Gung Haggis Fat Choy goes Montreal

via Maisoneuve Magazine/website

This much is obvious when you talk to Todd Wong, the cheerful founder of Gung Haggis Fat Choy, one of Vancouver’s newest and most intriguing cultural events. It all started when Wong was a student at Simon Fraser University. “I was asked to participate in the Robbie Burns Day celebration and nobody wanted to. Nobody wanted to wear a kilt! It was too strange, it was too weird. But I realized this is a multicultural statement. You’ve got a fifth-generation Chinese-Canadian wearing a kilt. It really put a flip on the stereotypes.” That was in 1993. Over the next several years a series of small dinners with friends based around the Chinese-cum-Scottish theme eventually ballooned into what is now a 600-person banquet featuring a twelve-course dinner, big-name guests and a number of fun and prominent performers. Traditional Chinese New Year dishes are served for dinner but the real star is the haggis which finds itself transformed into wontons, lettuce wraps and spring rolls. The cross-cultural culinary experience is upstaged only by the list of entertainment. This year the long list of talent includes iconic Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kogawa, who will speak to the audience some time after Lala, a Chinese-Canadian artist who blends soul and hip hop with traditional Asian and Canadian music, has performed. “We have to have fun with multiculturalism,” says Wong.

But Gung Haggis Fat Choy isn’t just about multiculturalism; it’s about interculturalism.There’s a fine but important distinction between the two. “It’s like a marriage,” explains Wong. “When you have an intercultural marriage, somebody’s actually coming into your family. For me, all my cousins on my maternal side and half my paternal cousins have interracially married. So we celebrate and everyone in the family is included.” That’s a pretty apt metaphor for Vancouver, even in a literal sense—last year, Statistics Canada determined that Vancouver is home to the largest proportion of mixed-race couples in Canada. Vancouver’s character is being built around cultural blending and exchange. “In Vancouver’s search for its own identity, everybody gets to express their own. We don’t have a long history—we are creating our history and identity in this moment,” adds Wong.

Perhaps inevitably then, in our lovely land of order and good governance, comes the question of how to enshrine part of that identity in a legal sense. Last year, a debate in Vancouver’s Chinese media about whether to make the Lunar New Year a public holiday made it into the pages of the Vancouver Sun, which asked, “Is it time to make it official?” Vancouver’s schools already throw multicultural New Year celebrations and, last year, all of the city’s high schools and half of its elementary schools closed for Lunar New Year. So why not make it a public holiday? Both Wong and Leung are skeptical. “It’s unfair to other cultural groups to isolate a Chinese holiday,” says Leung. Wong concurs. “I think that it is better presently to continue the status quo,” he says. “Should St. Patrick's Day and Robbie Burns Day become official holidays? Or Diwali? or Persian New Year?”

They have a point, but it’s helpful to remember that, unlike Robbie Burns Day or even Diwali, the Lunar New Year is celebrated by a huge number of Vancouverites. Not only is it a traditional festival for the Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese population, many non-Asians celebrate it by attending parades, the CFCC fair or by simply getting together with friends for dinner. Making it a public holiday in Vancouver would be an important symbol of the city’s dynamic character, one that is just as Asian as it is European. Still, making the Lunar New Year a holiday would ultimately be a token gesture; Vancouver’s character will continue to evolve regardless. “When I travel through Vancouver,” says Wong, “to me it’s intercultural. I don’t want to go to all the traditional dances and all that; I want to see what’s exciting. How do we create our own culture? How does Vancouver create its own identity by drawing on all its ethnic ancestries?”

The answer will be something for future generations to discover. In the meantime, have a good Year of the Dog. Gung Hay–er, Haggis–Fat Choy!