Chef Craig Wong: Food + Sustainability 王智榮: 永續的飲食革命

We caught up with Chef Craig Wong, the Toronto-based owner of the award-winning restaurant Patois and upcoming Bar Mignonette, to explore his views on sustainability. We wanted to know what the actual practice of this word versus lip service means to him as a chef, restaurateur and cultural champion. During the pandemic, he was a part of a collaboration with IKEA that focused on cooking with scraps. That exercise, in turn, inspired the images in our feature. In this special conversation, we examine the concept of sustainability through three lenses: first as a culinary philosophy, then towards the preservation of culture and, finally, the conservation of the restaurant industry.

Long Reads, Personal Stories, Food and LifestyleFête ChinoiseFebruary 23, 2022Asian Representation, culture, Food, SustainabilityComment

Tirion Law: Time As Foundation For A Ballerina’s Life 台上一分鐘，台下十年功

Standing at 158 centimeters tall, this young Hong Kong-born New Zealand-trained ballet dancer is making the most of her time as part of the National Ballet of Canada. Tirion Law officially joined as a member of the Corps de Ballet in 2018. Her repertoire includes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Nutcracker, Anna Karenina, The Dream, Paquita, The Second Detail and The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude.

Long Reads, Personal StoriesFête ChinoiseFebruary 17, 2022Asian Representation, ArtComment

Documentary Filmmaker Ruby Yang 楊紫燁: On Working With Time

Academy Award-Winning Director, Ruby Yang, talks about her journey, the idea of time and pace in her work, and COVID-19. Yang is currently the Project Director of the Hong Kong Documentary Initiative (HKDI) and was the recipient of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council’s Artist of the Year for Film in 2018. Our Fête Chinoise editors first met Ruby in December 2019 at the film screening of The Last Stitch (2019) directed by Alfred Sung, which Yang served as the Executive Producer. Later, Yang shared that she saw the wonderful events featuring Chinese Canadian culture that Fête Chinoise had designed. It is truly our pleasure to share her thoughts.

Long Reads, Personal Stories, Film & BooksFête ChinoiseFebruary 11, 2022Asian Representation, Art, artists, FilmComment

Paper Sneakers and Border-Crossing Dreams: Multimedia Artist Natalie Wong

Natalie’s work is never the same; it is continuing developing, adapting and evolving. I find it fascinating she cannot pick a favourite medium and experimentation tends to lead her to all sorts of new artistic dimensions. What is consistent however, is how Natalie seems to make pieces with cultural, whether localised or global, connotations. I would speculate whether it comes from Natalie’s outlook from splitting her time between Hong Kong and London. Natalie noted that “both cities are amazing in their own unique ways. Hong Kong is intense, efficient and it's easy to meet people.

Long Reads, Personal Stories, Art and FashionFête ChinoiseJanuary 21, 2022Asian Representation, Art, artistsComment

Dr. Thomas Fung 馮永發博士: Spirit of Enterprise 提升加國華人生活品質的企業精神

For many second-generation Chinese Canadian children growing up in the 1990s and 2000s, Fairchild was one of the major avenues to connect with their parents’ home and Hong Kong culture. Fairchild TV transmitted dramas and soap operas from Asia to Canada, successfully bridging the gap between “home” in Asia and “home” in Toronto for immigrants and their descendants for over three decades.

Long Reads, Personal StoriesFête ChinoiseJanuary 12, 2022Asian RepresentationComment

Samantha Wan: From the Director’s Chair

Fête Chinoise contributor Jasmine Chen shares an up-close and personal interview with Samantha Wan, whom you may know from the award-winning series Second Jen. She worked with Andrew Phung in this new and intriguing series and has so much warmth and heart to share. “Being an actor, a writer, a producer, all of those things make the directing way easier.”

Long Reads, Personal Stories, Film & BooksFête ChinoiseDecember 29, 2021Asian Representation, artists, FilmComment

Stories of Time: Eason Chan 時間的故事:陳奕迅

There is a reason why he has a nickname E神 or 歌神: God of Songs, admired by many like an immortal on his grand stage. Surpassing most performance careers — singer, songwriter, actor and producer, Eason Chan (陳奕迅) is now into his third decade of music-making since he began his career in 1995. Not many pop stars stay relevant for such a long and continuous stretch of time in the especially fast-paced Asian entertainment landscape, yet Eason has defied the odds. Winning multiple awards across Asia, and selling out for concert tours worldwide, he has been one of the top producing artists in Asia since the early 2000s.

Personal Stories, Design DialogueFête ChinoiseDecember 21, 2021Asian Representation, Music, chinese musicComment

He Kun 賀昆 : Capturing the Reality of the Pandemic with Traditional Brush Painting

From my series “The Quiet Spring,” the beginnings of the virus can be seen — at the time it wasn’t perceived as too serious and no one could predict that just two months later, it would become a global pandemic. The development of the epidemic inspired several series of large- and small-scale ink paintings with profound reflections.

Art and Fashion, Long Reads, Personal StoriesFête ChinoiseNovember 17, 2021Asian Representation, Art, artistsComment

Abundance: Across Oceans and Generations by Toronto artist Shellie Zhang 張雪萊

My latest project Abundance opened as an online exhibition with Patel Gallery for the 2020 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. Featuring new sculptural, photographic and installation-based works, Abundance is a cyclical reflection on two actions: my relatives bringing pieces of cut fruit in my youth, and me leaving fruit offerings at ancestral graves.

Art and Fashion, Long Reads, Personal StoriesFête ChinoiseNovember 17, 2021Asian Representation, Art, artistsComment

Brock DeBoer: A contemporary porcelain language in traditional blue and white

Brock De Boer's work is an archival snapshot of contemporary and nostalgic objects cast in porcelain telling my story. Casting an object from a past time or of a temporary material in porcelain allows that item to exist forever, telling the future a bit about the past.

Art and Fashion, Long Reads, Personal StoriesFête ChinoiseNovember 12, 2021Asian Representation, ceramics, Art, artists, sculptureComment

Stephanie H. Shih 石函玉:Capturing the Asian Diaspora through Ceramic Groceries

When she was just 11, Stephanie’s Chinese mother passed away, and because her father was white, she felt she had lost an important connection to her heritage. The porcelain dumpling reminded her of her mother, who died before teaching her how to fold real ones, and she would send me photos of herself travelling with the dumpling thereafter.