"I think most people would admit that real sex has its ugly elements. Even good sex is kind of gross, especially if you're not participating in it. It's a fundamentally awkward and transgressive act—one that also happens to be life-giving and life-affirming. Even the most vanilla sex involves crossing barriers of the body and swapping fluids that would be, in any other context, considered repulsive. Sex is also contaminating, both in a literal sense and a figurative one. It's something that opens out bodies up to the possibility of infection, illness, and death." (page 135-136)

I love love love this quote. So much about the human body and things people do is just gross. But at the end of the day many of these things are just "normal" not bad things. And honestly the 'grossness' level of something is often determined by other factors, like the patriarchy only thinking blood is gross if a woman is menstruating. So, with that, certain natural things in this world are just kind of gross when you think about them, like ingredients for perfume. But scent is a weird thing. I have heard so many women say they like the smell of their husbands/boyfriends sweat, and arguably that also just sounds gross when you think about it too much. Yet there are biological reasons why the scent smells good to them.

"While flowers grown from irradiated ancestors will not harm you, they might disappoint you. In creating roses that last long enough for shipment, we've created roses that smell like nothing. They may be easy to grow, and they may be easy to ship, but they are lacking in an essential element." (Page 40)

In a world were it could be argued that one of the most famous quotes, if not the most famous quote, about roses is "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" (Romeo and Juliet), I almost found it hilarious in its ridiculousness that the smell of a rose is not considered a foundational part of getting to experience the beauty of a rose. But as the author went on to describe their experience at a conference for floral companies and the way it was devoid of floral smells despite being full of flowers, it made me think of photos. The way that we often experience things through the lens of sharing it online, and thinking about what looks 'aesthetic.' And when we elevated the experience of sharing a photo of something, the actual in personal experience will start to matter less. So, of course the scent of a flower will not matter as much as how long a flower will look good for photo.

And I appreciate that the author goes into this idea directly when talking about the forever rose on page 42 "These roses are made for social media, a place where two-dimensional perfection matters far more than the simple pleasures of taste, touch, and smell." I also like the way they talk about the death of a plant and how that is its own experience of beauty and life, and at least with the scentless roses that is part of the process. As I think there is a beauty in the end of something that is so often lost, and these measures to alter things to last longer not only lose those elements of death and ending, but they tend to sacrifice the beauty of its living form as well. So changing the experience to something arguably lesser in ways, but will have a beauty that will last longer. And to me this desire to hold on to something so much that people are willing to change it and dampen its beauty just to own it a little longer, or share it for the visual pleasure of others, is just a new version of the same story, in which 'society' tries to conquer nature and claim it as theirs. Something that is very much a colonialist idea that remains prevalent today in so many ways.

"Even more so than the food, she said, Chinese restaurants are defined by the families that run them." - Chapter 11 Thunder Bay, spring 2016

"As we spoke I thought about how the further we travelled and the more restaurants we visited, the more I began to see how loosely the term Chinese restaurant might be applied. There were the restaurants that just happened to be run by Chinese, cafes, and steak houses, and western restaurants. [...] Then there were the Chop Suey restaurants, dozens of which we'd already visited. Some of them hadn't even been run by Chinese people, [...].

I remembered how Henry Yu at UBC had emphasized families and said to me that the term Chinese restaurant might be better defined by the labour, the family networks that ran them, rather than the cuisine." Chapter 15 Moncton, spring 2016.

One thing I loved so much about this book was the emphasis on the family systems around these restaurants, and showing the positive and negatives that come from them. And how they do discuss this family model of things and how it came about for Chinese immigrants yet is not just something associated with Chinese immigrants. It is also something immigrants from other countries utilize as well, and the actual food being made varies from their countries of origins. And how it is varying even more now with lots of new Chinese immigrants in big cities opening up non Chinese restaurants like sushi restaurants.

And with all that it reminded me of a lot of restaurants and cafes near me that fit this model but are not Chinese restaurants. Like when Hui talks about her parents Cafe, and her Dad's story of learning to make a fried egg sandwich, all I could think about is a local Indian cafe near me. One I specifically go to most often for a very ‘American’ style breakfast sandwich. It’s family owned and operated, with one table always filled with papers and their personal stuff much like other restaurants described in the book. And with a blended menu of classic North American basic cafe food and some East Indian dishes (mostly popular westernized ones, like samosas and butter chicken).

And I love the focus not just on the type of food, but the legacy of the people who run these places, the ways these restaurants have adapted their foods creatively for Canadian markets, how people have moved throughout Canada to create stability for their families. It’s a legacy of resilience and hope, and understanding of the sacrifices and care, that not only these parents have for their kids, but these families have for each other. As each story has their own background network of family and community support sprinkled in— people telling them of opportunities, helping watch kids, encouraging them to move, training them so they can start their own place, etc. Even when people are separated across the country there is this community support present in their stories.