Cooking up Cosmopolitan Vancouver:
Newspaper Writers and the Marco Polo Restaurant, 1960-1980
Shelly Chan
UC Santa Cruz
What is the name that is sweeping Vancouver? Is it Grey Cup? Alsbury?
The PNE Rodeo? No. It is Chow Mein. Also Wun Tun. Steamed Garlic
Spare Ribs with Blackbean sauce. Sweet and Sour Ducks Feet. Sharksfin
and Birdsnest soups. The trend is now clear – the end of the beef-and-potato
man is in sight in Vancouver. 1
-- The Vancouver Sun, 1960
By the early 1960s, Chinese food had become an icon of urban living in
Vancouver, a growing city on the Pacific coast of Canada with a population reaching
800,000, a size doubled since wartime.2 Evolving into a million-dollar industry in the
postwar period, Vancouver’s Chinese restaurants, a food writer announced, brought “the
greatest revolution in food since the old Canadians’ forefathers abandoned moose-muzzle
soup and roasted beaver tails.” One of the most successful in Chinatown, the Marco Polo
restaurant was home to the famous “Chinese smorgasbord” and a thriving nightclub, its
owner and manager, Victor Louie, being known as “the king of Cantonese food
This article began as part of an oral history project on three Chinese Canadian pioneer families sponsored
by the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver and Heritage Canada, and later as a research essay for
a critical seminar on North American modernities co-offered by the University of British Columbia and
Simon Fraser University in 2002. Part of the material was presented at a graduate student conference at the
University of California, Santa Cruz. Since its first formation, this project has benefited from the generous
support and advice from Karen Ferguson, Gail Hershatter, Calvin Louie, Robert McDonald, Alice YangMurray, Henry Yu, and Judy Yung. This version of the essay received insightful comments from John
Giggie, Henry Yu, and four anonymous readers. Most primary materials came from the Louie family
scrapbooks and personal interviews that I conducted in 2002.
1
Paul St. Pierre, “Chopsticks Now the Theme Song of a Million Dollar Industry,” The Vancouver Sun,
March 3, 1960. “Grey Cup” is the champion title of the Canadian Football League. “Alsbury” refers to A.
Thomas Alsbury, the mayor of Vancouver between 1959 and 1962. The PNE stands for the Pacific
National Exhibition, held every year in Vancouver.
2
The 1961 census data show that the metropolitan Vancouver population had climbed to more than
800,000, doubling the figure of 20 years earlier and reducing Vancouver's share of the population down to
46 per cent, around 370,000. The Chinese population in the city of Vancouver was at 14,000, out of which
8500 to 9000 lived in the Chinatown area.
1
producers.” It was also a popular venue for business and social functions among white
Canadians. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Marco Polo was a frequent subject of
report among food and entertainment writers, who played the role of creating distinct
tastes for a cosmopolitan Vancouver.
The success enjoyed by the Marco Polo restaurant provided fascinating insight
into the forging of an urban identity in postwar Vancouver, which had come to
encompass a knowledge of ethnic cultures, the result of the interplay between newspaper
writers and ethnic restaurant operators. The emergence of regular food and entertainment
columns in the local papers, which offered advice on where to obtain enjoyable and
special urban experiences, provided a space where the foodways of exoticized others
were introduced and taught. Many of these well-known white columnists prided
themselves on being cultural experts, who knew Chinese practices just as intimately as
the Chinese. During the postwar period when wartime shortages rapidly gave way to
postwar commercial expansion and rising disposable incomes, the high regard for ethnic
culinary cultures and “gourmet eating” among these writers exerted a powerful influence
over popular preferences and desires. Reinventing Chinese food as exotic and modern
that was also compatible with white Canadian tastes, the owners of the Marco Polo found
a receptive audience among newspaper writers who eagerly presented themselves as
savvy educators of cosmopolitanism for a consuming public.
This dynamic, complicated situation contrasts with Kay Anderson’s portrayal of
Chinatown and Chineseness in Vancouver as mere products of white cultural hegemony
and domination.3 Without downplaying the impact of Anglo-Canadian racism, I argue
3
See Kay Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada 1875-1980, (Montreal &
Kingston: McGill University Press 1991)
2
that Anderson has overlooked the complex realities of how a cultural identity was
invented and negotiated over time. Although Chinese people of wide-ranging
backgrounds have come to make Canada their home since the mid-nineteenth century,
Anderson assumes that Chinese culture was a monolithic and ahistorical whole, making
any changing form of manifestation in Canadian society appear completely Westernconstructed and -imposed. In the case of the Marco Polo restaurant, the commodification
of Chinese food involved a process of self-orientalization, in which the owners took part
in and profited from the creation of “ancient” Chinese culture for white consumption.
