VANCOUVER
“culture is very subtle,” says Robert ‘Bob’ Sung. “It’s all “Chinese about symbolism.” That may well be true, but little is subtle about the slices of char siu we’re devouring from a polystyrene tray on a Chinatown corner. The hot, sweet morsels of pork from Money BBQ & Produce are fatty and lurid red. “It all has a meaning,” adds Bob. Red, he says, is a symbol of joy and after today’s feast — my fingers sticky with scarlet sauce — I expect to be a very happy man indeed.
Bob is leading me on one of his A Wok Around Chinatown tours, exploring the cuisine of Vancouver’s Chinese community. A third-generation Chinese-Canadian, he comes from a family who’ve been living in Canada for more than a century, much of it working in British Columbia’s food industry. “I was always surrounded by the aromas of the kitchen growing up,” he says, as we pass shops strung with red-and-gold lanterns.
It’s fitting — symbolic, some might say — that gold still gleams amid
