Gung Haggis Fat Choy in the USA


Here's the information from the Caledonians Website

Gung Haggis Fat Choy!  Huh?!  In 2007 Bill McFadden, President of the Caledonian & St. Andrew's Society, introduced Todd Wong's  trademarked production of "Gung Haggis Fat Choy" to Seattle.  Billed as "A Celebration of Chinese New Year and Robert Burns' Dinner", the laughter-filled evening included haggis, a delicious Chinese dinner, Pipes & Drums (traditional and fusion style), sing-alongs (including "When Asian/Scottish Eyes are Smiling" and "My Haggis/Chow Mein Lies Over the Ocean"), Poems, The Address tae the Haggis (delivered in rap to an enthusiastic and responsive crowd) and Auld Lang Syne sung in both Mandarin Chinese and English.  

For February 21st, 2010 BIll has worked out improvements, and Gung Haggis Fat Choy IV will be the best year!  We will celebrated the 251st Birthday of Robert Burns and Chinese Lunar New Year Year of the Tiger with an 8 Course Chinese Dinner, Haggis, Raffle/Door Prize, and musical entertainment featuring: Emcee "Toddish McWong" and his inimitable "Address tae the Haggis Rap", "Red" McWilliams, Sifu David F. Leong's Belltown Martial Arts,  Kenmore & District Pipe Band, Piper Don Scobie and Asian Youth Orchestra - Warren Chang, Director

     
  Toddish McWong's
2010 Gung Haggis Fat Choy IV (Seattle style)
Produced by Bill McFadden

The fourth annual event has been scheduled for
Sunday, February 21st 2010    5-9pm
Ocean City Restaurant
609 S. Weller St.
Seattle, WA

Ticket Price US$35
Reservations required

For tickets and additional information
please contact
Bill McFadden
(206) 364-6025
bill@gunghaggisfatchoy-seattle.com

Please click here to go to the gunghaggisfatchoy-seattle.com web site.

Please click here to view photos in our Gallery from the '07 event in Seattle.

Please click here for a sample of "Toddish McWong's" Haggis Rap!

Please click here for additional information on Todd Wong's annual Gung Haggis Fat Choy held in Vancouver, BC.

In 1759, a wee bairn of a boy named Robert was born in a cottage in the village of Alloway, in Ayrshire Scotlandm, on January 25th in the last days of the Chinese Lunar Year of the Tiger. Four days later on January 29th, Chinese New Year of the Rabbit occurred + pictures + more    more »

Every year I do media interviews. On Robbie Burns Day, I was woken up at 7am by a request from BBC Radio Scotland. Yesterday, I did an interview for French CBC television. Monday was Epoch Times. Last week the Georgia Straight did a food feature article. Somewhere in Scotland there is an interview in the Sunday Post. Even SFU, Seattle and North Shore News have stories about Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner this year. Check out the links:   more »

BBC Radio Scotland woke me up at 7am for a 9:30 am interview. There is 8 hours time difference. After I was woken up, it was hard to get back to sleep, so I got onto the computer and listened to BBC Radio Scotland for awhile. It's always fun to listen to them both on New Year's Eve and Robbie Burns Day.... + PICTURES + MORE   more »

There are some changes for the dinner menu for the Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner. We try to vary the dinner items from year to year, add some new surprises, take out items we are bored with. This is a draft menu - subject to change. See if you can spot the new additions - not repeated from last year. 1. Floata Appetizer Platter a. Haggis Pork dumpling (Shiu Mai) b. turnip cake (Lo-bak-goh) c. Honey BBQ Pork d. Jelly Fish 2. Deep fried haggis won ton + PICTURES + MORE   more »

Internet Radio blog link to Cultural Connects - Very interesting interview with Todd Wong, creator of Gung Haggis Fat Choy, by Gary Jarvis.Listen to Gary's interview of Todd Wong, creator of Gung Haggis Fat Choy, as he explains the Scottish and Chinese and BC roots of his brain child - a cultural fusion Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner. http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.vie...w&friendId=400868504&blogId=526013921   more »

2009 featured photos in exhibits at Royal BC Museum and Scottish Parliament. Other highlights included the inaugural writer in residence program at Historic Joy Kogawa House, and Todd Wong's first visit to Scotland for the finale weekend of Homecoming Year. And there was the 250th anniversary of poet Robert Burns.    more »

Why do we sing Auld Lang Syne at New Year's Eve?

