For the love of line dancing

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I had a chance to test my line dancing skills Saturday night. Some friends invited me to a St. Valentine’s dance in Chinatown at Le Cristal Chinois restaurant which included a ten course meal. It’s a toss-up as to which appealed to me the most, the supper or the dance, so I brought both my dancing shoes and my appetite. The only requirement was everyone had to wear something red or pink.

The dance floor was already full when I arrived at 5:30. At the front of the sea of red was the instructor dressed in an outfit of black sequins and Line dancing in Chinatowngold heels. With a microphone in one hand, she called out the steps over the beat of the golden oldies. It was obvious that most of the people were seasoned line dancers and most likely, students in her class. There were only a handful of men present. A few of them assumed the job of guarding the belongings at the table while the women tore up the dance floor. The evening was a family affair with ages ranging from teenagers to retirees in their eighties, but I discovered it was mainly a girls’ night out as most of the women had left their husbands at home so they could dance the night away.  Continue reading →

Paper Fortune Cookie Tutorial

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Here’s a neat idea for a Chinese New Year party from the blog Feels Like Home, paper fortune cookies!

 * * *

You won’t believe how easy it is to make these paper fortune cookies. They’re inspired by the Silhouette machine template below, but you can make them almost as easily without a machine.

When I saw these paper fortune cookies in the Silhouette store, I had to make some.

Read more: http://www.feelslikehomeblog.com/2013/12/paper-fortune-cookie-tutorial/#ixzz3QjlufkXJ
Follow us: @TaraZiegmont on Twitter | FeelsLikeHome on Facebook

 

How to Tell if You Were Raised in a Chinese-American (or Canadian) Family

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Photo from iStock

Photo from iStock

Read this hilarious post by LiAnne Yu and see how many of these signs you can identify with. I can identify with every one except #7 and 10.

17 signs you were raised in a Chinese-American family

1. You speak Chinglish fluently.

You and your parents have developed your own, unique language, made up of some parts English and some parts Chinese. Every Chinese-American family has their own version of Chinglish. Some of my family favorites: “I bought hen duo (a lot) of your favorite snacks.” “It’s too mafan (troublesome).” And: “That’s so diu lian (humiliating).” When you were younger you felt embarrassed to speak Chinglish in public, but now that you’re older, you cherish having such an intimate language that you share with only a few other people in the world.  Continue reading →

Pumpkin Inferno

Ghosts and Goblins in the Nighttime

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Ghosts and goblins in the night are the subject of my entry for the photo challenge Nighttime.  Last October, I went to PUMPKIN INFERNO at Upper Canada Village where they create displays made out of fake pumpkins. Just to give you an idea of how these were made, below is a before and after picture.

Under the Sea as it really looks
Under the Sea at night

If you go, be prepared to walk a lot, bring a jacket as it’s in an open field, and remember to charge your camera batteries.

Continue reading →

Bagg Street Shul

Walking Tours with the Museum of Jewish Montreal

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Doing research for a project can either be a chore or a pleasure. It was the latter for me recently. I’ve been researching Jewish history in Montreal when a friend mentioned that the Museum of Jewish Montreal gives walking tours. It sounded like a lot more fun than just reading about it, so I signed up for “Making Their Mark,” a tour of the Jewish community that existed in the Plateau area from the turn of the 20th century until the 1950s.

I met Laura, my tour guide, at the corner of St. Laurent and Milton. Since I was the only one who signed up for that day, it would be a private tour. We spent the next two hours viewing buildings that were formerly synagogues, schools and hospitals which Laura brought to life as she talked about the immigration of Eastern European Jews and how they established their community, culture and what was once Montreal’s thriving schmatta industry.

Continue reading →

Hanx Writer App Brings Back Typing the Old-fashioned Way

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Hanx Writer

 

Everything old is new again.

I learned how to type in high school. Only the girls took typing
in those days. The one boy in my year who took the class was
considered to be either brave or an oddity. I remember the huge
manual Underwood typewriters we used. I never thought I would be
able to stretch my fingers far enough to reach the upper keys.
The room filled with the slow clack… clack of the keys as we
memorized where the letters were. And if anyone made a mistake,
there’d be a groan from the student and the grinding sound of the
carriage moving backward to correct it.

