LunarFest Vancouver builds bonds through hot pot and family dinners
Food is one way the festival celebrates the Year of the Ox
Melting Pot, I Think Not is a virtual LunarFest Vancouver event that explores how different cultures and families enjoy hot pot.
HOT POT HAS become a popular dining trend in Vancouver, but the style of eating is a centuries-old tradition throughout Asia. It’s said that the Qianlong Emperor, who reigned from 1735 to 1796 during China’s Qing dynasty, enjoyed the meal in which people gather around a simmering stock pot to cook various meats, vegetables, and noodles.
However, just as the term “Chinese food” does nothing to convey the diversity of cuisine from region to region within the nation, “hot pot” is a rather broad label as well: what’s served in and alongside those bubbling pots of broth varies from place to place. What you’ll find in Thailand will look unlike what you might taste in Vietnam, which will differ from what’s found in Korea or Japan.
What is consistent across cuisines and countries is the sense of communion that hot pot provides. With participation and input among everyone who gathers around the table, hot pot is an outstanding example of food as a great unifier.
LunarFest Vancouver (February 11 to 28) is highlighting hot pot among its programming to ring in the Year of the Ox, showcasing the feast to bring people of all backgrounds together, virtually.
Charlie Wu, managing director of Asian-Canadian Special Events Association, which produces LunarFest Vancouver, explains that just as family is at the heart of Lunar New Year feasts, it is also the overarching theme of this year’s festival—and hot pot is a way to welcome everyone to the table. Having open arms is especially important now, he says, with so many people feeling isolated amid the pandemic.
Asian-Canadian Special Events Association managing director of Charlie Wu.
Stir connected with Wu via Zoom from from Taiwan, where he lived until he was 15 and where he’s visiting his mom. It’s also where LunarFest developed one of the culinary events of this year’s festival.
For Melting Pot, I Think Not, LunarFest collaborated with the Story House to create a video that captures newcomers to Taiwan from several different countries joining together in a warm and friendly atmosphere to cook, eat, and discuss what makes hot pot unique to their homeland. The video will be available for viewing on YouTube throughout the festival.
“Like Canada, Taiwan has embraced diversity, and the culinary scene definitely reflects that,” Wu says. “For Melting Pot, I Think Not, we have people from Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Taiwan sharing their hot pot traditions—how they cook, what it means to them—and talking about the New Year.”
On the table are dishes like satay celup (Malay skewers), Thai lemon tea and sticky rice, sambal goreng (fried sambal, popular in Malaysia and Indonesia), Vietnamese sweet-and-sour basa fish soup, and much more.
“It’s a way of bringing cultures together—and of helping us expand on the definition of family to include people around us, from other communities” Wu says. “That’s the kind of thing we need today, to think beyond ourselves and use this opportunity to think about family in a different context. That is really important to us. Michael J. Fox said ‘family is not an important thing; it’s everything.’ We really believe family is everything.”
LunarFest Vancouver also developed Family Dinners, a video series that features local families sharing their own culinary histories and stories. Among the participants is Julienne Nieh, Miss Chinese Vancouver contender.
“We want families to share their family dinners virtually so we can get a taste of different cultures and get a sense of how people celebrate their New Year traditions,” Wu says, encouraging people to gather with their loved ones online and to reach out to those who may be going through a difficult time.
Beyond these culinary happenings, LunarFest Vancouver will feature art installations, performances, storytelling, and music, and more. In partnership with the Society of We Are Canadians Too, LunarFest will host the Lantern City at Jack Poole Plaza and šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énḵ Square (formerly Vancouver Art Gallery North Plaza).
The throughline of it all family—with the goal being for people to re-examine what it means to them and to strengthen the social fabric. Wu points to the Indigenous philosophy “all my relations”—“we are all related”—as a model example.
“Beyond our own family, our communities and the people around us are also like family,” Wu says. “Mother Nature is family. I’ve always that thought that with the concept of diversity in Canada, we should try to take it beyond the traditional thinking of acceptance and should move to create something that has meaning for all of us—to find connections.”
For more information, visit LunarFest Vancouver.
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