On the occasion of International Rice Cooker Day (Decemeber 10th): I was “made in China” in the 1970s. China at that time was in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, which rendered it poor and in disarray. My family was able to escape our destitution to a better life in Canada in 1979 by grace of its family reunification programme. My granduncle (paternal grandfather’s brother), who ran a successful business in Toronto’s Chinatown (and left China during the chaos of WWII), sponsored us. We would otherwise not qualify to enter into Canada, which normally selects its immigrants via a points-based system. When we emigrated from China, our first port of call was Hong Kong (which back then was a British colony). This was the only point of travel connecting China with the West back then. It was there that we also first experienced modernity, and my family took advantage of this to buy an electric rice cooker. (We bought the iconic National rice cooker; National later became part of Panasonic.) We were peasants and had previously cooked rice back in our village using a wok over a hay or dung fire. This was a new and cherished possession for us.…
