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The International District’s Fortune Cookie and Noodle Factory

Take a tour of a local fortune cookie and noodle factory with KBCS’s Yuko Kodama and Dawn Nguyen of the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, otherwise known as the Wing. Speaking of food, The Wing offers a tour called the International Dumpling Crawl, now through march, to tour and try dumplings at various restaurants in Seattle’s Chinatown, International District.

Producers: Yuko Kodama Adria McGhee and Jesse Callahan

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91.3 KBCS music and ideas listener supported radio from Bellevue College.

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Next, we take a field trip into a fortune cookie and noodle factory in Seattle’s Chinatown International District. Yuko Kodama goes on a tour of the neighborhood with the Wing Luke Museum’s Dawn Nguyen.

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Oh wow, look at all these fortune cookies. And all these flat ones! Are they called misfortune cookies?

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Misfortune cookies or unfortate cookies. Where we have stepped in is Tsue Chong. Our very own local fortune cookie and noodle factory that’s been here for 100 years now, in the corner of Eighth and King and this is their little shop where you can buy a super fresh fortune cookies, dried noodles, fresh noodles. Everywhere you look there’s all sorts of different kinds. So anytime you crack open a fortune cookie and you’ve got those two roses on your piece of paper, you now know it comes from this place here.

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Oh, it’s made in the international district. What kind of different kinds of noodles are there here?

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We’ve got, I think at one point they’ve had, like, maybe 14 different kinds? We have wonton noodles, egg noodles, dried noodles, wonton wrappers, they’re all packaged here for you to grab super fresh and super cheap too. So sometimes you might find these in other shops but when you come straight to the source, it’s a little bit more of a better deal.

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They have siu mai wrappers, which are kind of like wonton wrappers and they have like a thin kind and a medium kind of thickness ones.

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That’s depending on what you’re making. So if you’re making siu mai, that’s the pork kind of meatballs with the wrappers on the outside, you want a thinner kind of wrapper versus let’s say, doing dumplings, right? Dumplings, you’ll need something a little bit thicker to house all of that, like yummy goodness that you’re going to make.

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So a lot of people might think you know, “there’s only Chinese dumplings.” What are some of the different kinds of dumplings?

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Some of the more surprising dumplings that people find are the Vietnamese ones where you’ve got like things steamed and banana leaves with tapioca and then they’re savory, but they can also be sweet too. So those ones are always a really big surprise. But there’s just a lot of different kinds besides the jiaozi kind that you find and…

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What’s jiaozi?

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Jiaozi is the type of dumpling that kind of looks like an ear, right? That gets crimped on the side. That’s your general like moon shaped, kind of like yoga, right? So jiaozi is more of the Chinese traditional dumpling the story behind it is about like, how in the winter time, people’s ears were getting so cold that they were like cracking. And so this doctor was like, “hey, I’m going to make something that will fix this” and he put in like different kinds of ingredients that would warm the body during the winter times to prevent the whole ear cracking business, so he called them jiaozi because of that, you know that ear shape and then it’s interesting because, you know, these, these foods, they don’t just stay contained in one country. There’s movement. So the dumpling that we know, gyoza right? The Japanese gyoza that’s coming from jiaozi so you can kind of hear it in the linguistics of the food too.

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Oh, jiaozi versus gyoza.

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Yeah!

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That was a tour of a local fortune cookie and noodle factory with KBCS’s Yuko Kodama and Dawn Nguyen of the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, otherwise known as the Wing. Speaking of food, The Wing offers a tour called the International Dumpling Crawl, now through March, to tour and try dumplings at various restaurants in Seattle’s Chinatown, International District.

Bruce Lee in Seattle

You may know Bruce Lee as a martial artist legend and action movie hero. The city of Seattle is where much of his story begins.

Bruce Lee spent his youth in Hong Kong and moved to Seattle at the age of eighteen. Ruby Chow, a family friend, and future King County Councilmember, gave him a place to stay and a job as a waiter at her restaurant.  After settling in, Lee studied philosophy at the University Washington and continued to develop and teach his martial art Jeet Kune Do.  Seattle is where he fell in love with his wife, Linda Emery, and Seattle is where he is buried with his son Brandon. It’s estimated that 10,000 people visit his Lakeview Cemetery grave site every year.

The new exhibit Do You Know Bruce? at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience provides us with an opportunity to look back at the movies, writings, artwork and philosophy of the man who revolutionized the modern martial arts, and whose movies are loved by millions. The Wing Luke Museum also offers the Bruce Lee’s Chinatown tour that takes you to his favorite haunts.

Listen to segments of interviews by KBCS Producer, Yuko Kodama with Bruce Lee’s friends, family and fans, and learn about the true story of Bruce Lee.

Episode 1: Shannon Lee on the cultural impact of her father Bruce Lee
Episode 2: Linda Lee recalls meeting her husband Bruce Lee
Episode 3: Martial Arts Expert and former Champion, Mike Stone on Bruce Lee’s individualism and interest in the arts
Episode 4: Martial artist and Attorney, Doug Palmer recounts memories from a trip with Bruce Lee to Hong Kong
Episode 5: Bruce Lee memorabilia collector, Perry Lee on Bruce Lee’s journey to Hollywood and beyond

(Special thanks to Asano Ogata for assistance with this project, Music by Gepel)

Bruce Lee jump

Under My Skin: Artists Explore Race in the 21st Century

Seattle is home to a special exhibit right now which invites visitors into a thoughtful conversation about race.  It’s at the Wing Luke Asian Museum, and it’s called Under My Skin: Artists Explore Race in the 21st Century.

In it, 26 artists share their creative visions of race.  They depict the brutal realities of racism in the past and present, the ways race shapes the immigrant experience, and the hope that can be found amidst the complex realities of race in daily life.  Under My Skin: Artists Explore Race in the 21st Century is on exhibit at the Wing Luke Asian Museum through mid-November.

Guests:

  • Sharon Maeda, former art teacher in the public schools and member of the Wing Luke Community Advisory Committee for this exhibit.
  • Jasmine Brown, featured artist in the exhibit
  • Carina DelRosario, featured artist in the exhibit

 

Listen to the interview here: KBCS_M+I_20130703_Wing Luke Exhibit

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