The Cardboard Suitcase in Vancouver: Forty Years of Dried Shiitake

Terminal 1 in November 1968

My mother, Mei-ling, was twenty-two years old when she boarded an ancient propeller flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo, then across the Aleutian Islands to Vancouver. She had never seen snow, never heard English spoken in person, and possessed a total of seventy-four Canadian dollars sewn into the lining of her brassiere.

Her entire earthly life was packed into a brown pressed-cardboard suitcase with tin corner brackets, reinforced with yellow hemp clothesline rope because the latch had broken during turbulence over Alaska.

When customs officers opened the lid, they found four vacuum-sealed bags of dried shiitake mushrooms, two jars of pickled ginger, three silk dresses she had hand-stitched with her mother, and a bilingual pocket dictionary with water-stained pages.

The Chinatown Laundry

For thirty-four years, my parents operated a commercial laundry press on Pender Street in Vancouver’s Chinatown. The steam inside that room in July was suffocating. My mother worked ten-hour shifts standing on a rubber mat, pressing wool overcoats and starched tablecloths for downtown hotels.

Every evening, she boiled chicken bone broth infused with those dried mushrooms. The broth was dark, earthy, and fragrant. She would ladle the marrow and the shiitake caps into my bowl, keeping only the thin broth for herself. When I asked why she didn't eat the meat, she would smile and say: 'In Hong Kong, they say the soup carries all the nutrients; the meat is just wood.' It took me twenty years to understand she was lying so her son wouldn't go hungry.

The Cardboard Artifact

My mother died peacefully in 2019 at the age of seventy-three. When my sister and I cleared out her closet in East Vancouver, we found the brown cardboard suitcase on the top shelf, still smelling faintly of cedar and dried mushrooms.

Inside was my kindergarten diploma, my university degree, and every single Father’s Day and Mother’s Day card my sister and I had ever drawn with crayons. She hadn't preserved jewelry or gold coins; she had preserved the paper trail of our existence.

Immigrant parents do not write poetry with words; they write it with blistered feet and unsung sacrifices. On Solas Haven, the hemp-tied suitcase is unpacked into the stars. Thank you, Ma. We are fed, we are educated, and we remember.