This is not to suggest that they were free agents, but their participation was essential to
the construction of an urban identity based on an appreciation of cultural differences in
Vancouver during the 1960s. Furthermore, they reinvented the notion of Chineseness,
which had long been associated with an inability to assimilate into white society, to
signify a modern experience for those aspiring to be cosmopolitan.
Selling Chinese food through Marco Polo
Stepping into the Marco Polo Restaurant in the 1960s, one would first be greeted
by the sight of curios, a rickshaw in red paint, and a glass cabinet filled with antiquelooking figurines and vases. The interior of the restaurant was fully decorated with
bamboo, rattan, and oriental-style motifs. Hanging on the walls were pieces of
embroidery and shell pictures of dragons and humans. Dinner was laid out on the large
tables at the center: sweet and sour pork, deep fried prawns, sesame chicken wings, fried
rice, chow mein, broccoli with beef, steamed buns with barbecued pork, egg rolls, egg
foo-yung, and diced almond chicken. There was a salad bar and a dessert table covered
3
with almond cookies, lychee nuts, jello and fortune cookies. One would not miss the tall
glass container with built-in heat lamps. It showcased the restaurant’s major attraction – a
roast whole pig. A white-uniformed chef chopped up the meat into bite size for diners.
On the first page of the red-covered menu were a sketch of East Asia and an explorer on a
camel pointing to the west with the slogan, “Food from the Far East to meet western
tastes.”
When the two Canadian-born brothers, Alex and Victor Louie, who were veterans
of the Second World War, first opened the restaurant at the corner of Pender and
Columbia Streets in the late 1950s, all they hoped for was to generate employment for
themselves since job opportunities for Asian Canadians in the immediate postwar years
had still been limited. Nonetheless, business at their restaurant was going very slowly
because of the stiff competition from other long-established chop suey houses in
Chinatown. Convinced that they had to offer something different to survive, the Louies
became attracted to the idea of smorgasbord as the other two smorgasbord restaurants in
town had been enjoying great success. Allowing diners to select and sample a variety of
dishes, they believed, could lure white patrons who were hesitant about ordering
unfamiliar Chinese food from the menu. Applying a creative turn to the idea, the Louie
brothers decided to start a Chinese smorgasbord, serving ten courses and twenty-four
items at one price.4
Evoking the images of ancient China as a rich and fanciful empire, the restaurant
was named after Marco Polo (1254-1324), the well-known Venetian adventurer and
trader who lived two decades in Mongol China and became a trusted official of Kublai
Khan. Printed on the restaurant’s pocket-sized delivery menu was a biography of Marco
4
Interview with Alex Louie.
4
Polo from the Oxford Junior Encyclopaedia, describing him as “one of the few
Europeans in the Middle Ages to penetrate the fabled Empire of China.” The biography
also mentioned that there were tantalizing chapters in his famous travelogue on “the
Summer Palace, the great dinners in the Winter Palace, and the hunting parties in the
country southeast of Peking.” Despite the fact that their cooking was a creative hybrid of
Cantonese and Canadian styles, the Marco Polo introduced “Mongolian” dishes by giving
them exotic names such as the “Mongolian Fire Pot (Chinese Fondue)” and “Mongolian
tenderloin beef.”
The fascination with ancient China has had a long history in Vancouver since its
early days. An example was the public frenzy over the 1936 jubilee exhibit of Chinese
antiques and treasures, which took place during the height of Chinese exclusion in
Canada (1923-1947). As John Kuo-wei Tchen has pointed out, the possession of rare
Chinese goods had been a badge of distinction and a means to sociability among white
upper-class elites for many centuries in the western world. Rather than disappearing
completely, this form of “patrician orientalism” was overlapped with “commercial
orientalism” and “political orientalism” in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which
saw the intensification and institutionalization of white racism against the Chinese.5
Tchen’s model of overlapping layers of orientalism shows the ways in which white
identity was constructed through the othering of Chinese people and things, and ethnic
groups often had to operate within such limited range of possibilities. Building upon
Tchen’s insight, I argue further that these forces of orientalism did not only exist as layers
but also operated as dynamic forces that constituted and interacted with each other, such
5
See John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York Before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American
Culture, 1776-1882, (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), Introduction, xx.
