Our menu has evolved from a traditional Chinese banquet and we try to alternate dishes each year, and include many vegetarian dishes.
Appetizer platter:
Veggie turnip cake (but similar to what my great-grandmother used to make, but minus the tiny shrimp and chinese sausage)
Veggie Spring rolls (we once tried once with haggis, but people complained there was too much haggis)
Spicy Jelly Fish (if Chinese people are eating haggis, we ask Scottish people to please try the jelly fish)
Deep Fried Haggis Wonton dumplings
(this has varied over the years, but usually had prawn stuffing with the haggis + secret ingredient of “Chinese water chestnuts”)
Vegetarian Soup
Hot & Sour or Wintermelon or Fish Maw soup
Traditional Haggis
(sorry no vegetarian alternative available)
but served simultaneously with…
Vegetable Lettuce Wrap
+ we ask people to add haggis to the lettuce wrap with hoisin plum sauce or not! (for vegetarians)
Fish dish
Represents good luck! Pineapple Sweet & Sour Fish Fillet or fish balls or ginger and sesame oil filet
Buddhist Feast with Deep fried Tofu
– definitely vegetarian traditional CNY dish – no meat alternative available
Beef dish
Gold coin beef, Manchurian tomato beef, Ginger beef or?
Long Life Noodles
One of my fav noodle dishes! – mushroom sauce for a vegetarian dish
Dessert
Mango pudding or sesame balls or red bean pudding?
And this is how we do it!!!
Monthly Archives: January 2026
Gung Haggis Fat Choy 2026 Program
Featured poet:
Bonnie Quan Symons has been a poet for 35+ years, and last year she joined us at the Robert Burns statue in Stanley Park to read a poem by Burns. She has been featured at LiterASIAN and Word Vancouver, and has written many chapbooks and been published in many organizations. She is active in the Vancouver poetry community and is a member of the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop, Pandora’s Collective and Writers International Network (WIN) Canada.
Featured welcome and author:
Larry Grant is a Musqueam Elder with Chinese heritage on his father’s side, who grew up both on the Musqueam Reserve and in Vancouver Chinatown. He gave our Indigenous welcome and land acknowledgment at the 2014 Gung Haggis Fat Choy Dinner. Larry has written a memoir with Scott Steedman titled “Reconciling: A Lifelong Struggle to Belong.”
Featured Filmmaker
Sarah Ling is a cultural and historical researcher, activist and curator. “All My Father’s Relations” is about Larry Grant and his 3 siblings travelling to China in 2013 to visit the ancestral village their father left in 1920 and meet relatives they never knew they had. The film won “Best Canadian Feature” at its premiere at the Vancouver Asian Film Festival.
Featured Bagpipers
Allan McMordie (a co-founder of the JP Fell Pipe Band, and often seen or heard in the news as a manager for North Shore Rescue), and Caroline Ng (who first joined the Gung Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat team, then the JP Fell Pipe Band)
Featured Musicians:
Gung Haggis Fat Choy House Band is a group of author friends who also play musical instruments.
Chris Wong – jazz writer, Journey to the Bandstand
Sean Gunn – poet
Ann Marie Fleming – graphic novelist/filmmaker, Window Horse, Can I Get a Witness
Leith Davis – SFU Prof of English and Director of Centre for Scottish Studies at SFU, Robert Burns and Transatlantic Culture
Jill Barber – children’s author/singer
Music is For Everyone, Metaphora, Chances, Holly Jolly Christmas Album
Black Bear Rebels Celtic Ceilidh Ensemble
+ unannounced surprises!
. . . including Toddish McWong’s presentation of photos from his 2009 visit to Scotland – featuring the Robert Burns Birthplace Cottage and Museum and his 2025 trip to my own ancestral area of Guandong province, to Kaiping, China.

