The Canton Village Restaurant - Research Paper Example

ASIAN HISTORY The United s is home to some of the best Asian restaurants on the planet. Yes, this side of Asia, Southern California has some of the best Vietnamese, Chinese and Cambodian and Thai restaurants on the planet. Chinese restaurants are a staple of the Southern Californian experience and Japanese sushi stores have popularized raw fish and made bento boxes a staple across the Pacific coast of the United States. From New York to Los Angeles and beyond, Asian restaurants are ubiquitous in this country, whether they are Filipino bakeries, a Japanese manju shop or a traditional Chinese restaurant serving chicken balls and Cantonese style rice, Asian restaurants can be found throughout this country. The globalization phenomenon has significantly added to the multicultural mix of this country and has ensured that the United States remains culturally diverse and home to many different cultures. Multiculturalism in the 21st century has had a variety of ramifications in the social, economic, and cultural realms and has adding significantly to the culinary options available to Americans today. Seeking to understand the history of a Chinese restaurant here in Southern California, the following research paper will provide a thorough overview of an Asian restaurant found in Chinatown and will integrate scholarly information on the subject of the Asian community in California, as well as in the United States. Aiming to provide a thorough overview of the Canton Village restaurant, this research paper will discuss its history with an analysis of the neighborhood in which it is located, the types of businesses that are nearby, its clientele, and a whole host of other factors which contribute to the cultural uniqueness of this particular restaurant in question. Through the history of this restaurant, this research paper will relate the Asian restaurant business to the larger history of Chinese migration settlement, economic migration and cultural development in recent American history. Introduction to the Canton Village Restaurant Located in the heart of Los Angeles is Chinatown, off of the Pasadena Freeway, the Canton Village restaurant has been a staple of Southern Californias Chinese community for more than 30 years. Established in the 1970s, just off the heart of Chinatown, the Canton Village restaurant is located on the ground floor of a former hotel and was once a diner which was converted a few years after its establishment. The Canton Village restaurant now boasts two rooms which are used for dining as well as for private parties. This restaurant was started by family members, five brothers who migrated to the United States during the tumultuous 1960s and named the restaurant after their home country. Created by the Chang family, the Canton Village was not their first introduction into the restaurant business. Accordingly, the Chang family boasts generations of cooks, restaurateurs and business people. Prior to the creation of the Canton Village, the Chang family opened a series of restaurants in the bustling core of San Franciscos Chinatown. Unfortunately these restaurants ultimately failed but provided the Chang family with the motivation to start a new life in Los Angeles. When the Canton Village restaurant first opened in 1971, the wives of the Chang family were in the kitchen creating the delicacies which would one day make this restaurant well known throughout Los Angeles in the Chinatown neighborhood. As a Los Angeles-based family venture, the Canton Village has withstood the test of time and business has continued in an upward progression for more than 38 years. Speaking with the owner, Mr. Chang, his recipe for success has been a staple of Cantonese chow mein and the desire to always please his customers. According to Mr. Chang, this has been the secret to success over the last 38 years and the Cantonese village has been able to weather a series of economic storms including the current global economic crisis. As mentioned above, the Cantonese village restaurant was started by five brothers who, despite challenges in the cutthroat San Francisco Chinese restaurant community, were able to bring their skills to Los Angeles’ Chinatown and create a staple within the Chinese community. The Chang brothers decided that Chinatown would be the ideal location for their restaurant because there was a dedicated community and many of their suppliers already existed within the neighborhood. For the Chang brothers then, the decision to start the restaurant in Los Angeles and the Chinese community was a “no-brainer”. Accordingly, the Chinese community was initially welcoming to the Chang brothers and they understood that this would be ideal location in order to start their new venture in their new city. At the time, the Los Angeles Chinatown was much smaller than the separate San Francisco Chinatown but the members of the family who started the business understood that competition would be fierce. Due to their experiences in San Francisco, the founders of the Canton Village restaurant understood that success depended on a whole host of variables but they were fortunate in that many of the contacts they made within San Francisco they were able to utilize in the new city of Los Angeles. During this period, the United States did have a significant Chinese community but it was nowhere near as large as it is today. It is important to remember that during the early 1970s the United States, the Soviet Union, and China were all participants in the Cold War and there was much misunderstanding as well as mutual animosity between the United States and the socialist