Celebrating a ‘tapestry of cultures’
With a rise in cross-cultural unions, tastes are blended and served up for the holiday
More than one million Canadian residents identify themselves as being of Chinese heritage, according to Statistics Canada. Of the more than 350,000 couples in that group, nearly 20 per cent report being in “cross- cultural unions,” in which both partners are from different cultural or ethnic backgrounds. This means more and more multicultural families are celebrating Chinese New Year and putting their unique spin on the festivities.
For Yaz Maziar and his wife, Heslie Chua, the holiday is all about gathering together with their family over a good meal. Chua was born in Fujian (Fukien) province in China but grew up in Vancouver, and Chinese New Year has always been an important annual ritual. The couple sticks with traditional Chinese New Year foods but mixes up where they celebrate.
Some years, they enjoy a Chinese buffet at a restaurant. This offers something delicious for everyone, including Maziar’s parents, who hail from Iran, and the couple’s 4-yearold son, Cameron. “We make it a point to go out to a Chinese restaurant so we’re in that environment,” Maziar says. “Our little guy gets to eat whatever he likes, and my parents love Chinese food.”
This year, the couple has happily accepted an invitation from Chua’s aunt in Toronto, who will host a family meal that includes symbolic Chinese New Year dishes. To ensure long life, the family digs in to e-fu noodles (Cantonese-style egg noodles) stirfried with mushrooms and chives. For prosperity, they enjoy whole fish steamed with green onions, cilantro, ginger and soy sauce, and sweet rice cakes that have been dipped in an egg batter and pan-fried. “The food transcends everything and brings people together,” Maziar says.
Meanwhile, Irene Fong, her husband, Sean Grattan, and their infant daughter, Penny, will be making the trek back to Ottawa, where Fong grew up. Fong’s parents, originally from Hong Kong, have close ties to their native culture.
They celebrate the New Year with a variety of foods — including roast pork, roast duck, steamed whole fish and broth-style soup — many of which symbolize good health, wealth and happiness.
Typically, Fong’s aunts and uncles host the feast. Fong, now a chef, remembers liking most everything as a child, including dishes that seemed strange to her and her cousins, who were all born in Canada. “There were specific Chinese New Year foods that, to a kid, were kind-of yucky,” she says with a laugh. “And I was the only kid who liked them.” The family still tucks into traditional hair vegetable, a type of algae eaten for prosperity, and lotus root for abundance. She also looks forward to sea cucumber braised with black Chinese mushrooms in a thick, savoury sauce.
Fong says the family’s menus have evolved to accommodate changing tastes and to welcome non-Chinese members of the family, such as Grattan. She remembers butter tarts showing up for dessert one year, and a simple noodle dish — representing long life — dressed up with kid-friendly beef and broccoli. “Chinese New Year is kind of like Christmas in Canada,” she says. “Everyone celebrates their own way, and there are no hard-and-fast rules.”
Leqin Lu moved to Toronto in 2009 from China’s Guangdong (Canton) province, and her family in Canada is decidedly small. She celebrates the New Year with just her husband, George Martin, who grew up in Peterborough, Ont., and is of European descent, and their 15-month-old daughter, Lian.
In China, “the biggest and most important meal was Chinese New Year’s Eve,” Lu says. “We usually had about10 courses.” Shrimp was always included, because the Cantonese word for it sounds like “laugh,” guaranteeing happiness for the year ahead. A brothy soup, steamed chicken and steamed whole fish were always in the lineup, too. Lu’s family also served a dish that contained leafy lettuce, like romaine or iceberg, pigs’ feet, and mushrooms or hair fungus (a.k.a. hair vegetable) braised in rich gravy to encourage good fortune.
In Canada, Lu says her Chinese New Year celebrations are “much more low-key.” Her small family enjoys a meal at a restaurant or celebrates at home. One year, she and Martin invited friends to join them for hotpot at their apartment. In a boiling pot of Lu’s homemade broth (made with chicken bones and dried mushrooms), everyone cooked whatever they liked from a selection of symbolic foods, including abalone, shrimp, oysters, fish, chicken, lettuce, carrots and mushrooms.
All three families agree that a Chinese New Year meal — in whatever form it takes — is a piece of cultural heritage their children will inherit. “We love the tapestry of cultures that our marriage has allowed,” says Maziar. Lu and Fong echo the sentiment, adding they’re hoping to learn some family recipes so their children can continue to enjoy this tradition. With them, they can add delicious new threads to their own multicultural family tapestries.