Todd will be on Canada AM
on CTV, Sunday morning
– must be there at 5am so Toronto people can see
a brief interview between 8 and 9am.. I will do the interview at Robson Square, which is part of the the BC Canada Pavillion.
Then will do an interview and
filming at Chinese New Year parade with ZDF tv from Germany. We will meet at 8:30am, as the parade starts at 9:30am in Vancouver Chinatown.
Now….Must get
ready to attend the Women's hockey Canada vs Slovakia today at 5pm
Winter Solstice at Dr. Sun Yat Sen Gardens + Roundhouse + elsewhere
I usually help organize a team social for attending the Winter Solstice events at Dr. Sun Yat Sen Gardens – but this year I must attend AGM and Christmas Party at Joy Kogawa House.
Check out my past stories about attending Winter Solstice events here:
http://www.gunghaggisfatchoy.com/blog?cmd=search&keywords=winter+solstice
Check out the official Winter Solstice events here:
http://www.secretlantern.org/
Event organizer Naomi Singer is an incredible arts advocate and organizer. She was one of my fellow award recipients for the BC Community Achievement Award in 2008.
My friend Devon Cooke is performing “Fire tossing” at the Round House Community Centre. Devon loves being involved in many cultural activities and also paddles on the Gung Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat team.
Lantern
processions start from Emery Barnes Park and Vancouver Aquatic Centre,
and should arrive at the Round House's Train tracks turnable area
beside Davie St. around 6:30ish…
There will be a lantern procession from Strathcona Community Centre to
Dr. Sun Yat Sen Gardens at 6pm. Admission to the Gardens is by
Donation. There will be lots of lanterns everywhere and FREE music.
Also check out the Round House Community Centre.
There is free music, events and the candlelight labrynth.
Now Available: Tickets for Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner
– It's the 12 Anniversary of the “little dinner that could.”
January 31st, Sunday 2010
Floata Seafood Restaurant
Vancouver Chinatown
Contact Firehall Arts Centre:
phone 604.689.0926
The Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Dinner has created an awareness of cultural fusion that has spanned international media, and been featured at the 2008 BC Canada Pavillion in Bejing during the 2008 Summer Olympics, the Royal BC Museum celebration exhibit of the 150th Anniversary of the province of BC, and a 2009 touring exhibition in Scotland titled This Is Who We Are: Scots in Canada.
Gung Haggis Fat Choy creator Todd Wong at the Scottish Parliament exhibition of THIS IS WHO WE ARE: Scots in Canada. The exhibition featured a life sized photo of Wong and a video interview about the Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner, which features the acknowledgement of Chinese and Scottish pioneer history in Canada and contemporary culinary and cultural fusions.
Tickets are now on sale for the 12th Anniversary Dinner.
January 31st, Sunday, 2010
Floata Seafood Restaurant
Vancouver Chinatown
Doors open 5pm
Dinner starts 6pm
$60 + $5 service charge
or
$600 per table + $20 service charge
prices for students and children available.
Raffle Prizes are featured, as this dinner has traditionally been a fundraiser for: Gung Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat team, Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop/Ricepaper Magazine and Historic Joy Kogawa House.
Contact Firehall Arts Centre:
phone 604.689.0926
Visit the Firehall Box Office, 280 E. Cordova Street.
Box Office hours are: 9:30am – 5:00pm, Monday through Friday.
For media information
– contact: Todd Wong 778-846-7090
– email: gunghaggis@yahoo.ca
The origins of the dinner started with 16 people in a living room in 1998. The next year it expanded to 40 people in a restaurant. Soon it outgrew the first restaurant and expanded to 220 people in 2002. Moving to a larger restaurant for 2003, and expanding to a 2-night event in 2004, serving over 500 people. 2005 saw the move to North America's largest Chinese restaurant and present home of the dinner where 570 people were accomodated.
A 2004 CBC telelevision performance special, Gung Haggis Fat Choy, was inspired by the dinner, and received two Leo nominations for best music performance, and best director of music performance. In 2007, a CBC television documentary Generations: The Chan Legacy featured interviews with dinner creator Todd Wong, and film clips of the dinner.
A wide range of musical performers have been featured over the years including: fusion musicians Silk Road Music Ensemble, Dragon River Chinese Music Ensemble, Blackthorn celtic band, The Mad Celts, Chinese erhu master Ji-Rong Huang; opera singers Heather Pawsey, Veera Devi Khare; Jazz singer Leora Cashe. Featured poets have included: Joy Kogawa, Rita Wong, Fred Wah, George McWhirter, Fiona Tin Wei Lam, Jim Wong-Chu, Sean Gunn and Tommy Tao. The past 3 years have also featured sneak previews of Asian Canadian plays including: Mixie and the Half-Breeds, The Quickie, and Twisting Fortunes.
Todd Wong visits Scotland for Homecoming Year, the 250th Anniversary of the birth of Scottish poet Robert Burns.
