Far East in the near east

From birth we hear food being prepared, savour its aromas, see it displayed as art-about-to-be-eaten, touch and taste it. In marvelling at how food makes the unknown familiar, we acknowledge its role as ambassador for other ways of being in the world, for perspectives, tastes, values and aesthetics different to our own.

Food is thus an invaluable guide to all tourists, a travel aid found in all types of eateries but especially Chinese restaurants throughout the world. Whether run by newcomers to a country or by second-, third-, fourth- or even fifth-generation citizens, these places are representations of home, microcosms of the real and mythical worlds left behind. Their voices soar collectively into song, often the song of exile, most often the song of celebration.

My family came from what is known today as Guangdong, the southern Chinese province that has Guangzhou as its capital. When my great-grandfather and grandfather set out, they left Kwangtung, the capital of which was Canton. As a great and ancient port, Canton was the gateway to the world, or at least another life, for hundreds of thousands of Chinese. It was from here that they left directly, or took ship to Hong Kong on the first stage of their journeys to foreign lands. Naturally, people from Kwangtung — and more specifically from the so-called Namsoon villages within a radius of about 19km of Canton — had the advantage of proximity to this port of human export, and so it was that Cantonese settled all over the world.

The Chinese diaspora — then the Cantonese dispersion — reached from San Francisco to South Africa to Melbourne, with the small termini of Mauritius and Madagascar; it stretched from New York to Amsterdam to Hawaii. This was not an empire; it was a string of unconnected outposts, but all flying the flag and flavours of home in the hearts and minds of Cantonese settlers. It was a piece of home, of heaven amid alien landscapes and languages and peoples.

One of the consequences of accommodations with adopted countries is a certain loss of one’s original national and cultural identity. There are the superficial changes, such as clothing, hairstyles and homes. Then there are the more fundamental: loss of mother tongue. The first language of the third generation is unlikely to be that of their parents and grandparents.

It is this understandable concession to the new country that makes food so vital a guarantor of cultural continuity and connection with the motherland. Chinese in their worldwide distribution owe a great deal to the eateries and dim sum parlours and fine restaurants in the midst of their communities and in the cities where they live.

As Emma Chen, proprietor of the famed Red Chamber restaurant in Hyde Park, Johannesburg, mischievously puts it: “The Chinese have always put food above everything else.” That is not difficult to understand. The Frankish Emperor Charlemagne said that to possess another language is to possess another soul. To be allowed to glimpse into another experience and perspective, presented by fine food, is also to possess another soul.

The family-run Chinese restaurant has been called “a global icon of immigration, community and good (or bad) food”. And, just as in other parts of the world, Chinese eateries are to be found in even the most remote parts of South Africa. These can broadly be divided into three categories.