countries of the Eastern world. The war in Vietnam was raging and China was openly antagonistic towards the United States. In this respect Chinese-Americans at times felt a little less secure than they do today. It was under these circumstances and this global climate that the Chang brothers moved from San Francisco and opened up their restaurant in Los Angeles (Louie 114-116). Chinatown seemed the ideal location for this new restaurant and the Canton Village was surrounded by many other Asian businesses. While it was started by five brothers, today it is now run by the youngest, and his offspring, who have carried the torch and have maintained their presence in the western portion of Los Angeles’ Chinatown for nearly 40 years. While Chinatown has changed significantly over the past 40 years, the Canton Village remains a staple for the community. It is moderately priced, and surely its prices have increased over time, but looking at the menu it would be hard to guess. Prices are low to moderate and there are many items for under eight dollars such as Cantonese chow mein, a variety of appetizers including sweet and sour as well as tum yum soups, and specialty rice, garlic spareribs and chicken rolls. The food found here is traditional Chinese cuisine and looking at the menu one would doubt that it is changed much over the past 38 years. The exterior of the building similarly looks as though it has not changed much since the creation of the restaurant. The exterior is a little shoddy and it is obvious that the building could use a little more upkeep. The interior decor similarly is a little dated but is reminiscent of the time when this restaurant first opened. The style could be described as Chinese modernist and there are many features of this restaurant which hark back to the days of ancient China. Interestingly, there is a Buddha statue at the entrance as well as a plate for offerings to the gods. The restaurant itself is not too large but there are two rooms which gives the impression that the restaurant in fact could be larger than it actually is. The main entrance room is used primarily for casual dining while the separate second room is used for private parties and sometimes is opened up to increase space for the average evening diner. The specialty of this restaurant is Cantonese chow mein and a variety of derivatives of this basic staple. While vegetarian selections are available it does not appear as though that vegetarian cuisine is a high priority for this restaurant. Standard beverages such as Coke, Pepsi, Sprite and Chinese green tea sit side-by-side on the menu and demonstrate the fusion of Western soft drinks with traditional Chinese beverages. The language on the menu appears to be Cantonese, although could be Mandarin, and English is given second billing on the menu. Thus, this looks as though the main target audience of the Canton Village restaurant would be native speaking Cantonese people as opposed to English-speaking Americans visiting restaurant. This reflects the cultural and historical roots of the Canton Village restaurant and the fact that it is firmly established within the Los Angeles Chinese speaking community. Although the restaurant itself appears to be small and is run as a family business, there are many people, both visible and invisible, who worke to make the Cantonese village restaurant a success. During the evening rush there appears to be four waiters and waitresses, a business manager and someone at the cash. These are the people who are visible but surely there are many more who are invisible such as the cooks, chefs and cleaning staff who make up the essential components of this restaurant. As with many Asian restaurants in Chinatown, it is normal to pay at the cash as opposed to paying your waitress or waiter at the end of the meal. This is something which is culturally specific, not found frequently in American restaurants, but is quite common in Chinatown and normal here at the Canton Village restaurant. Interestingly there are both waitresses and waiters who serve customers at this restaurant so serving is not sexually specific as both men and women work with the customers. Now that we have established the history of the Canton Village restaurant, we will situate it within the larger narrative of the evolution of the Asian communities within the United States and relate this particular business to the larger history of Asian immigration, settlement economic development and cultural strategies in the 20th and 21st century. History and Chinese Community Evolution in America The Asian community in the United States is large and attempts to fully understand the multiple Asian communities within the United States are beyond the scope of this analysis. Due to the specific focus of the Canton Village Chinese restaurant, the following will provide a nice introduction to Chinese American history in a comprehensive and holistic perspective. Chinese-Americans form a very large community in the United States and there are many Chinese diaspora groups all throughout the world. For the purpose of this brief history, Chinese American will include ethnic Chinese people from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau as well as Chinese people who have migrated to the United States from all over Asia. According to data provided by the United States government, the first Chinese migrants arrived in the United States in 1820. Following the California gold rush in 1948, Chinese immigrants flocked to the United States and to the West Coast in particular for the opportunities to earn a livelihood and a better life in this new land. While there were reportedly less