In Canadian Prairie towns the Chinese Food restaurants and cafes stand as ubiquitous reminders of the past ... they remain and even persist in an era of Fast Food Outlets, because they not only hearken back to a simpler time, they offer good, and comforting food that is familiar, yet delightfully exotic ...It has been said that almost EVERY prairie town once had a Chinese food Cafe of some kind. Some of this is grounded in the harsh racism that marked the early days on the prairies: Chinese families could run one of two businesses - the cafe and the laundry. The irony of course is that in their racism, the town folk trust the outcasts with two of the most intimate actions we possess - our food and our clothing !!
But whatever the reason for their origin, the Chinese Food Cafe remains a presence in many, many prairie towns. Today the tend to be run by recent immigrants from Asian countries, and they may be connected to the past only by thier location, but they remain an integral component of the town fabric. The lunch time buffet at Sun Sun's is seldom poorly attended.
Here in Minnedosa there were two Chinese Food Cafes on Main St - Sun Sun's and Lee's. The former has been refurbished lately, and has just installed a new sign, while the latter once known as The Dominion, remains closed following the death of its owner/operator a couple of years ago. The stories in town of the Dominion are legion ... they vary from the mundane to the fanciful, but they each speak of the central importance a cultural institution like a Chinese Food Cafe had in the life of small prairie towns.
Too bad the importance of the business didn't translate better into an acceptance of the families who ran them ... but then, we trusted them with our food and our underwear, so maybe the racism didn't run as deep as we may fear ...
No comments:
Post a Comment