Chinatown's iconic Wing Noodles is reborn in exhibition on its storied history
A Chinatown institution closed for good in November and is being reborn in an intimate space a few doors over. The exhibition Wing Noodles: The Heart of Chinatown, which runs from Saturday through March 7 at Chinatown House on de la Gauchetière St., recounts the storied history of the Lee Family’s presence in Montreal, complete with artifacts and anecdotes that show the company’s integral connection to the evolution of the neighbourhood.
“We’re really trying to anchor the story of Wing’s as a Montreal story and a Quebec story,” said Karen Cho, lead curator and researcher for the exhibition, who is also making a documentary about Wing Noodles. “It’s like cracking open a fortune cookie, these things are part of our collective memory. And it’s also the story of the Chinese on the east coast of Canada.”
Yin Geow Lee came to Canada in 1880 to work on the railroad, then in 1905 his son Hee Chong Lee became a partner in Wing Lung, an import-export business dealing in Chinese goods, allowing him to bring over his wife Fong Shee and daughter Loon Lee in 1915 while avoiding the Chinese head tax. At the time, as we learn in the exhibition, the two were among just a dozen Chinese women in Montreal. When Fong died in 1993 at the age of 103, she was the eldest resident of Chinatown.
The Second World War brought the import-export business to a halt, and Wing Noodles was born in 1946. It fast became the city’s No. 1 producer of Chinese food products, from noodles to soy sauce and their famous bilingual fortune cookies, supplying restaurants across the city and the east coast of Canada and the U.S.
“The story of Wings (is part of) the story of the shaping of Montreal,” Cho explained. “They’re giving us a recipe of how to build community. How do we take the best of what Wing Noodles was — this place where food, family and social responsibility came together — and project that onto the future of the Wings building and the Wings block?”
The exhibition features a hand-picked selection of the more than 8,000 artifacts gathered from Wing Noodles by museologist neighbour Jean-Philippe Riopelle (who owns the building in which Chinatown House is located) and stored at the Centre des mémoires Montréalaises.
Put on by the JIA Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to promoting Chinatown’s heritage, the exhibition contains mementoes, photos, rare video footage and a detailed timeline of the Lee family’s long-standing role in Montreal’s Chinese community. It ends in the present, with pressing questions about the future of the Wing Noodles building, which is up for sale.
Standing in the exhibition space Friday, brothers Garnet and Gilbert Lee were thrilled to see the story of their family business live on.
“It’s very emotional,” Garnet said. “For JIA to put on this presentation is mind-boggling. We didn’t know what we had. They took the time to piece everything together.”
JIA Foundation director Jessica Chen hopes to turn the exhibition space, which is also JIA’s headquarters, into “a real cultural hub” where the future of the building, block and neighbourhood are discussed freely. Visitors are encouraged participate in the exhibition by writing their vision for Wing Noodles’ former home and for Chinatown in 2050 on a postcard.
“It’s a privilege and kind of amazing that (Wing Noodles) — the oldest business in Chinatown — worked with this young organization, the JIA Foundation, to tell their story and are encouraging us and being part of writing the next chapter,” Chen said. “Even in their departure, they’re giving back to the community. It’s very touching.”
AT A GLANCE: Wing Noodles: The Heart of Chinatown runs from Saturday through March 7 at Chinatown House, 116 de la Gauchetière St. W. The exhibition is open Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, visit jiafoundationmtl.org