. He looked a lot like him too, with a thin face and high cheekbones. Every once in a while, he smiled, causing the corners of his eyes to crinkle. He was right in the middle of the lunch rush, he said apologetically. But if I didn’t mind waiting, he could come talk to me once things died down.

  So I sat at a table near the front of the room, watching as he hurried back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room. The dining room itself was huge, split into two levels, with about thirty tables. The walls were white with green wainscotting. The door frames and trims were painted red. In the middle of the room was one long table with over a dozen people seated around it, mostly seniors having their lunch. A handful of other families and couples were there too. And every few minutes, the door would open and in would walk another guy in a flannel shirt and work boots, ordering take out for lunch.

  I studied the menu, a mostly familiar collection of classic chop suey dishes (egg rolls, chicken guy ding, sweet and sour pork), along with “Canadian” ones (fish and chips, liver dinner and T-bone steak). The wings were on special, either deep-fried in batter or drenched in honey-garlic sauce.

  About ten minutes later, Mr. Yu came over to sit down. Like my dad, he was from Toisan and had moved to Vancouver in his twenties. Like my dad, he had daughters.

  He’d been a high school science teacher in China, something my dad only aspired to. But when he arrived in Vancouver, he didn’t have the luxury of going back to school to get the credentials he needed to continue teaching. He needed to earn money right away to support his family. So he went into the restaurant business.

  It was the Goldilocks approach that had led them to Deer Lake, he said. They liked Vancouver, with all of the amenities for Chinese immigrants. But there were already so many Chinese restaurants there. Competition was stiff, so they had to work all the time. Plus the living costs were high. What did it matter that there was a Chinese New Year parade when they didn’t have time to go see it?

  They heard t
hrough acquaintances that Newfoundland was a nice place to live. So the family moved to Corner Brook, where Mr. Yu took over a Chinese restaurant. But that city wasn’t right either. The restaurant was too quiet. It had a bad reputation among locals because of previous owners, they learned. And there was no parking—essential, given the Newfoundland winter weather.

  So they moved again, this time to Deer Lake. Finally, Mr. Yu said, they felt like they were home. The town, with just under five thousand residents, felt peaceful. The people were nice. And here, competition wasn’t an issue. Canton was, at least at the beginning, the only Chinese restaurant in town.

  “We made the right decision,” he said. “I’m satisfied with my life right now. My kids have grown up, my business is steady, and I have peace of mind.”

  He’d had to make adjustments for the region, he said. Some of the recipes didn’t translate in Newfoundland. Ribs, for example. In Vancouver, he’d had his recipe for spareribs perfected. He’d deep fry them before coating them in a sauce—sweet and sour or honey garlic—so that they were crispy on the outside but tender on the inside. They’d always been a hit in Vancouver.

  But when he made the same ribs for his Newfoundland customers, they were unimpressed. “They said, ‘Even a dog wouldn’t eat this!’” Mr. Yu said, chuckling. It took him a while to figure out the key difference. His new customers in Newfoundland were much, much older than the ones he’d had in BC. The crunchy ribs were hard on their teeth. Or at least, on the teeth they had left. Newfoundland has the oldest median age in the entire country. Over 20 per cent of the population in Deer Lake is over the age of sixty-five.

  So he started braising his ribs, cooking them slowly under low heat until they were soft and tender, falling off the bone. They were an immediate hit.