5
as the case where ethnic cultural practices became a basis for white discrimination.
Historically, Chinese food habits have been made a powerful symbol of Chinese inability
to assimilate. A reporter was astonished to find that “the Chinese are still the Chinese”
during his trip to Vancouver’s Chinatown in 1938, many years later since his last visit:
The Chinese still go into gastronomical raptures over their dried turtle,
age blackened, almost fossilized eggs, pressed China duck, birds’ nests
and roast pork, treated with some kind of a sauce that I believe has a
formaldyhide base.
If the food stuffs that are on display in Chinatown are any criterion of the
changing habits of the Chinese, then these modern ones have only a thin
veneer. They are but little different than their kindly, amiable, pig-tail
wearing fathers and grandfathers of thirty years ago.6
“Changeless” and “inscrutable,” the writer continued, the Chinese in Vancouver
remained stubbornly pre-modern, even though a republic had been founded in China in
1911 and should have fostered shattering changes. As the sight, tastes and smells of
Chinese food provided concrete ways to articulate fear and disgust toward the other, these
perceptions of Chinese eating habits were linked with white anxieties about the Chinese
race. Eaters of food with strange appearances and pungent odor, the Chinese had been
widely assumed to be incapable of becoming true Canadians.
During the 1960s, Chinese food and restaurants catering to white patrons enjoyed
unprecedented popularity, a phenomenon well-captured by the quote at the beginning of
this article. This success was largely because restaurant operators such as those of the
Marco Polo restaurant reinvented Chineseness as modern and exotic simultaneously,
perfectly compatible with white Canadian culture that had begun to experiment with
ethnic cultures. Inside the restaurant menu, a note from the manager explained the idea
behind the “Chinese smorgasbord”:
6
“Chinatown – The Inscrutable, Changeless,” The Vancouver Sun, September 24, 1938.
6
For centuries the Chinese have maintained the philosophy that food should be
eaten slowly and in small portions so that the true aromas and flavours may be
savoured and appreciated. While the Smorgasbord style of serving originated
in Sweden, it is ideally suited to the oriental philosophy of eating since the
food is kept warm and fragrant while waiting to be tasted.7
Claiming that the Chinese “for centuries” had practised “the oriental philosophy of
eating,” the owners exoticized and essentialized Chinese culinary practices, downplaying
historical change and regional diversity. In a full-page newspaper advertisement in 1960,
Victor Louie was even quoted saying that the “traditional style of Chinese cooking has
been basically unchanged for close to 5000 years.”
Though exotic and changeless, Chinese food served at the Marco Polo also
appeared modern and compatible with white habit of eating. Their smorgasbord was
presented as a perfect match between the “Swedish style of serving” and ancient Chinese
philosophy of eating, allowing diners to taste a variety of dishes at the same time.8
Emphasizing that Chinese cooking was always “tasty” and “fresh” in principle, the
Louies dissociated Chinese food from the images of strange dried and preserved foods,
such as those mentioned by the 1938 report, and worked against the abhorrent images of
“cheap cafes” operated in Chinatown in the 1930s.9 Reinventing the whole idea of
Chinese food, they emphasized fresh and modern techniques in their newspaper
advertisements:
“Freshness of preparation is one of the secrets of Chinese foods.”
“The food never is overcooked. If anything, vegetables are slightly undercooked
so as to preserve their fresh flavour.”
7
Printed on the first page of the restaurant menu.
Written as “smörgåsbord” in Swedish, the term originally meant an assortment of sandwich spreads. An
adapted form of the French “hors d’oeuvres,” the smörgåsbord later developed from being an introduction
to the main meal to becoming the main meal itself, which then usually included herring, anchovy, fish, liver
paste, cold cuts, meat balls, kidneys, and egg concoctions. In other words, the smörgåsbord was not only a
“style of serving.” See Anna Olsson Coombs, The Smörgåsbord Cookbook, revised and enlarged with a 48page supplement, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1958), 6-7, 13-14.
8
9
7
“All food prepared at Marco Polo is locally produced. Vegetables are obtained
from the United States only when B.C. produce is unavailable.”
