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…