For the 2010 dinner, creator Todd Wong has just returned from Scotland after visiting the birthplace of Scotland poet Robert Burns, and researching the displays of Burns for Homecoming Scotland, and museum exhibits on Scottish history and emmigration to Canada. Wong is active in Chinese Canadian activities and visited Bejing and Xian in 1993. He hopes to combine a merger of Scottish-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian history and culture in the Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner.
Another extravaganza of culinary and cultural fusion are expected for the 2010 dinner. Details will be released each week leading up to the event. Special guest speakers, media hosts, poets and musicians are confirmed or being confirmed. The 2010 dinner will feature old traditions and new surprises, something borrowed and something brewed – especially created for the 2010 Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Dinner.
Tell your friends, and put a table of 10 together to enjoy the singalongs!
or come as a single or a double, and meet 8 brand new best friends for the evening at your table!
It's the most fun and intimate dinner for 500 you will ever attend!
Kilts Night at Doolin's Irish Pub + December Ceilidh at Scottish Cultural Centre.
Every 1st Thursday of each month, I usually meet with my kilted friends at Doolin's Irish Pub at Granville and Nelson St in Vancouver. Free Music starts at 9pm with Halifax Wharf Rats – if there isn't a hockey game on. It's always lots of fun, and a great way to meet people.
Big Secret: Wear a Kilt and ask for a free pint of Guiness Beer.
Another monthly cultural event happens on Saturday. It's the December Ceilidh at the Scottish Cultural Centre.
I like Scottish Country Dancing – I just wish I could get out to it more often.
After attending the Homecoming Scotland ceilidh here in Edinburgh at The Hub. I am ready to go for another one. It's really easy to do, as the callers give a demonstration and tell people what to do. eg. turn left, grab the right hand, etc etc.
Here's a full message from Ron MacLeod
Greetings, a message from the Vancouver Gaelic Society and the Vancouver Gaelic Choir. Regards, the other Ron
1. WHAT: December Ceilidh, an evening of entertainment.
WHERE: Scottish Cultural Centre, 8886 Hudson Street (at 73rd ), Vancouver, B.C.
WHEN: 8 P.M. Saturday, December 5, 2009. Doors open at 7 P.M.
COST: $12.00; students $6.00; under 12 years free. Tickets at the door.
ENTERTAINMENT: Piper
Ed McIlwaine; Accordionist Sandy Black; and, Lillian Lind to lead the
audience through a Gaelic sing-along. Plus other entertainment.
Orchid Ensemble is one of Vancouver's bravest culturally exploring musical ensembles.
Jewish and Chinese musical influences combine for Oct 3 show at Vancouver Community College
Here is the latest from my friend Lan Tung and Orchid Ensemble:
A musical exploration of the cultural exchange between the Jews and the Chinese
 |
Now Vancouver’s Orchid
Ensemble, already one of the pioneering acts of the cross-cultural
fusion scene, is preparing a concert that will showcase its members’
most personal repertoire yet: a concert that pays tribute to the
centuries-old links between Chinese and Jewish culture. It’s called
Ten Thousand Miles to Kai-Feng.
The project began about 11 years
ago as a labour of love for the ensemble’s founders, the husband and
wife duo of Lan Tung and Jonathan Bernard. Tung was an award-winning
erhu player in Taiwan before settling in Canada with her family at age
20. Bernard is a Canadian percussionist of Jewish ancestry who is a
regular with the Vancouver Symphony.
What
they discovered together is fascinating: tangible evidence of a Jewish
presence in China can be dated to the seventh century when Sephardic
Jews arrived from Persia along the several Silk Roads, settling in
China’s capital city, Xi'an. By the Northern Sung dynasty (960-1127
CE), a thriving Jewish community had been established in the new
capital Kaifeng, and it remained active for the next 1200 years. More
recently Russian Jews settled in Harbin and Ashkenazi Jewish refugees
settled in Shanghai. There is also a long-ago-established Jewish
community in Hong Kong.
Lan Tung
Orchid Ensemble
Chinese Music and Beyond…
http://www.orchidensemble.com
http://myspace.com/orchidensemble
http://youtube.com/TheOrchidEnsemble
ACCORDIONS TAKE OVER VANCOUVER for ONE WEEKEND.
It's the 2nd Annual Accordion Noir Festival
September 11,12,13
Here is information from Rowan Lipkovits
Exhaustive information about all three festival days should be up at , but to summarize:
*
Friday night, Sept 11th, Geoff Berner will be a guest on the Accordion
Noir radio show at CFRO 102.7 fm from 9:30 through 10:30 pm.
Meanwhile, up Main street at Cafe Montmartre (4362 Main Street), Rowan
will be hosting a varied program of virtuous squeezebox players in
small groups from 8 pm through closing time (after midnight), featuring
the ivory-tickling of Joanna Chapman-Smith, Barbara Adler, Dawn Zoe,
Tina Tew, Andy Fielding, with Mezamazing and the Creaking Planks
closing things out. By donation.