Todd Wong be heard today on CBC Radion One 690 AM - ON THE COAST. 3-6pm

They asked me about the origins of singing "Auld Lang Syne" - the Robert Burns lyrics connection and the proper way of holding hands while singing. Of course I threw in similarities between Scottish Hogmannay and Chinese New Year - such as making lots of noise and paying off your debts.

They asked if I will be with friends ringing in the New Year. I said I am at Silver Star in Vernon, with good friends... including Craig Brown who was at my 1st Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner, when the only "kilts" we had were Canadian Mackinkaw lumberjack shirts tied around our waists...

Origins of singing Auld Lang Syne in North America are traced back to a Scottish tradition that spread through Scottish and British emmigration.

Wikipedia writes:

Singing the song on Hogmanay or New Year's Eve very quickly became a Scots custom that soon spread to other parts of the British Isles. As Scots (and other Britons) emigrated around the world, they took the song with them.

Canadian band leader Guy Lombardo is often credited with popularising the use of the song at New Year’s celebrations in America, through his annual broadcasts on radio and television, beginning in 1929. The song became his trademark. In addition to his live broadcasts, Lombardo recorded the song more than once. His first recording was in 1939. A later recording on September 29, 1947 was issued as a single by Decca Records as catalog #24260

Wikipedia's entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auld_Lang_Syne
also compares the 1711 version of Old Long Syne by James Watson to the 1788 version of Scots verse by Robert Burns.

Now Available: Tickets for Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner

- It's the 12 Anniversary of the "little dinner that could."

January 31st, Sunday 2010
Floata Seafood Restaurant
Vancouver Chinatown
Contact Firehall Arts Centre:
phone 604.689.0926

The Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Dinner has created an awareness of cultural fusion that has spanned international media, and been featured at the 2008 BC Canada Pavillion in Bejing during the 2008 Summer Olympics, the Royal BC Museum celebration exhibit of the 150th Anniversary of the province of BC, and a 2009 touring exhibition in Scotland titled This Is Who We Are: Scots in Canada.


Gung Haggis Fat Choy creator Todd Wong at the Scottish Parliament exhibition of THIS IS WHO WE ARE: Scots in Canada.  The exhibition featured a life sized photo of Wong and a video interview about the Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner, which features the acknowledgement of Chinese and Scottish pioneer history in Canada and contemporary culinary and cultural fusions.

Tickets are now on sale for the 12th Anniversary Dinner.
January 31st, Sunday, 2010
Floata Seafood Restaurant
Vancouver Chinatown
Doors open 5pm
Dinner starts 6pm

$60 + $5 service charge
or
$600 per table + $20 service charge
prices for students and children available.

Raffle Prizes are featured, as this dinner has traditionally been a fundraiser for: Gung Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat team, Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop/Ricepaper Magazine and Historic Joy Kogawa House.

Contact Firehall Arts Centre:
phone 604.689.0926
Visit the Firehall Box Office, 280 E. Cordova Street.
Box Office hours are: 9:30am - 5:00pm, Monday through Friday.

For media information
- contact: Todd Wong 778-846-7090
- email: gunghaggis@yahoo.ca

The origins of the dinner started with 16 people in a living room in 1998.  The next year it expanded to 40 people in a restaurant.  Soon it outgrew the first restaurant and expanded to 220 people in 2002.  Moving to a larger restaurant for 2003, and expanding to a 2-night event in 2004, serving over 500 people.  2005 saw the move to North America's largest Chinese restaurant and present home of the dinner where 570 people were accomodated.

A 2004 CBC telelevision performance special, Gung Haggis Fat Choy, was inspired by the dinner, and received two Leo nominations for best music performance, and best director of music performance.  In 2007, a CBC television documentary Generations: The Chan Legacy featured interviews with dinner creator Todd Wong, and film clips of the dinner.

A wide range of musical performers have been featured over the years including: fusion musicians Silk Road Music Ensemble, Dragon River Chinese Music Ensemble, Blackthorn celtic band, The Mad Celts, Chinese erhu master Ji-Rong Huang; opera singers Heather Pawsey, Veera Devi Khare; Jazz singer Leora Cashe.  Featured poets have included: Joy Kogawa, Rita Wong, Fred Wah, George McWhirter, Fiona Tin Wei Lam, Jim Wong-Chu, Sean Gunn and Tommy Tao.  The past 3 years have also featured sneak previews of Asian Canadian plays including: Mixie and the Half-Breeds, The Quickie, and Twisting Fortunes.

