Sunday, January 25 2009
Gong Xi Fa Cai, Robbie Burns
Hey! Your end is draggin'!
At the end of January I'm always pulled in two competing directions: jau gok and a nice bottle of Tsing Tao, or haggis and a wee dram? It's not only Chinese New Year on January 26th, but also it's Robbie Burns Day on the 25th.
Noble Chieftan, getting his due.
Regular readers of this blog will know I'm interested in all forms of festivals and celebrations from various cultures. I'm particularly happy about these two. At one time I worked in Vancouver's Chinatown district (pretty much the coolest centre of Asian culture outside of Asia, in my opinion) and even got to carry the dragon one year in the parade. I was very lucky: most of my co-workers were immigrant or second-generation Chinese, and they enjoyed the new year with parades and a lot of fun and celebration, and especially a dinner with traditional foods symbolising prosperity and happiness.
In addition to this I married a woman of Scottish-Caribbean ancestry. If there's one group of people that's more intensely Scottish than any others, it's those with a tenuous ancestral connection to the old country. But I don't mind at all. In fact, I've embraced it, to a certain extent:
300 pound entrechats, Mr. McNureyev?
Robbie Burns birthday is celebrated around the world with a Burns Supper. While they vary a bit in detail (sometimes even devolving into a full-fledged céilidh when nobody is looking) they always involved bagpipes, whisky, Burns poetry and haggis. There's so much disgust and misinformation surrounding haggis it's disheartening. Really, it's just a strongly flavoured sausage the size of a man's head, made out of sheep guts. What's not to love?
Stab it? Nuke it from orbit!
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.
I've been to Chinese dinners to celebrate, and I've been to some wonderful Robbie Burns celebrations as well, complete with Haggis and whisky ('oat cuisine', as my pal Quentin so wonderfully put it) but was always sorry to have to choose between the two milieus. It turns out that I didn't have to: I could have had Gung Haggis Fat Choy, a creation of Toddish McWong in the early 90's.
Such happy confusion!
Wong was attending Simon Fraser University and helped out at their staunchly traditional Robbie Burns day dinner when he realised that the two events were a natural overlap. He created his Gung Haggist Fat Choy dinner initially for a few friends, and now sixteen years later it's gone international and raises funds for Dragon Boat teams, and bridges cultural divides and brings people together in celebration.
That's what is best about Canadian multiculturalism. Rather than a vast melting pot mingling our differences into one bland broth, we're a tossed salad, with crisp-crunchy cultural contrasts, and the sweet dressing of shared values and pleasures and the grated cheese of ancestral reverence all mingled onto a plate we can share and be proud of.
I hope your new year, and your Burns supper are happy and prosperous.
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