“We are restricting [home delivery] to Vancouver addresses only because outside
trips could result in the food losing the fine aromas and flavours of freshlyprepared foods.”
“There will not be mass production. Each order will be individually cooked and
prepared.” 10
Catering to a wide range of patrons, the Marco Polo restaurant served
“businessmen’s luncheon,” “smorgasbord dinners,” and “after-theatre star specials.” It
also had children’s and weekend specials, and advertised itself as an ideal place to
celebrate special occasions such as Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day. The annual
highlight was the Chinese New Year celebration. A 1964 newspaper advertisement read:
“Come share our joy as we celebrate the year of the dragon. See the Exciting Firework
Displays, Dragon Dance, Lion Dance. Chinese Lucky Coins for everyone. 200 lbs of
Barbecued Pig plus Many Extra Courses of Chinese Delicacies will be served on this
festive occasion. On behalf of the Chinese community, we welcome you to Chinatown.”
As for Chinese Canadians who would understand “authentic” Chinese food much
differently from white Canadians, the owners of the Marco Polo tried to be sensitive to
their demands by allowing a great deal of flexibility in the dining services. Since banquet
trade remained an important source of income, Chinese weddings, birthday dinners for
elderly parents or relatives, dinners held in celebration of new-born babies turning one
month old, and anniversaries of Chinatown associations, were all entertained. Replacing
the smorgasbord was multi-course set meals served to the guests at the table.
A waiter’s awareness and sensitivity to differences – such as the different
preferences between a Chinese Canadian “old timer” and a white Canadian newly
introduced to Chinese food – were often quite crucial. Besides having the choice of
10
Newspaper advertisements collected from the 1960s and 1970s.
8
ordering from the a-la-carte menu such as “Steamed Up-Gorn (Duck’s Liver) Minced
Pork” and “Sliced Cold Chicken,” the experienced Chinese Canadian diner could receive
recommendations for specials available during the week. There might also be special
dishes familiar to Hong Kong immigrants: live seafood, “violin duck,” and soup served in
a whole melon. Moreover, diners could request a dish customized with special
ingredients and cooking style. For instance, instead of having them deep-fried as
preferred by the white customer, prawns could be sautéed with ginger and green onions
for the Chinese customer. The waiter could also offer recommendations to the more
“informed” white patron who might want to supplement the smorgasbord with “exotic
gourmet side dishes” such as “Peking Duck” and “Shark’s Fin Soup.”
As Tchen would argue, the owners of the Marco Polo faced many limitations as
they marketed Chinese food to Vancouver’s white residents. Having to entertain the
orientalistic images of Chineseness as changeless and traditional, the owners appealed to
white Canadians by representing Chinese cooking as ahistorical and exotic. Nonetheless,
by posing as authentic inheritors of an ancient culture at the same time, the Louies
successfully reinvented Chinese food as fresh, modern, and fully compatible with white
Canadian tastes, a formulation that attracted a sizable white Canadian clientele without
alienating patrons of Chinese backgrounds.
Creating cosmopolitan desires
Between 1961 and 1970, the Marco Polo restaurant expanded into the nightclub
business, which made the restaurant further known besides its smorgasbord. Beginning
nightly at nine o’clock, Chinese cocktail waitresses in pink bunny costumes and slit skirts
9
appeared in the dining room to take orders. Bartenders served up drinks such as
Singapore Sling, Bombay Sling, Shanghai Sling, Mao Tai, and the Marco Polo Special.
On the stage, the house band led by Carse Sneddon played music for dancing. Harvey
Lowe, the Chinese Canadian host of a local radio program, was the Master of Ceremonies
for many shows. Over the years, he and Alex Louie brought in various acts from San
Francisco, Las Vegas, Hawaii, and Hollywood.11 In addition to importing acts from the
U.S., the Louies attempted to produce its own at a lower cost. Consisting of locally born
young Chinese women, the Marco Polo China Dolls was a copy of the highly successful
China Dolls at the Forbidden City nightclub in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Dressed in
bra tops, slit skirts and fishnet pantyhose, the dancers also doubled as waitresses. A
program of “The China Dolls Revue,” which debuted on November 18, 1964, shows the
featuring of “the exciting and exotic China Dolls” and two Japanese American
entertainers performing the songs, “Grant Avenue” and “Street in Singapore.”
