Negotiating Chinese Culinary Traditions in Newfoundland

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Mu Li

Abstract

What is “Chinese food”? Here I explore this complicated question in the context of St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador. Although the Chinese represent Newfoundland and Labrador’s largest non-indigenous “visible minority” with a single ethnic origin, they comprise only 0.26 percent of the province’s total population (Statistics Canada 2006). There is no Chinatown and the small number of Chinese Newfoundlanders means that their culture remains largely invisible except for a few large public cultural displays such as annual Chinese New Year celebrations, an annual flower service in August, and sometimes, a moon festival dinner. In this context the twenty-five plus Chinese restaurants and four Chinese groceries stores located in St John’s become important markers of local Chinese culture and locations for both Chinese and non-Chinese to define, negotiate and re-define what “Chinese” means to them. 

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