Bonus: A Ricepaper Magazine subscription is included with every dinner ticket purchase!

Upon entering its 15 year anniversary, Gung Haggis  is shaping into another memorable event! The event will be hosted by Tetsuro Shigematsu and Toddish McWong, and will feature many performers in celebration of Gung Haggis (coupled with some tasty treats!).

From the website:

In 1998, “Toddish McWong” held a small private dinner for 16 friends with food, haggis, poetry and songs – from both Scottish and Chinese cultures and thus was born – Gung Haggis Fat Choy  Now it is a dinner for 400 people!

More than  a traditional dinner with music and poetry.  Gung Haggis Fat Choy re-imagines a traditional Robert Burns Dinner format, within a BC or Canadian historical context that puts Scottish-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian pioneers on an inclusive and equal platform, while acknowledging historical racism and how we move beyond it. This event has grown to also  celebrate contemporary Scottish-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian artists and poets and their innovations to create something uniquely Canadian.

This event is gaining quite the attention as featured in the  Globe and Mail:

At this very moment, I bet you’re not thinking about deep-fried haggis wonton for dinner. But then, you’re not Toddish McWong. That’s the famous persona of Todd Wong, a 51-year-old Chinese-Canadian who works as a library assistant in Vancouver. His annual Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner marks its 15th year next Sunday. An amalgam of traditions for Chinese New Year and Robbie Burns Night, the dinner is a celebration of Canadian multiculturalism that has grown in popularity every year. (There’s a spin-off Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner in Seattle and ambitions to roll them out across Canada.)

The event will host some amazing performances:

• Fred Wah – Parliamentary Poet Laureate
• Jan Walls – Chinese clapper tales and Chinese scholar
• Harry McGrath – Robbie Burns Immortal Memory
• Black Bear Rebels Celtic Ceilidh ensemble
• Gung Haggis Fat Choy Pipes & Drums
• Lots of dragons + surprises!

As mentioned, a Ricepaper Magazine subscription is included with every purchased dinner ticket! Come and enjoy some haggis wontons!

We’re currently in the process of recruiting a web team and a web editor/coordinator – email info[at] ricepapermagazine.ca and go to our volunteers page for more info if you’re interested! Until we manage to recruit more people, it’ll be me, Jon, or our fearless editor, Eury, blogging, tweeting and writing on the latest happenings in Asian Canadian arts and culture. Hopefully there’ll be a web game or two from Ren, our Art Director and the ricepaper collective.

During my early learning days of using Twitter and banging my head to come up with a <140 word twit (tweet?), I came across several Asian-Canadian and Asian-American culture blogs, some that I’d heard of before, and some that I hadn’t. As is common with many other things arts/culture/pop culture-related, the Americans seem to be dominating the Asian-North American blog cyberspace scene. However, if you’ve come across good Asian-Canadian blogs that you’ve enjoyed, share in the comments.

In the States

• Angry Asian Man – while searching the Internet many many years ago in search of cool-seeming Asian-American and Asian-Canadian media, I found this and Giant Robot. After a little bit more searching, I found Ricepaper Magazine, eventually becoming a humble volunteer. And now here we are. Sunny Shao described Angry Asian Man in Ricepaper‘s 13.2 issue as a “self-confessed hyper-sensitive-but-proud Asian American” with “tongue-in-cheek conjectures on Asian arts and entertainment, mixed with the odd tidbit on racial profiling.” I took part in a Schema Mag-sponsored web-event and as I expected, Angry Asian Man (also known by his Clark Kent name, Phil Yu) was well-informed and thoughtful about the place of Asian-Americans in movies, tv, pop culture and current events. Surprisingly, Angry Asian Man did not spazz out or live up to his moniker during the webcast (he saves that for when he watches racist TV/movies/etc. and thinks/blogs “That’s racist!”) .

• 8 Asians – This blog was actually composed by both Asian-Americans and Asian-Canadians. Similar to Angry Asian Man, 8 Asians covers “whatever Asian issues are currently relevant in our lives, whether it be pop culture or current events or politics” (according to their About Us page). Note that there are actually 15 bloggers but citing reasons of “community”, “feng shui” and “laziness”, 8 Asians is what the blog will continue to be called.

• RaceWire is ColourLines Magazine’s blog. ColourLines focuses a bit more on race and politics, as opposed to pop culture. Since, this blog is, yes, Asian-American, there is a justifiable focus on US politics, current events, immigration policies, social trends, etc. However, it’s nice to contrast and compare our own Canadian politics, current events, immigration policies, etc. to the States, isn’t it? That’s the Canadian way.

In Canada

I haven’t found an Asian-Canadian blog that reaches “Angry Asian Man” superblog status. Most of these blogs are just on the upswing, but I’ve got high hopes (much like the hopes I have for the Ricepaper website). Again though, if you’ve come across any frequently updated, critically thoughtful, suitably snarky blogs with Asian Canadian arts and culture leanings, feel free to share in the comments.

• Gung Haggis Fat Choy – in interest of full disclosure, I will admit that Toddish McWong, the creator of this blog, is on the board of directors of the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop, which publishes Ricepaper. But in addition to blogging about Gung Haggis Fat Choy (which is happening on the 31st, btw!), Todd blogs about literary and cultural events going around town, Asian-Canadian history, his work with the Historic Joy Kogawa House Society, plus the Gung Haggis Dragon Boat team. This guy gets around (and I mean that in the best possible way).
• Schema Mag “explores the unique evolution of diversity in the lives of cultural navigators—through design, food, music, art, film, or comic books—everything that cultural navigators actively consume as part of their daily lives.”
• A whole mess of random blogs, from near and far (but still in Canada), from past Ricepaper contributors to people who sadly may have never heard of Ricepaper before, from music to literature to – young poet and frequent Twitterer Gillian Sze‘s blog; Quinn Omori’s music blog From Blown Speakers; another music blog, the Panic Manual – in their words, “probably the first and only indie-twee-britpop-rock, video game-movie-travel-food-gadget reviewing, asian centric-maritime influenced Canadian blog on the interweb”; Asian Canadian Writers Workshop – starting slow, but off to a good start; the Ricepaper Collective – our fabulous Ricepaper art team, hasn’t been updated for a while, but the blog  contains a fascinating process overview on the cover design for the 14.3 Space:Culture:Place issue; Bryan Lee O’Malley (creator of Scott Pilgrim, Kim Pine and Ramona Flowers)‘s blog; award-winning playwright Marty Chan‘s blog.
  

Photo: Courtesy of Gung Haggis Fat Choy

Ricepaper is looking for volunteers to help out 5pm January 31, Sunday, at the Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner at Floata Restaurant in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Gung Haggis Fat Choy fuses Robbie Burns Day with Chinese Year to create a fusion-y goo of intercultural goodness.

There’ll be haggis-filled wonton. Hobnobbing with participants and guests such as CBC News anchor Gloria Macarenko, Rita Wong, Adrienne Wong, Toddish McWong, and other people in the local Vancouver arts and culture scene. Plenty of bagpiping. And yes, you heard me right, haggis-filled wonton.

Those are my selling points and I’m sticking to them. Please email info[at]ricepapermagazine.ca if you’d like to help out.

Also, a fair share of men wearing kilts.

For more information, go to Gung Haggis Fat Choy