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Marco Polo Restaurant was the venue for
many new types of business and social functions that were telling of Vancouver’s
changing scenes. As one of the few Vancouver restaurants that could seat as many as 500
diners, it attracted many bookings for business conventions and staff parties from
organizations such as Birks Jewellery, Robin Hood Flour Mills, International
Woodworkers of America, and the Fraser Valley Milk Producers Association. These
groups often requested a full program that not only included a specially arranged feast but
also a tasteful experience of exotic Chinese culture. For instance, the organizers of the
Imperial Oil Limited Convention in 1960 treated its delegates to “A Night in Chinatown”
11
Pat Paulsen, Glen Yarborough, Lainie Kazan as well as Bill Haley and his Comets. Japanese Americans
such as The George Minami Trio, Ayoko Hosokawa and Pat Morita. Black performers included The Fifth
Dimension, The Platters, Joe Williams and Lou Rawls
10
at the Marco Polo, which included dinner, fireworks, a lion dance, a traditional Chinese
fashion show, music by a “moon harp” player, a yo-yo performance, and dancing. A 1962
letter from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada requested the Marco Polo to
provide “dinner music from a three or four piece Chinese stringed orchestra,” “a Lion
Dance or similar dance,” and chopsticks as table favors. Aside from corporate events, the
Marco Polo was popular among high schools and groups from the University of British
Columbia, who had fraternity house rush events, Big Block award ceremonies, and
graduation dinners held at the restaurant.
Some of the interest in the Marco Polo came from charity organizations in the
form of donation requests, which reflected the thinking that Chinese food producers
could contribute to the development of social and recreational lives. In a 1963 letter, a
mental clinic secretary who said that she enjoyed the Marco Polo’s Chinese smorgasbord,
solicited food donations for her institution’s “social evenings in order to get the patients
back into socity [sic], which in some cases is quite hard.” If donations could not be
arranged, she asked to be directed to “some wholesale company that would supply
Chinese food. [emphasis added]” In the same year, the Royal City Cycling Club wrote to
the Marco Polo: “We know you have an excellent record of charitable donations and
while we realized that cycling is not a charity it does serve many useful purposes in the
community. Cycling offers a constructive outlet for youth, helping them to develop
extremely healthy bodies and good sportsmanship… a pass for two to your restaurant to
be used as a prize in one of our races would help to make it far more successful.”
One particular group of regular customers of the Marco Polo played an important
role in shaping urban tastes and desires outlined above – the newspaper writers. Mostly
11
working for The Vancouver Sun, these food and entertainment writers offered restaurant
reviews and reported on the city’s new happenings in their columns. Their writings were
marked by a great curiosity in Chinese foodways and the Chinese Canadian community,
which helped promote a new sense of cosmopolitan identity, one that could be enriched
by an appreciation of cultural differences. In a February 1964 article, columnist Penny
Wise announced the coming of the Chinese New Year to the readers: “All restaurants in
Chinatown will be offering special dishes to honor the occasion. I do wish those of you
who are not familiar with the wonders of Chinese food would undertake to try it. Most of
the time it’s truly excellent, and very good for you.” One of her suggestions was a
Chinese smorgasbord. Together with another writer, Edith Adams, they frequently wrote
about Chinese traditions and cooking recipes. Encouraging housewives to take up
something different in the kitchen, the two female writers gave advice on Chinese
groceries, as well as step-by-step directions on how to prepare fried abalone, pineapple
duckling, egg foo-yung, chicken chow mein and Chinese New Year dumplings. In one of
her articles, Wise recommended her readers to give up forks and knives: “Do try to eat
Chinese food with chopsticks because it’s really easy…and I think makes the food taste
so much better than the use of metal.”12
Another columnist, Alex MacGillivray, frequently wrote about the Marco Polo
restaurant. In an interview with Victor Louie, MacGillivray remarked that there had been
increasing bold experimentation of various Chinese foods among “‘the ‘loffan’ as the
Chinese call us Western barbarians.” He went on to educate readers about regional
cuisines in Cantonese, Szechwan, Mandarin, Shanghai, and Hakka styles. The long list of
information, he hoped, would assist his readers with the “understanding of the difference
12
Penny Wise, “‘Gong Ho Sun Hay’ to Chinese Friends,” The Vancouver Sun, February 19, 1964.