Todd Wong visits Scotland for Homecoming Year, the 250th Anniversary of the birth of Scottish poet Robert Burns.

For the 2010 dinner, creator Todd Wong has just returned from Scotland after visiting the birthplace of Scotland poet Robert Burns, and researching the displays of Burns for Homecoming Scotland, and museum exhibits on Scottish history and emmigration to Canada.  Wong is active in Chinese Canadian activities and visited Bejing and Xian in 1993.  He hopes to combine a merger of Scottish-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian history and culture in the Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner.

Another extravaganza of culinary and cultural fusion are expected for the 2010 dinner.  Details will be released each week leading up to the event.  Special guest speakers, media hosts, poets and musicians are confirmed or being confirmed.  The 2010 dinner will feature old traditions and new surprises, something borrowed and something brewed - especially created for the 2010 Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Dinner.

Tell your friends, and put a table of 10 together to enjoy the singalongs!
or come as a single or a double, and meet 8 brand new best friends for the evening at your table!
It's the most fun and intimate dinner for 500 you will ever attend!

I am now back in Canada. It was an incredible learning experience for my first trip across the Atlantic to one of the most important cultural and historical ancestral homes for this country called Canada. Canada is probably the most Scottish nations outside of Scotland. Our first prime minister, many of our explorers, BC's first premier, Vancouver's first mayor - were all born in Scotland. And yet... Scotland is a country that is learning from Canada. My trip was initiated because a life-size picture and video-interview of me were used in the photo exhibit This is Who We Are: Scots in Canada. I have written about the exhibit here: Toddish McWong arrives in Scotland for inaugural visit and reception at Scottish Parliament for "This is Who We Are". Here are my pictures from the exhibit and the reception at the closing of the event on St. Andrew's Day   more »

From Rosanne Cash website: There are still a few things with the name of Cash scattered around this part of Fife: Cash Mill, Cash Farm, Cash Easter and Cash Wester, and this street, Cash Feus. It’s odd— and comforting— to know that my ancestors lived here for hundreds of years, until one of them decided to move to America in the 17th century. I don’t even know what they passed on to me— perhaps a love of melancholy, Celtic- rooted music? A love of rolling hills and crumbling stone walls?   more »

A New Perspective on the Scottish Diaspora Source: www.arts.gla.ac.uk Dr. Leith Davis of SFU Centre of Scottish Studies, writes that "Gung Haggis Fat Choy" bucks the trend of "Scottish Discursive Unconscious." She writes: "In his contribution to the recent volume on Transatlantic Scots, Colin McArthur comments on what he calls the "Scottish Discursive Unconscious," a restricted range of "images, tones, rhetorical tropes, and ideological tendencies, often within utterances promulgated decades (sometimes even a century or more) apart"... "There are indeed traces of the Scottish Discursive Unconscious at work in Vancouver.... "Gung Haggis Fat Choy takes many of the features of traditional Burns nights and gives them a non-traditional twist...The "Address to the Haggis" morphs into the "Rap to the Haggis," featuring Joe MacDonald and Todd Wong with a synthesized beat maker in the background."   more »

How does the poetry and songs of Robert Burns affect Canadians in West Coast Vancouver?

Dr. Leith Davis, director of the Centre for Scottish Studies, Simon Fraser University, has organized a conference about the global Robert Burns - titled "Robert Burns in a Transatlantic Context."

Leith loved attending the 2009 Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner, and how we blended and juxtaposed Scottish, Chinese cultures with a Canadian twist and a seasoning of First Nations.  In planning her conference for Tartan Week, we wondered how to give a "Gung Haggis" experience to her conference attendees.  So for the Tuesday night evening of Robert Burns songs and poetry, A Musical Celebration of Burns in North America, she has invited Toddish McWong and Gung Haggis Fat Choy performers to give our "Rap to a Haggis", a Chinese claper tale performance by Dr. Jan Walls set to a Robbie Burns poem, and a performance of Auld Lang Syne (with the first verse sung in Mandarin Chinese) augmented with our parade dragon and Chinese Lions.  Deep-fried haggis wontons will hopefully be served along with haggis on Tuesday evening. 

On Wednesday afternoon, I will be part of the Community Research Forum of "Burns in BC." - where I will talk about the history and development of Gung Haggis Fat Choy, and how it inspired both a CBC TV television Gung Haggis Fat Choy performance special and the SFU Gung Haggis Fat Choy Festival.

2009 SFU Gung Haggis Fat Choy Festival features "dragon cart racing" invented by yours truly - photo Todd Wong.

How did I first meet Dr. Davis?

