December 16th, 2009 by Dawn

You might think it’s funny that superstar Canadian comedian, Russell Peters, is the source of my inspiration for writing about food and culture in Toronto. I was watching his DVD, Red, White and Brown at Scott’s cottage this summer. In between fits of laughter, Peters’ commentary about race and culture that were so hilarious, were made more so because of the accuracy of his statements. What hit home in his comedy sketch was his explanation that race and culture are different. Russell Peters is Indian (his race), actually he more specifically says Anglo-Indian. But when he first stepped off the plane in India he realized he was sooo Canadian (his culture). And how he tells it will make you pee your pants. If you’ve never experienced this, I highly recommend you get to know Russell Peters by watching his stand-up routines.

I would add that while our nationality might define us, it’s our cultural attitudes, usually passed on to us by our parents and our environment, that really shape us. Growing up Chinese in Vancouver was like living in a bubble. Visible minority? What were they talking about? More than half the kids in my graduating class at Windermere High School were Asian (as defined in the Usage Note). (I just blew the dust off my annual and actually counted the faces. Man, those were some bad hair days.)

As kids, we moved back and forth from Vancouver to Toronto, a few times because of my dad’s work. The first move to a small suburb of Toronto, when I was about nine, was total culture shock. This was the 80’s and ours was one of maybe four Asian families in the whole school and for the first time I understood what discrimination felt like. Of course that’s all different now.

There were stages along the way when being Chinese was cool thanks to TV and movies for the depiction of us as kick ass, cool, don’t-mess-with-the-Triad type of characters. There were times when having an Asian girlfriend was a marker stating how worldly you were. The term we used for guys like that was “yellow fever”. They had yellow fever and in a reverse sort of discrimination, this really worked for me as a young adult new to the Tdot. Needless to say, I did learn to truly embrace my culture. I am yellow on the outside and white (western thinking) on the inside and that makes me a “banana”.

There are other terms out there. For instance, my not-Auntie Margaret says my American Uncle Milo is an egg (both pictured above). He’s white on the outside, but hard core yellow on the inside. I must say, he’s got a greater understanding of all things Asian than most Canadian-born Chinese, which brings me to the next term: CBC. Nope, not the national broadcasting station. Not only am I a banana, I’m also CBC, Canadian-born Chinese, which is different from being a Konger (that’s easy – from Hong Kong). And I don’t think people use the term FOB (Fresh Off the Boat) any more which is more derogatory because newcomers don’t call themselves FOBs. See terms are fine if you’re from the same family. The way my gay friends can call each other fags and how I can say banana in a positive way embracing all that it stands for because we’re in the family. Again, watch Russell Peters. He can explain it better, and in a much funnier way, than I can.

So that’s kind of the crux of this blog in a nutshell. I look forward to sharing with you my experiences with food and culture in Toronto from a banana’s perspective. Post #1 down, thousands more to go!!