12
in Chinese foods.”13 MacGillivray frequently gave vivid accounts of events at the Marco
Polo:
One of the taste treats at the Marco Polo’s highly successful New Year’s
celebration was the heavily sauced crab served in an edible bird’s nets. It was
edible because it was created by the imaginative cooks in the downstairs kitchen
from potatoes that were shaped into a nest before deep-frying. The evening was a
major triumph for the newly long-haired Victor Louie who decided to open the
traditional Chinese New Year’s celebration to all comers. It seemed that all came.
The place was sold out two weeks before the big night and has convinced Victor
that people love a show with their dinners. In these quiet business days for the
14
restaurant people, he seems to have found a winning formula.
On the same page, MacGillivray’s colleague, Jack Wasserman, was also impressed by the
same event:
Marco Polo’s genial sage, Victor Louie, pulled off a major commercial triumph
Friday when he sold out the establishment for a gigantic Chinese New Year
celebration that featured a spectacular 12-course dinner. The crowd was almost
equally divided between Chinese and Caucasian Canadians, which tells us
15
something nice about our town.
Over the years, many reporters like Wasserman and MacGillivary befriended
Victor Louie and his staff. When news came that the Marco Polo site would be
demolished to make way for a new office building in 1983, it was reported with deep
disappointment and nostalgia. In an article entitled “Bye Marco Polo – fat choy, Victor,”
Bruce McLean wrote that the city’s old baby boomers had grown with the Marco Polo.
He quoted the words of a white Canadian woman: “We have been coming here [the
Marco Polo Restaurant] since our children were babies. We’ve all been regulars over the
years and we’ll miss it.” MacGillivray also produced several articles to recount the
restaurant’s past, wishing Victor Louie well in his new endeavor to open a new restaurant
in North Vancouver. MacGilliveray’s long-time love affair with the Marco Polo had not
13
Alex MacGillivray, The Vancouver Sun, October 6, 1978
Alex MacGillivray, The Vancouver Sun, February 19, 1977.
15
Jack Wasserman, The Vancouver Sun, February 19, 1977.
14
13
only resulted in a special friendship with Victor Louie but also a marriage. He married
Pamela Hong, who had been one of the China Dolls.
Conclusion
The success of the Marco Polo restaurant provided a valuable entry point to
analyze the making of a postwar urban identity in Vancouver during the 1960s and
1970s, the processes in which the Louie brothers commodified Chineseness by marketing
it as traditional and exotic, but also in harmony with whiteness. Their reinventions of
Chinese eating as a fashionable cultural adventure encompassing the enjoyment of a
smorgasbord, dance and music, met the tastes and desires of urban consumers, coached
and encouraged by a group of culture-savvy newspaper writers. Though circumscribed by
orientalistic notions about Chinese culture, the Louies did not simply reproduce the
constructions. Instead, they successfully transformed the images of Chinese food from
strange and repelling to modern, refreshing, and well-suited for the white cosmopolitan.
Changeless, Chinese food might seem, but it was no longer inscrutable.
Although many white patrons might have expected to experience authentic
Chinese culture at the Marco Polo restaurant, it is important to point out that they were
only given what appeared to them as “Chinese.” Bong Joe, who had worked as a waiter
for many years at the Marco Polo, recalled that he and Victor Louie used to “fool” white
Canadians by performing lion dances themselves and imitating the steps that seemed
right to the untrained eye, rather than hiring professional martial arts groups to do it. This
humorous anecdote shows how easily perceptions of Chineseness could be manipulated
without the notice of the recipients.
14
Nonetheless, the success of the Marco Polo restaurant in the 1960s should also be
contextualized within the urban renewal projects in Strathcona, a nearby neighborhood of
predominantly Chinese Canadian immigrant families and “old-time” bachelors, as well as
the proposal of a freeway cutting through the business district of Chinatown. Fierce
protestors against both programs, working-class Chinese Canadians were portrayed by
the media and officials as a hindrance to progress, too fearful and unwilling to give up
their ghetto-slum for apartment housing and modern roadways. These views occluded
their labor as business operators, cooks, wait staff and entertainers, which had been
integral to Vancouver’s urban identity largely based on the consumption of ethnic
cultures. Exploiting a tight niche, the owners of the Marco Polo represented Chineseness
as both traditional and compatible with white Canadian culture, a delicate balance with
the commodification of Chineseness as fashionable and consumerable on one side, and
the continuous efforts to re-engineer Chinese Canadian life for progress and assimilation
on the other.
