The majority of my knowledge of my Chinese heritage comes from one person, mainly about one topic: from my Poppa - that's my mom's mother, about food. There are definitely quirks to the Chinese culture that I've never fully understood, but thanks to my Poppa and our shared love of everything culinary, what was once opaque is now, at least, slightly translucent.

Ever since I was young, there has always been a cloak of mystery surrounding my mom's parents, mainly due to the language barrier. They speak Cantonese (Canto), the language/dialect of the south. My Poppa is from Guangzhou (the southern mainland), while my Gongon (my mom's father), is from the island: Hong Kong. Between themselves, they have always spoken Cantonese, although, curiously, my gongon speaks exclusively English to my mom and her sisters, while my Poppa speaks a 40/60 mix of English-Canto.

I was often upset when I was younger, that I was never taught any Cantonese, and my mom's excuse was always only the lines of 'I looked for Cantonese schools in Sudbury (my hometown), and I couldn't find any - there was only Mandarin!' (Mandarin was a useless alternative because none of my relatives can communicate in Mandarin, although learning to read and write would've done some good.) Unfortunately for her, when I reached middle school and then later in high school, I did have Cantonese friends whose mom's taught Cantonese. But I suppose I can't exactly blame her, moving to a small town without connections, somehow putting your 5-year-old daughter into weekend Canto classes is probably not the biggest concern. (I most likely would not have been down for it anyway, because my weekends were already full of swimming lessons and church Sunday mornings.)

Having those friends definitely skewed my already biased thoughts on Cantonese and Chinese culture, though. I grew up mainly only hearing Cantonese (I knew another 'dialect' existed, but that was less important, right?) and thus believed that Cantonese was THE dialect. The biggest, the best, the most important. Then university hit and I ran into the largest group of non-Cantonese-speaking Chinese people ever. And they all spoke and lived in Mandarin.

When I finally ended up living with my grandparents when I got my first job in Toronto, I was finally given some insight to the weirder parts of Chinese culture. Let's get to the stories.