than 1,000 Chinese people in the United States prior to the Gold Rush, by 1885 100,000 Chinese immigrants lived in United States. American history with respect to ethnic immigration is spotty at best and between 1885 and 1943 the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act restricted the migration of Chinese people to the United States. This was a racist piece of legislation based upon fear, prejudice and misunderstandings and was not repealed for nearly 60 years. While San Francisco is home to one of the largest Chinatowns in the Western world, Los Angeles has an old and relatively diverse Chinatown which officially began and was recognized as a unique cultural community on June 25, 1938 when Californias Gov. Merriam dedicated Chinatown’s Central Plaza. Immigration policies today are far less restrictive than they once were and the Chinatown in Los Angeles is one of this citys most vibrant communities. Our restaurant under analysis, the Canton Village restaurant was established by migrants who left Communist China during the 1960s (Louie 3-33; History 2009). As Susan Kalcik emphatically demonstrates in her book Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the US, ethnic communities face a variety of challenges when entering the United States for the first time. Accordingly, Kalcik relates a story of the immigration of Vietnamese refugees to Kentucky who faced challenges due to a mixture of fear and prejudice. Accordingly, upon the introduction of refugees to this community, food stereotypes such as the fact that the Vietnamese were cooking cats and dogs pervaded. Thus, food stereotype is used “as a weapon against an intruder” (Kalcik 37). Accordingly, food also provides the ties that bind within a cultural community and can provide social cohesion. From this perspective then, there is a symbolic nature of food to forment group identity, particularly in a new society (Kalcik 44). As the Chinese menus at the Canton Village restaurant demonstrate, this Los Angeles Chinatown restaurant caters primarily to the cultural community in which it resides. As a staple of the Los Angeles Chinatown community for almost 40 years, the Canton Village restaurant serves to inculcate a sense of community within the wider Asian community in Southern California. As Nora Oka Keller shows in her brief essay, A Bite of Kimchee, food resonates with the cultural communities and plays an essential role in the creation of cultural identity (Keller, n.d). The Canton Village restaurant had both female and male waiters which is interesting considering the belief that Chinese society has a gender division of labor. With both waiters and waitresses serving the clientele, the Canton Village experience refutes the arguments put forth by Wong (1945) that a gendered division of labor exists within the Chinese culture. Perhaps this is just the result of the Americanization of the Chinese-American staff or perhaps there are other reasons for this. In her exploration of Asian businesses and the role that entrepreneurialism has played in the creation of Asian economic success in United States, Pham argues that the creation of a family business is an essential component of maintaining social cohesion following transnational migration (Pham 22). In this respect then, the decision by the five Chang brothers to create the Canton Village in Los Angeles represented an attempt to ensure the economic sustainability of the family and also ensure the continuity of the family in a new environment. While failure in San Francisco did not discourage them, this family moved to the Los Angeles area and was determined to make it work in a new city. Asian communities within the United States have significantly grown since the introduction of the first Chinese migrant in United States in 1820. The Canton Village has managed to withstand the test of time and continues to be an important focal point for the Chinese community in Los Angeles. Concluding Remarks In United States Asian restaurants are ubiquitous and California is home to some of the best culinary cuisine on the planet. Los Angeles has a Chinatown which is more than 70 years old and the Chinese community in this region of the United States spans nearly two centuries. The globalization of the world has increased the economic interdependence of United States with the rest of the planet and the result has been an influx of migrants from all over the place. Seeking to understand the challenges associated with managing a Chinese restaurant in the Los Angeles area, this research paper has provided an introduction to the Canton Village restaurant in Southern California and has situated it within a larger narrative of the evolution of Chinese communities within the United States. The Canton Village restaurant remains a staple of the Los Angeles Chinese community and it continues to serve its dedicated customer base despite dramatic changes to the community as well as in the United States over the past 40 years. Works Cited “History”. Los Angeles’ Chinatown. 2009. November 5, 2009 http://www.chinatownla.com/history.php Kalcik, Susan. Ethnic and regional Foodways in the US: Symbol and the Performance of Identity. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984. Keller, Nora Oka. A bite of Kimchee. no date. Louie, Vivian S. Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education, and Opportunity Among Chinese Americans. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Nee & Nee. Why Chinese Restaurants are Cheaper. Los Angeles: Longtime. Pham, Vu H. “Secret Kitchen”. Amerasian Journal 32:2 (2006): 21-34. Wong, Jane Snow. Chinese Daughter. New York: Routledge, 1945. Read More