15
Bibliography
Books
Anderson, Kay. Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada 1875-1980.
Montreal & Kingston: McGill University Press 1991
Coombs, Anna Olsson. The Smörgåsbord Cookbook, revised and enlarged with a 48-page
supplement, New York: Hill and Wang, 1958.
Levenstein, Harvey. Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Tchen, John Kuo Wei. New York Before Chinatown. Baltimore & London: John Hopkins
University Press, 1999.
Yee, Paul. The Saltwater City: An Illustrated History of the Chinese in Vancouver.
Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 1988.
Yu, Henry. Thinking Orientals: Migrations, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America.
Oxford University Press 2001.
16
Yu, Renqiu. “Chop Suey: From Chinese Food to Chinese American Food,” Chinese
America: History and Perspectives, 1987. San Francisco Chinese Historical
Society, 1987.
Newspaper Articles
“Chinatown – the inscrutable, changeless,” The Vancouver Sun, September 24, 1936.
“Cheap Cafes Assailed,” The Vancouver Sun, November 30, 1936.
“Restaurant Complaints in Vancouver,” The Victoria Daily Times, November 30, 1936.
“Cafes May be Forced to Close at Night and on Sundays Soon,” The Vancouver Daily
Province, September 1, 1942.
“Royal Dominion Cafe Opens Today,” The Daily Colonist, November 3, 1942.
“Tea, Coffee Between Meals May be Banned by Restaurants,” The Vancouver Sun,
November 9, 1942.
“Cafes Buying Retail to Meet Potato Lack,” The Vancouver Daily Province, January 6,
1943.
17
“Labour Shortage May Close Many Cafes,” The Vancouver Sun, May 18, 1943.
“Housewives Sought for Restaurants,” The Vancouver Daily Province, June 28, 1943.
“Housewives Asked to Help Cafes,” The Vancouver Sun, June 29, 1943.
“114 Housewives Now Waitresses,” The Vancouver Daily Province, July 19, 1943.
“Restaurants to Close For Two Week Rest,” The Vancouver Daily Province, August 5,
1943.
“Must Revamp Restaurant Menus: Two Meatless Days,” The Victoria Daily Times,
August 11, 1943.
“Vancouver’s Chinatown Going Modern with Neon,” The Vancouver Sun, January 10,
1947.
“Lawyers Have Best Paid Work of All Canadians,” The Vancouver Sun, August 27,
1953.
“Doctors, Dentists Get Top Pay,” The Province, June 9, 1954.
“B.C. Chinese Food Gets Gourmet’s OK,” The Vancouver Sun, September 28, 1954.
18
“B.C. Chinese Made Vast Contribution,” The Vancouver Sun, July 14, 1958.
“Top Pay to Engineers, Architects,” The Vancouver Sun, October 24, 1957.
“‘Lousy’ B.C. Meals Frighten Tourists,” The Vancouver Sun, October 30, 1958.
Paul St. Pierre, “Chopsticks Now the Theme Song of a Million Dollar Industry,” The
Vancouver Sun, March 3, 1960.
Penny Wise, “‘Gong Ho Sun Hay’ to Chinese Friends,” The Vancouver Sun, February 19,
1964.
“Vancouver Extends Hand to Visitors,” The Vancouver Sun, May 26, 1967.
“Ethnic Groups…1: Canadian-Chinese,” The Province, May 27, 1967.
“Canada Ranks Fifth,” The Vancouver Sun, November 1, 1967.
“Planners Love Carrall, Ladies Find Her Shady,” The Vancouver Sun, November 18,
1967
19
“B.C. Clerks’ Paycheques Record Substantial Gains,” The Vancouver Sun, February 3,
1968.
“Farmers’ Incomes Fall Far Behind,” The Vancouver Sun, September 6, 1968.
Alex MacGillivray, The Vancouver Sun, February 19, 1977.
Jack Wasserman, The Vancouver Sun, February 19, 1977.
Alex MacGillivray, The Vancouver Sun, October 6, 1978.
Interviews
Alex Louie, December 1, 2002
Harvey Lowe, December 6, 2002
Bong Joe, December 9, 2002
Pat Opperman, December 9, 2002
Private Collection
Marco Polo Restaurant scrapbooks provided by Calvin Louie and Kim Louie
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