Electric rice cooker

I stumbled upon this rice cooker on the streets of St. John’s, Newfoundland, left outside in working order for whoever might want it. I stopped to examine it. It was almost exactly like the one my family had bought in Hong Kong nearly fifty years earlier.

I was “made in China” in the 1970s, when the country was still in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, which left it in disarray and impoverished.

My peasant family was able to escape our destitution to a better life in Canada in 1979 thanks to its family reunification programme. Relatives who ran successful businesses in Toronto’s Chinatown sponsored us. Without them, we would not have qualified to enter Canada, which largely selects its immigrants through a points-based system.

When we emigrated from Canton (Guangzhou), our first port of call was Hong Kong (which back then was a British colony). This was, de facto, the only point of travel connecting China with the West at the time. It was there that we also first encountered the modern world, and my family took advantage of this to buy the iconic white National/Panasonic electric rice cooker.

Until then, we had previously prepared rice in our village using a wok over a fire fuelled by hay or dung. The rice cooker was a new and cherished possession — a small piece of modern life that we were taking with us into an uncertain future.

Although our final destination was Toronto, we first crossed into Canada at the Vancouver Airport as direct flights from Hong Kong did not exist at that time. As part of the transiting procedure, we had to carry our goods across the airport. Everyone in my family had their hands full with suitcases. Therefore, the duty of carrying the rice cooker fell on four-year-old me, even as my arms could barely hug the machine, much less see my own feet once I wrapped my arms around the pot.

After clearing customs, we saw relatives at the airport waiting on the level below to greet us. With our suitcases in hand — and me with my arms enveloped around the rice cooker — we moved towards the escalator, soon to be in the company of kin.

I was unfamiliar with the sight of moving stairs but proceeded anyhow. As soon as I stepped on — without the benefit of anyone holding my hands — I ended up tumbling all the way down the escalator. I came away with scrapes and bruises all over my body. I do not recall how the rice cooker fared, but I do remember eating rice made from that pot as a child, so I must have done a decent job protecting it. 😅

Or perhaps the rice cooker was manufactured, like me, to take a beating! 😂

Almost fifty years later, at the opposite end of the country from where my Canadian story began, I came across this rice cooker. I had started my life in China, crossed through Hong Kong, arrived in Canada with one of these machines in my arms, and somehow found myself reunited with one nearly half a century later. The original rice cooker is long gone. But standing there in St. John’s, I was reminded that the journey has been real.