Last May I participated in a fund raiser for Foo's Ho Ho Restaurant, a local favorite family style place in Vancouver's old Chinatown. Author Judy Fong Bates, local activist Elwyn Xie, and I, all having had first hand experiences working and growing up in our parents' laundries. spoke about some of our experiences.
One unexpected benefit of this event was that it attracted the interest of Yvonne Gall, a radio documentary producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) in Vancouver. Last fall she came to L. A. to interview me about my book, Chinese Laundries: Tickets to Survival on Gold Mountain and the personal experiences from our family laundry described in my memoir, Southern Fried Rice. We also visited one of the last old time full service Chinese laundries in town, the Sam Sing Laundry, and talked with the third generation owner, Albert Wong. The documentary, which includes other material, will air on April 18 at 9 p.m.and May 9 at 1 p.m. on CBC Radio and will also be streaming on their website starting May 2.
Update April 13, 2012: The above link no longer works, but the documentary re-aired yesterday at this link: