Docuseries celebrates Chinese-Canadian history through cuisine
Posted May 19, 2023 6:53 pm.
Last Updated May 20, 2023 2:35 pm.
A Vancouver-based chef and author is exploring the Chinese-Canadian experience through the lens of small-town Asian restaurants original docuseries House Special, created by the local filmmaking team behind Black Rhino Creative.
Jackie Kai Ellis says she makes her way across B.C. and Alberta in search of Chinese-Canadian restaurants.
“Through those restaurants, we learn about the Chinese-Canadian immigrant story, as well as the history of Chinese-Canadians,” she said. “It’s also me discovering my own Chinese Canadian roots and where I come from and how I want to pass that along to the next generation.”
Kai Ellis says she was initially approached about doing the show during the pandemic, a time when she noticed a rise in anti-Asian violence and hate crime in Vancouver.
“With all the hate crimes that were happening during the pandemic, it was sort of the first time that I was really confronted with the reality of racism towards Chinese people.”
“With it so in our faces, it made me feel like, ‘Wow, I really need to reconnect to the things that make me who I am.’ And around that time it just so happened that Black Rhino Creative … contacted me saying. ‘hey, we want to do this show,’ and I thought this is the perfect opportunity for me to discover a history that I know almost nothing about because, frankly, we don’t learn about it in social studies in high school.”
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Over the course of the 5-part series, viewers join Kai Ellis in travelling by train to visit five communities in B.C. and Alberta on a culinary quest to uncover the dishes at the centre of the Chinese-Canadian story. Throughout the filming process, Kai Ellis says she learned a lot, with one particular moment at a museum in Kelowna standing out to her.
“I was reading some letters … that were preserved that had been written from families in China back to the young men that had immigrated here for work. I didn’t realize but they had emigrated because there was a famine in China at the time. And they sent their able-bodied family members to Canada to send home money,” she said.
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“This one letter from the wife to the husband said, ‘Please send money so that maybe our grandchildren would have the opportunity to prosper.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, this guy has left his family probably knowing that he would never see them again.’ And he wasn’t even doing it for them or for his children – he was doing it for a generation that he would never meet. I get emotional just thinking about it now.”
According to Kai Ellis, “food is a love language” in Chinese culture.
“I do believe that food is sort of like the secret door into any culture … by understanding the food and how a culture eats, there can be so much more connection and understanding.”
Kai Ellis says it’s been an honour to learn more about Chinese-Canadian history alongside viewers, and hopes the series inspires connection and understanding.
House Special takes viewers to five cities showcased in the docuseries including Penticton, Vernon, and Kelowna in B.C., as well as Red Deer and Grand Prairie in Alberta. Each episode explores a unique theme and showcases dishes like pork fat rice, ginger beef, and handmade dumplings.
As for what’s next for the Vancouver-based acclaimed designer, entrepreneur, and advice columnist, Kai Ellis says she’s currently working on releasing a podcast called ‘You & I’, which is scheduled to launch June 21.
House Special can be viewed on TELUS Video on Demand Optik, CBC Gem, as well as streamed on the series’ website.