After brief email introductions, I called her with the idea of a wreath laying ceremony at the Burns statue in Vancouver's Stanley Park to mark the 250th Anniversary of Burn's birth.

We emailed and talked by phone and organized some activities, but we didn't meet in person until after she had spent 2 weeks in Scotland for the 2009 Homecoming activities, and arrived back in Vancouver on January 25th, and came to Stanley Park for our planned event, which her husband and two children were already present at.

That evening she and her husband were guests of honour at the 2009 Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner.  Leith gave "the immortal address" and marvelled at all the songs, guests, food and performances at the Gung Haggis Dinner, and especially at the impromptu ceremonial cutting of the haggis by Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson.

Please check out the free public events for the:

SFU's Centre for Scottish Studies presents

"Robert Burns in a Transatlantic Context"

 

Public events:

 

Tuesday, April 7^th

Doors open at 6:30 p.m.; concerts starts at 7:00 p.m.

A Musical Celebration of 
Burns in North America

Jon Bartlett and Rika Ruebsaat, 
“Burns Songs in BC”

Kirsteen McCue and David Hamilton, 
“Burns Songs Set by Serge Hovey”

Gung Haggis Fat Choy Performers

Scottish Cultural Centre, 8886 Hudson Street , Vancouver

 

Wednesday, April 8^th, 3:00 - 3:30 p.m.

Michael Russell, Scottish Minister for Culture,
External Affairs and the Constitution
“Connecting Scotland and the Scottish Diaspora”

Room 1425 SFU Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street , Vancouver

Wednesday, April 8^th, 3:45 - 5:00 p.m.

Community Research Forum on 
“Burns in BC”

Room 2200 SFU Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street , Vancouver

 

Wednesday, April 8^th, 7:00 p.m.

Lecture: Dr. Robert Crawford, 
“Writing Burns’s Biography”

Room 1400, SFU Harbour Centre (reception to follow)

 

Thursday, April 9^th, 3:00-4:30 p.m.

Workshop: “Connecting Diasporas: 
Scotland, Asia and the Caribbean ”

Room 2200, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street , Vancouver

 

All events are free and open to the public. 

Please contact Ron Sutherland to reserve a seat:

rsutherl@sfu.ca; 604-988-0479

 

Sponsored by SFU’s Centre for Scottish Studies; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; and the Vancouver Burns Club

This picture was created while Todd Wong was involved with the local CBC television performance special "Gung Haggis Fat Choy", based on the concepts of his annual Robbie Burns Chinese New Year dinner. This picture was reproduced in the Vancouver Sun today uncredited... even though it was first used by the Vancouver Sun, Dec 21, 2004, in the Mia Stainsby article "Have a taste of 2004". Recently, Jason Kenney waded into the discussion about Canadian identity, and immigration language classes, when he talked with editors at the Calgary Herald: New Canadians, says Kenney, "have a duty to integrate." Further, he says, "We don't need the state to promote diversity. It is a natural part of our civil society."    more »

Informal gathering celebrates the 250th Anniversary of poet Robbie Burns birth, at Stanley Park statue

Our group of Burns celebrants included bagpipers Trish and Allan McMordie (very rear), members of the Burns Club of Vancouver, members of the Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University, some visitors from Scotland, and lots of Vancouverites included myself.
Check out the rest of my pictures on Flickr.

Robbie Burns statue 250th...

Gung Haggis Fat Choy is always a wonderful event for photographs. Special thanks to our incredible photographers Patrick Tam, Lydia Nagai and VFK. If you like their photos, please contact them and purchase them. We have asked them to put "water marks" on their photos, so that we will advertise and promote them. They help us with our event, because they believe in the community work and social consciousness raising that we do. + PICTURES   more »

Hi everybody... A wonderful job by everybody last night - Veteran Gung Haggis performers Joe McDonald and Heather pronounced last night as "The Best Gung Haggis Dinner yet" And Dr. Leith Davis said it was the best Burns Supper she had ever attended - and she just spent 2 weeks in Scotland for Homecoming Scotland! Congratulations to everybody. The energy was brilliantly contagious and fun. There were lots of nice surprises in the program, with the Mayor reading a Burns poem, a treatise on the details of scotch drinking, Parks Commissioner Stuart Mackinnon singing A Man's A Man For A' That, and hip hop artist Ndidi Cascade coming up from the audience to rap a verse of Burns' Address to A Haggis.   more »