My fascination with China began in Scotland
Lunch would be a small bowl of chicken, mushroom and noodle soup, then beef or chicken chop suey with fried rice followed by banana fritters. We all enjoyed those moments, feeling it was dining ‘Chinese-style’. Later, regularly travelling across the US and Canada, I often headed to the nearest Chinese restaurant knowing they would serve food I was familiar with! It was of course quite a cultural shock to first visit China in 1987. The quite delicious dinners I would have in Beijing bore little resemblance to my youthful preconceptions. Living in Guangzhou during the early 1990’s, catering similarly felt quite different to the Cantonese-themed restaurants I had become familiar with. However ‘Xin-Da-Xin’ department store on Beijing Lu had a top-floor dining area where stir-fried beef with tomatoes did remind me of being back in Glasgow.
Mainly pedestrianized Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow is home today to a wide range of Glasgow’s contemporary international dining. This tree-lined avenue runs parallel to where many families originating from Fujian, Guangdong and Hong Kong had earlier settled. Indeed some elderly continue to reside there, conversing in their local dialects while trying to maintain traditional South China lifestyles. Catering partly for this community several restaurants, along Sauchiehall Street and its vicinity, such as the Loon Fung, were long regarded as ‘real’ Chinese venues. Appreciated were the experiences when Chinese friends or organizations would invite me to join them there on special occasions. An opportunity to sample cuisine from menus often presented only with Chinese characters.
The Loon Fung is reasonably close to Dalian House, a building reflecting Glasgow’s ongoing twinning with Dalian. It was, for a while, used as part of the administration for the former Strathclyde Region. It was there I was interviewed for what became a ‘life-changing’ year, 1992-93, in Guangdong. Strathclyde was twinned with that rapidly developing southern province. Upon returning to Glasgow the restaurant organized a display within its premises featuring my photo images from southern China. This was partly to show diners how that area was rapidly changing, along with its physical beauty and amazing ethnic diversity. Many Glaswegians then had limited knowledge of its fascinating ethnic groups, for example. What proved fortuitous was the restaurant incorporated a travel agency mainly catering for the local Chinese community. It was through a director there that I was encouraged in 1994 to start visiting Beijing. Indeed, they helped arranged a hotel within a traditional hutong district near the capital’s famed Lama Temple. My fascination with Beijing really began then.
