11 February 2010
An embarrassment
The author of the article for which a link is given above isn't quite so crass as to himself voice the claim that Vancouver has the best Chinese food in the world, but he does quote this jaw-dropping and criminally absurd view with approval in an opening that is otherwise a triumph of other silliness. My in-laws and their myriad friends and acquaintances, as well as their forefathers who built Vancouver's Chinatown, would be rather surprised (if their English were up to it) to read that 'it was 1997's repatriation of Hong Kong that began the mass influx of Chinese to British Columbia's lower mainland'. And who built the railroads a century ago, provided services to gold rush miners, and worked in the mines themselves?
'A migration which continues to this day, fueled in part by Canada's immigrant-friendly policies,' he continues, although it's mainland China that provides the largest source of immigrants now, not Hong Kong. 'Today, almost one in five of Vancouver's two million residents is ethnically Chinese.' Yes, but a large proportion of these were born here, can read, write, or even speak little Chinese of any variety, and are more comfortable with burgers or barbecue or all-you-can-eat pizza, than the subtleties of xiaolongbao broth. And while there are now enough mainland immigrants to ensure that authentic Sichuan food has started to appear, and even Yunnan and Hunan restaurants, the author's meager 38 meals in 12 restaurants hardly qualify him to make the sweeping recommendation that everyone should fly to Vancouver to eat Chinese, especially where the majority of Chinese restaurants are in fact low-cost, mass stodge outfits producing adulterated dishes that visitors from the mainland rightly regard as inedible. Dim sum is an exception, but there's a great deal more to Chinese food than Cantonese, as the author seems barely aware, recommending precisely one Shanghainese snack, and apparently unaware of the geographical and palatal disconnection between the Guizhou dish he recommends and the Sichuan restaurant in which he found it.
Perhaps I find all this particularly fatuous because I've just returned from 4.5 weeks of restaurant reviewing in Hong Kong and Beijing, but common sense ought to tell anyone that when your main source of migration until recently has been Hong Kong and southern China, the other major cooking schools are not going to be well represented, and minor ones will be completely invisible. It ought also to be obvious to all but the most dimwitted that a city/region with a population of two million, of whom only a fifth are of Chinese descent a large proportion of whom have not the slightest clue about the full range of Chinese cuisine themselves, are not exactly likely to beat a country of 1.5 billion in the range or quality of their restaurants. Much of what is made there is rare or simply cannot be found in a backwater like Vancouver, more's the pity.
But this is the problem: Whether a story is published depends on whether a splashy, easily-digested idea has been sold to an editor who probably still says 'Peking' and can't (like the author of this piece, I suspect) find China on a map. The story doesn't need to be true; its idea needs to be ear-catching and to be made persuasive regardless of any lack of evidence, and it isn't unusual for editors to insist on rewrites of a story simply to make it fit the initial proposition more closely. 'Truth in travel' doesn't actually exist, and certainly not in Condé Nast Traveler, with its absurd lists of fortune-cookie style descriptions, and its features on 'hidden' or 'secret' places.
However, if anything is likely to make a career change inevitable it is an accompanying video on Vancouver in general in which the author appears to demonstrate he has made being stupid, crass, and predictable into a profession. There's been a vast amount of drivel published in the run up to the winter Olympics, which open tomorrow here, but this beats anything else I've seen. Don't watch it on a full stomach:
Liveable City
Meanwhile, having just staggered off a plane from Beijing via Hong Kong, I'm hard at work on a Vancouver piece myself, rather against my will, and much to the chagrin of others here who know of my lack of enthusiasm for the place. Luckily it isn't due for publication until June, and no mention of the Olympics is required. On that topic I'm unprintable.
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