Royal Cafe : Chinese-Western In Alberta

Elyse Bouvier

doi:10.32920/ryerson.14644743.v1

Abstract

Across Alberta there are found many diner style restaurants serving both Chinese and Western Canadian meals to people in the small-towns they inhabit. It’s a culturally significant and interesting aspect of Albertan identity. This research paper describes a journey to photograph and document these spaces and try to contextualize them within the context of Albertan identity. It details the research the author did to richer understanding of these spaces and their part in what it means to be Albertan. Included in this is a discussion on the significance of food and, in particular, the Chinese-Western dishes such as ginger beef, to communal identity. This paper details how the research influenced my own journey across Alberta and how it translated into a fully realized photo-documentary project that led the author to a greater understanding of what it means to be Albertan.

Highlights

As a road trip project, Royal Cafe nods to other photographers such as Robert Frank, William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, or the Western Canadian photographer George Webber who drove and documented small towns of the Western United States and Canada
Royal Cafe does not set out to make any conclusions about the Chinese or Asian diaspora in Alberta, nor does it try to map out one simplistic narrative of what these spaces mean to rural identity
A few years ago, when I began thinking about this project, I did not know how to proceed, which is what led me to formally pursue the project in The CanLit Foodbook: From Pen to Palate (Toronto)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

One of the aims of the Royal Cafe project is to look at Albertan identity from a different viewpoint: through these small-town Chinese-Western food spaces. It highlights other, and significant, narratives about what it means to be Albertan, while simultaneously challenging hegemonic perspectives on rural Alberta. Nadia Seremetakis states that “artifacts are in themselves histories of prior commensal events and emotional sensory exchanges, and it is these very histories that are exchanged at commensal events that qualify the object as commensal in the first place.” Eating ginger beef, or any other Chinese-Western dish, becomes its own commensal event that shares in the histories and experiences of those that make the dish Eating in these restaurants allows one a taste of history of immigration and resistance of the Chinese people, who survive and thrive in rural Alberta and have become woven into the complex history of the province. Personal interview with Evan conducted August 14, 2015. Cho, Eating Chinese, 113

METHODS

CONCLUSION