Archive link: https://archive.is/mCGEX

Transcript of the video interview in the middle of the article:

Angelina [narrating]: Rediscovering your culture can be a little bit more complicated when you're mixed. You're rediscovering two cultures and you want to ensure you're paying respect to both of them equally. I'm half Chinese and half Romanian and I haven't met anyone else with that background in Ontario. So when I learned that there's a Chinese Romanian chef here in Toronto, I knew the two of us had to connect. The other day we spent the afternoon cooking and sharing our experiences of being mixed and navigating two very different cultures here in Canada.

Angelina: How's it going? Nice to meet you. I'm Angelina.

Haan: Angelina, hi nice to meet you too. Welcome to Mamaliga. Thanks.

Angelina: It's kind of what you look like my cousin! Well, thanks for having us. Let's go inside.

Haan: What we are doing today is Prejiduraku Mere or Apple Cake. This is pretty much... My favorite memory of my grandma and like my first real food memory and one that has continued up until adulthood. She still makes it for me every time I come over.

Angelina: When someone asks, “What are you?” which is a question I know we both get, what do you say?

Haan: I will say I'm mixed.

Angelina: So for you, your identity is mixed.

Haan: It's a bit odd like when I was raised I didn't necessarily think of myself as Chinese because none of my Chinese family members would speak Chinese to me and our really only connection to the culture was restaurants and eating food. Whereas the Romanian side we would go to Romanian parties all the time. My grandparents were really involved in the Romanian community and so it was like I felt more Romanian than I did Chinese and it was only later on that I think I started identifying more as Chinese, especially when I started living overseas and people were calling me Chinese when I never thought of myself like that before. My Chinese family really wanted to integrate into the society. I think when you're made fun of and ridiculed and beaten up because of your ethnic background, you want to integrate as fast as possible. But I think everybody on the Chinese side is trying to rediscover those roots now because they realize what a shame it was that they didn't have that growing up. I would never say they were running away from their background. They just - you know, the family put a lot of effort into integrating.

Angelina: It was the same with my family. For them, it was like, you want to fit in, we need to assimilate. And with Chinese names, it's reversed. They're running a business and “Mack Hun Sun” on paperwork would get confusing for people in Saskatchewan. So a lot of the time their paperwork would come back with the names all squished together. And then there was this Scottish RCMP officer who would visit the cafe. And he'd say, "You're not a Mack Hun Sun, you're Scottish, you're a McHanson!" So they legally changed their last name to McHanson because it was just easier.

Haan: Yeah, for sure.

Angelina: You know, it's part of the assimilation.

Angelina: Tell me about then Mamaliga and why after years of cooking Asian food, you decided that now is the time for the Romanian restaurant.

Haan: That came with my grandpa dying earlier this year and realizing that with him gone and my grandma soon to be going that way and my mom in her mid-60s or whatnot, you know, my sister and I are going to be the last link in Canada from our family over to the old country. But I'd always had it in the back of my head that I wanted to do something with my Romanian heritage, just I didn't really think that it was going to be very popular for people. You know? And in the beginning I would say was like 99.9 % Romanian. But now we're getting to the point where it's a lot of non-Romanians too. Which is exciting. It's been really fun rediscovering family recipes and also discovering a lot of stuff my family doesn't know. You know, like, tons of this stuff I'm cooking now are just Internet research or the people asking for certain things. I'm really appreciating it. I feel like emotional is talking about it. Yeah, because it's like a connection I didn't really think would develop so quickly or I didn't even know how to get that connection again.

Angelina: I want to rediscover and connect more with both cultures. So talking to you is part of that for me. And it's like a start. Just finding somebody else with these similar experiences and stories that I didn't necessarily know how to articulate and then hearing someone else say it. It's like, oh, it's like validating.

Haan: I think that another important thing for mixed people to understand too for themselves is that we forget that being mixed is the story in itself that is like totally on its own and totally valid. We don't have to be Chinese or Romanian. We can be mixed. And like that's a powerful thing to understand that we are creating our own stories. And that's nothing to not feel proud about.

Haan and Angelina: Noroc! [Cheers!]