Well, thanks to Tom Hanks’ vision, I can relive the good old days.
He launched his app called Hanx Writer this week. The basic
version, Hanx Prime Select, is free at the iTunes store. It
combines the sound and experience of pounding away at the keys
with the convenience of the digital age. I’m figuring out how to
use it as I write this. One thing for sure, it’s a heck of a lot
easier to fix mistakes than on the real thing.

Continue reading →

The Fitting Room by Cheryl Sim

Chinese Fever

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Looking for some free things to do around Montreal? Head towards Chinatown and take a look at a couple of exhibits by local artists.

Cheryl Sim

Cheryl Sim

La Cabine d’Essayage (The Fitting Room) by Cheryl Sim is aptly located in a small corner of a shopping mall in Chinatown amid clothing and accessory boutiques.

Sim examines the cheongsam, which according to her, is a dress that has become an internationally recognized symbol of Chinese cultural identity. She asks Canadian-born Chinese women how they feel about the dress and if they have a desire to wear it. You get to listen to their answers through headphones and feel as if you’re a part of their conversation. Also part of the exhibit is a video-sculptural work that evokes the classic Chinese screen on which photos and videos showing the evolution of the cheongsam are displayed, and a transparent, plexi-glass fitting room which projects clips from Hollywood films onto the visitor’s body.

Continue reading →

Does this St. Hubert commercial depict Chinese people in a negative way?

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St Hubert Restaurant For the past few weeks, the St. Hubert restaurant chain has been running a commercial where the owner of a Chinese restaurant discovers St. Hubert has a $7.95 meal deal. Both of the actors are Chinese and speak in Cantonese with either English or French subtitles. The complaint is that the commercial is demeaning and offensive. It has drawn criticism and comments on its Facebook and Twitter accounts, and sparked a national dialogue on the stereotyping of Chinese-Canadians.

You can watch it here in English followed by the French version.

Do I think the St. Hubert commercial is stereotyping Chinese people? Yes, but not in a negative way.  Is it demeaning? I don’t think so.

Television has not done a good job of depicting Chinese people. I watched the TV series Bonanza when I was growing up and found the character of the Chinese cook, Hopsing, kind of…confusing. My father and none of the Chinese men I knew had a long braid or behaved in a subservient way. Then there was the practice of casting Caucasian actors in Chinese roles, such as Charlie Chan who was played by three Caucasian actors and the TV series Kung Fu where David Carradine was chosen over Bruce Lee to play the lead role.  There are a handful of Asians on prime time shows now, but basically unless there is a scene that takes place in Chinatown, it’s rare to see a Chinese person on TV.

Continue reading →

Celebrate Asian Heritage Month

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Asian Heritage Month 2014

 

If you have always wanted to try dim sum but never got around to it, then here’s a good reason to go: May is designated as Asian Heritage Month. The Canadian Government’s web site (where you can download the poster above) says “Asian Heritage Month is an ideal occasion for all to celebrate the beauty and wisdom of various Asian cultures.”  Of course, you can celebrate anytime of the year, but what better excuse to order Chinese take-out and indulge in a marathon of Bruce Lee or Ang Lee films?

Need some more ideas? Here are a few from my shelf of Canadian books and film:

Books

I’m currently reading A Cowherd in Paradise – From China to Canada by May Q. Wong and am loving it. It’s the story of Wong’s parents who were forced to live apart for 25 years because of Canada’s exclusionary immigration laws. It is a well-written account with family photos and it brings to life the price the Chinese paid when Canada enacted the Chinese Immigration Act. I met Wong when she came to Montreal to do a reading of her book. You can read about it here. 

The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son and a Suit by J.J. Lee was a finalist for the Governor General’s literary award for non-fiction in 2012. This book deserved all the accolades it received. This memoir about a son who decides to become an apprentice to one of the last great tailors in Vancouver’s Chinatown in order to alter his father’s suit learns invaluable lessons about life instead.

The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy is, in my opinion, a classic. It’s the story of the children of an immigrant family living and growing up in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1930s and 1940s. Continue reading →