Chinese Banquets of My Youth (Mostly Thrown By People I Didn’t Know—But That’s OK Since They All Came To My Wedding Banquet ).

As many of you have read before, I ate very little Chinese food growing up.  That’s because mid-20th century familial Chinese America was largely American born with Grandpa and Grandma often the only family members from China.  Indeed my primary exposure to Chinese food was at Chinese wedding and birthday banquets, where many of you may have read that I only ate soy sauce and rice and passed on all of the entrees (except for bird’s nest soup if it was on the menu).  And believe me those banquets were commonplace events.  

However it’s not like my folks were socially active.  To the contrary.  They only had a small circle of friends who they saw in person infrequently.  Indeed they got together with their very best friends only once or twice a year.  We did have gatherings with my maternal grandparents and uncles, aunts and cousins on special occasions.  But with my dad’s heavy work schedule, long hours morning to night every day except for Sunday afternoons, where we'd go off for a “ride” to visit the different parts of greater Los Angeles to see places like the orange groves of Orange County, Zuma Beach or the Long Beach Pike and my dad's favorite Shrimpy Joe's.  (When we reached our destination, I would mail a postcard back to myself as a souvenir of the outing.  One time we went to San Gabriel, probably to see the mission, and I remember dropping the post card in the mail.  I was so excited the next day when the postcard arrived (yes, local mail deposited on Sunday arrived the next day) when the post card carried the postmark of Rosemead, California.  I had never heard of Rosemead, even though as a grade schooler I did know most of the cities in the Los Angeles area.) 

So with little time to socialize, how did we get invited to so many Chinese banquets?  Well, as with many other issues I have discussed in the past, it all goes back to the nature of Chinese immigration to the United States from the 1850s until the changes in the 1960s to the United States immigration laws.  As I have frequently pointed out, during this earlier time period, essentially all of the Chinese migration to America originated in and around rural Toishan, outside of Canton.   With a current population of 1 million, out of a national Chinese population of 1.4 billion, Toishan is barely a blip on the face of China.  But certain factors in the immigration of Toishanese to the United States led to a unique culture different from what would have arisen had migrants come to the United States from all parts of China.  

The first major factor was the rural nature of Toishan.  Toishanese migrants lived in villages, not cities.  So when these villagers came to the United States, fellow villagers here were treated as family.  Furthermore, in many Toishanese villages, virtually the entire male population eventually made their way to the United States.  Consequently, while the Toishanese migrants may have been strangers in a distant land, the presence of many familiar people made life in the United States much more comfortable.

Adding to this familial feeling was the fact that Chinese people considered anyone with the same last surname to be a cousin, as the same surname was evidence of a common founding ancestor.  On top of that, there are relatively few different surnames in China, and in Toishan the number was even fewer.  Hence even in the old days when the number of Chinese in Los Angeles was in the low thousands, there were still a lot of people named David Chan running around.  Arriving in the United States, Chinese migrants quickly founded family associations, expanding the sense of kinship even further in the Chinese American community.

All this led to a situation where Toishanese Americans had a lot of people they could call family, and for important events like weddings, births and milestone birthdays, the entire family was invited.  Consequently, growing up, I remember attending many of these events, having little idea who the guest of honor, such as Reger Wong, might be aside from the fact he was some kind of far relation.  (Actually, I do remember one woman who particularly invited us to all sorts of gatherings involving her family.  Her name was Mrs. Wong, but we all called her "Loudmouth."  However I don't recall any of her family members.)  And because they met the communal definition of family, not attending the wedding or birthday banquet or other event was not an option.   As a young adult this led me to make the observation that just like big city political bosses delivered votes to particular candidates, we were delivered to attend banquets and similar social gatherings.

So long as grandpa and grandma were active, the system kept on going, sweeping up the younger generations in the practice.  When Mrs. Chandavkl and I were married, we had 62 tables at our wedding banquet.  Reger Wong was there, along with probably 200 or more people on my mom's side of the family who were total strangers to me.  And the crowd could have been much bigger if Mrs. Chandavkl's family had the number of "relatives" as there were on my mom's side, or if my dad's parents hadn't passed decades previously, resulting in only three tables of immediate family members from his side.  Some of our contemporaries had wedding crowds of a thousand or more guests, spread over two or three restaurants because no single restaurant had sufficient capacity.

The old way has since given way.  Our latest family wedding last month was a wonderful oceanside event with no more than 150 guests (not even as many as the strangers at our wedding).  It was certainly a lot more fun than my banquet or all the others I attended before then.  But in hindsight I am grateful for having the experience even though I didn't eat much of the food at those banquets.  If it weren't for these banquets I would never had the opportunity to visit New Chinatown during its pre-1970s tourist trap days, where little housing existed in the area, and where the City Market produce terminal area was the true Chinese community.  Without these visits to restaurants like Lime House, Hong Kong Low, New Hung Far and New Grand East, I would not know as much about the Chinese community of Los Angeles as I do.