Making its North American premiere at the Vancouver Asian Film Festival, Ketchup and Soya Sauce depicts a relevant, modern Canadian experience — the interactions of a diversity of cultures at the most intimate level.
In her latest film, Chinese Canadian filmmaker ZhiMin Hu explores contrasting eating habits, communication styles, and political views in mixed race couples.
Born from her personal experience in a mixed race marriage, Hu’s 63 minute documentary, Ketchup and Soya Sauce, documents the stories of five relationships between first-generation Chinese immigrants and Caucasian Canadians across all walks of life. The film captures the nuances of these mixed race relationships, from language barriers to perceptions of affection, and chronicles the progression of interracial relationships in Canada over the years.
But at the end of the day, Hu’s film is also about the simplicity of love, and how it transcends languages, borders, and cultures.
See also: Highlights from the 2020 Vancouver Asian Film Festival
From WeChat messages to feature documentary
Hu describes her relationship with her husband as being “very happy, passionate, and full of love” but admits that after they married, had kids, and started living together, she realized that there was a sea of differences between them.
Born in Guangzhou, China and having immigrated to Montreal, Canada in her adulthood, Hu describes how growing up in a different country from her American husband meant that they experienced completely different pop culture. She wouldn’t know the comedians he talked about, and humour often went over her head because she didn’t understand the words he was using.
Through a friend, Hu joined a WeChat group where she connected with other first generation Chinese mothers married to non-Chinese husbands in Canada. Through this group chat, the idea for Ketchup and Soya Sauce really took off.
“I realized we have so much in common,” said Hu. “Not only just that, I’m learning how they deal with their conflicts with their family.”
Before joining the WeChat group, Hu had already planned to make a film about the mixed race dating experience, specifically focusing on first generation immigrants who experience “the biggest crash of culture shock.” Hu says she is drawn to stories around psychology, social interaction, and the “inner worlds” of people and how they transform and change.
In 2016, after her epiphany with her WeChat community, Hu expanded her research, started reaching out to different interracial couples across Canada, and got the ball rolling with Ketchup and Soya Sauce.
The evolution of interracial love
Hu says she hopes to portray the history of mixed race relationships in Canada, as well as the diverse types of interracial relationships, in Ketchup and Soya Sauce.
The film opens with the story of Velma Demerson, a Canadian woman sent to jail for becoming pregnant with a Chinese man’s child and who subsequently had her citizenship revoked after marrying him. It closes out with a scene of the father of a French-Canadian woman tearing up at the sight of a sonogram of his daughter’s child with Xingyu, a Chinese man.
Featuring five couples, ranging from a gay couple in their 40’s in Quebec to 80-year old divorcee, Zhimei, who was in a relationship with a widowed pastor before he passed away, the film dives into the couples’ stories of their first dates, weddings, in-laws, and child rearing by combining interviews and B-roll with footage provided by the sources.
Across all of the couples, Hu delves into the idiosyncrasies of each relationship and explores each individual’s thoughts on the challenges of mixed race relationships and why they love their partner regardless.
In one scene, Beijing-born Ryan takes his French-Canadian boyfriend Gerald to a grocery store where they buy live fish, vegetables, and ingredients to make a Chinese soup, evoking insights into the importance of being open-minded about food.
In another scene, it is revealed that Zhimei was with her partner, Marcel, for 20 years before he passed away, but abstained from marriage because she wanted to keep a distance from his family and not “mix money”, highlighting how stereotypes existed around Chinese women being gold diggers.
Language is also a universal challenge among all the couples, whether it’s Mandarin-speaking Roxanne feeling shy about speaking the language in front of her Chinese husband’s parents, or multilingual couple Flavia and Luc-Eric speaking a mix of English, French, and Mandarin to their daughters.
Hu says language and cultural understanding is a big barrier to overcome for interracial couples. Without fluency in a language and knowledge about its pop culture, it is difficult to communicate humour or deeper topics without losing them through explanation.
“I don’t express myself as well as in Chinese,” said Hu. “Language really is the way you think; if you don’t have the vocabulary, how you think is very basic. Only when you’re able to express yourself in more complicated sentences [can you] exchange deeper thoughts and ideas.”
While these barriers still exist today, Hu notes that online dating has helped spur interracial dating. “When you go online, you communicate a lot more through deep, profound conversation,” said Hu. “I felt that mixed relationships got more popular after internet dating started.”
See also: How dating my boyfriend helped me embrace my Japanese heritage
Loving the person, not the culture
In the film, the distinction between loving the person and loving the culture is brought up by Gerald, a difference that Hu believes is important to acknowledge in interracal relationships.
Hu believes that the way someone is raised in their culture often influences their behavior, but isn’t completely indicative of their true personality.
“The way my culture brought me up as a woman, it taught me women are soft, not in your face,” said Hu. “It’s just the way we’re brought up. Am I someone very submissive? No, not at all. I don’t have this weak and submissive personality.”
Hu sees reducing individuals to their ethnic background, or only feeling attracted to them because of their background as problematic.
“For some people, it’s ‘love the culture and then love the person.’ But I think it’s important that you love that person, who the person is, not the culture behind that,” said Hu. “I think that’s super crucial because when you love the culture, you just like the labels, like ‘Oh, I love Chinese women, so any Chinese woman’ — but we’re all different.”
Hu hopes that one thing her audience can glean from Ketchup and Soya Sauce is how to learn from a partner, even if they’re from the same culture, and to accept them as they are and understand the fundamental reason why they love them.
“People might pick their relationships based on professions or families or culture, but those are all wrong reasons,” said Hu. “You have to have the fundamental thing down and figure out how you choose to love, and how you can be together.”
A Canadian story
By the end of Ketchup and Soya Sauce, Hu also hopes her audience learns that it’s “only when we enjoy the challenges of our differences are we able to embrace and celebrate diversity.”
When she came to Canada, Hu explained that the diversity of culture and people was what impressed her the most. For her, her film was inspired by what she saw in Canada, and how diversity was embodied through the interracial couples.
From 80 years ago with Demerson’s incarceration to today, where mixed race relationships are common, Hu says seeing the social evolution of interracial love in Canada is beautiful.
“Seeing the progression of Canadian society, the diversity, and it becoming more open, more accepting, showed me how beautiful our country is,” said Hu. “That’s the country that I love to live in.”
The 24th Annual Vancouver Asian Film Festival (VAFF) runs from October 31 – November 8, 2020. You can get tickets and watch Ketchup and Soya Sauce on-demand at https://festival.vaff.org/2020/.
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