Chowing Down In Chinatown

"Excuse me, but if you aren't going to finish the Chicken Claws, I think I'll have another helping."

Our culinary tour of Vancouver's Chinatown began with a dim sum lunch at the Jade Dynasty Restaurant hosted by Edible British Columbia tour guide and travel and food writer Stephanie Yuen.  Unlike yesterday's tour of the Granville Island Public Market when Cindy and I were the only takers, today we had a full house --- eight of us sat around a big round table with a "Lazy Susan" in the middle loaded with all sorts of dim sum and other Cantonese dishes.

"Chicken Claws" (you guessed it --- the whole foot of a chicken -- in the round steamer in the photo) tastes a lot like the upper part of that fowl's leg, the drumstick, which none of us would give a second thought about eating.  And the consistency of the "claws" was similar --- the meat had been cooked so well that it just slid off the bone in your mouth.  Well, it slid off into mine,;Cindy lost her sense of dining adventure at that moment and let the other guests scarf up the rest of the little fowl toes.

Over lunch, Stephanie told us the story of Chinese immigration to British Columbia during the 19th century, a tale which parallels the similar influx of those people from Asia into the United States:  Work building railroads and doing the least-desired jobs in society, compounded by racial discrimination and indentured servitude.

Stephanie herself came to Canada from Hong Kong.  Many others followed in her footsteps when Hong Kong was turned over to China with the end of British rule ended in 1997.

We waddled out of the Jade Dynasty and down East Pender Street and stopped outside of a store selling "Bubble Tea", a sort of smoothie that became popular in Taiwan where places selling it were as ubiquitous as Starbucks coffee houses are in Seattle.

Farther west we left the street and walked through the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, named after the famous Nationalist Chinese leader of the early 20th century, then headed east to the Ten Ren Tea and Ginseng Company to learn about various varieties of tea and munch on some Green Tree Candy.  In between these stops we learned that the Floata Seafood Restaurant with seating for 1,000 is often the venue for wedding parties where it is customary for the parents of both the bride and groom to visit each table of guests and thank them personally for coming. 

Then we walked around the corner and up the block to the Sun Fresh Bakery House which not only makes the Chinese pork buns which we sampled, but also bakes European pastries.  At the nearby Chinatown Supermarket ]Stephanie explained how she cooks various types of Chinese vegetables including daikon, winter melon, and Chinese broccoli.  She bought a "Dragon Fruit" (which has white flesh and little black seeds) and cut it up into slices for use to try.

We continued around the block, passing by one fish market that we had seen on a pre-tour walk around Chintown before stopping at another similar place where Stephanie talked about the kinds of local fresh fish available in Vancouver. 

Then we walked a couple of doors down the block to the The Dollar Meat StoreDollar Meat Store where butchers were cutting up fresh meat while dried sausages looking like salami, prosciutto-style hams, and sun-dried pressed duck (looking like road-kill) hung on wall-mounted racks.  We tried four different kinds of meat there.

We ended the tour at the Guo Hua Enterprise herb shop on Main Street which sells dried fungi (some looked like sea sponges), berries and fruits, and even geckos (the tails are used for medicinal purposes).  Sea horses and "birds nests" (some of which sell for nearly $1,900/lb) are amoung the many items displayed in large glass jars.

While Friday skies were gloomy gray, Saturday the sun shone throughout our tour.  As we left Chinatown the clouds covered the city and just as we finished up grocery shopping for our evening pizza dinner-in, rain began to fall and continued throughout the evening.