* Saturday, Sept 12th, at 4
pm, an accordion parade will be departing (weather permitting) from the
southeast corner of Grandview Park (Commercial Drive at Charles Street)
to squeeze along the seven blocks to the day's venue, the WISE Hall
(1882 Adanac Street at Victoria Drive).
45-minute workshops begin at
4:15 pm, starting with an accordion repair and maintenance session led
by Rickey Mann, then an accordion composing session led by Andy
Fielding, and closing with an accordion history talk by Bruce Triggs of
Accordion Noir!
An accordion film festival of sorts should get
underway around 6:30 pm, and close to 8 pm, we should be beginning the
main evening performances: Story from the Maritimes, Jason Webley of
Washington State (though he does spend a lot of time touring in Russia)
and Vancouver's own Geoff Berner.
The evening promises further
surprises and special guests, but you'll just have to come out to know
for sure what they're going to be! All-day tickets for Saturday will
be $20 at the door, or $15 for just the closing concert portion.
It's the final dragon boat regatta of the 2009 season in Vancouver
Last Gasp dragon boat regatta Sep 5 Saturday @ Science World/False Creek
This will be the first public dragon boat race in Canada that features 10 person dragon boats. These boats were first used in Vancouver for the World Police and Fire Games in August.
The Gung Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat team started their racing season with practices in the last week of February, the first race on May 2 in Burnaby's Barnet Marine Park, the Dragon Zone regatta on June 7th, and the Rio Tinto Alcan Dragon Boat Festival on June 20 and 21st.
We entered the Richmond Festival for our first time, and came 4th in the A division. We traveled to Vernon for July 25/26, as it is our favorite race of the year on beautiful Kalamalka Lake.
We will next enter the UBC Day of the Long Boats and the Ft. Langley Cranberry Festival Regatta, to race in voyageur canoes.
But first…. we have to race Saturday Sep 5th at the Last Gasp regata.
Dragon Zone beside Science World, at Creekside Park, Vancouver BC.
Please come cheer us on!
Here's the message from our magnificient manager Tzhe Lam:
I have finally received the race grid from Dragon Zone and it looks like the first races of the day start at 9am.
Our
first race of the Day will be at 9:55am so we will need to marshall at
9:35 if they are on time which means I would like everyone to be at
Dragon Zone at 9am at the very latest.
This is so that we have
enough time to setup tents and get organized as well as make sure we
get the final roster into the Officials so that we can race.
If you have not signed the roster yet make sure you arrive early so that you can do so.
Also bring me your $20 race fee if you have not yet paid me!!!
Our second race will be between 12pm and 12:45pm depending on our placing in our first race
Race 3 will be most like between 2:15 and 3pm depending on our times
Race 4 1000m will be between 3:20pm – 4:20pm again determined by overall time.
These are rough estimates of time and can and will change on race day depending how quick/slow they get the races out.
As always bring food and drink of your choice to the event. Preferably something that won't make you sick while paddling.
Fans and supporters are welcome.
Tzhe
The final 3 Enchanted Evenings concerts at Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Gardens all feature musicians that have performed at past Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinners.
Last week celtic ensemble Blackthorn performed August 21. This Friday Aug. 28, Erhu specialist Ji-Rong Huang artistic director of Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble takes stage. On Sept 4, Silk Road Music performs as a quartet, led by Qiu Xia He and Andre Thibault.
Qiu Xia and Andre have performed many times at Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinners since 2004. Silk Road Music Ensemble was featured in the 2004 CBC television performance special “Gung Haggis Fat Choy”.
Blackthorn and Ji-Rong both came to the 2008 Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner. Blackthorn has an incredible repertoire of Celtic songs that they kept pulling out of their hats. Ji-Rong and I performed 2 songs on accordion and erhu – Galloping Horse and Hungarian Dance No. 5 – which he also plays solo.
Summer Concert Series
Tickets $18 for non-members,
$15 for Garden Society Members
VANCOUVER CHINESE MUSIC ENSEMBLE- August 28
A rich showcase of traditional Chinese instruments
SILK ROAD- September 4
World Music with a Chinese flair
Tickets and info, contact 604.662.3207 ext. 208 or
email assistant@vancouverchinesegarden.com
reservations are recommended
Historic Fort Langley is the birthplace of BC, where Gov. James Douglas signed the proclamation almost 150 years and 9 months ago.
| Monday, Aug 03 |
6:30pm | Brigade Days Fort Langley National Historic Site of Canada, BC Brigade Blackthorn will be bathed and on stage Monday evening. |
Walter Quan and his sushi candles booth at the 2007 Powell Street Festival – photo Todd Wong
Here's a great article in the Vancouver Sun by Kevin Griffin:
