The precarity of being Chinese in Canada
White Riot: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver.
There are some great advantages to being Chinese, such as being able to identify with a culture with a deep and rich past, full of artistic, literary, scientific and cultural accomplishments. There’s also the food, which is diverse and complex, like the people. But there are also some serious disadvantages to being Chinese where I live, in Canada, on the unceded ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, also known as Vancouver.
Everything felt different in Vancouver. Hong Kong was a vibrant, bustling city, full of people and energy. Vancouver felt smaller, less dense with wide open spaces, and quiet. The people were reserved and predominantly white, at least where we lived, and although many languages were spoken, English was dominant. But the Chinese people were also different, even if they were mostly Cantonese, for many spoke dialects from rural areas that were unintelligible to us city folk.
Because I wasn’t born here, I am very aware of my place in this society on this land, and I try to not take my privileges for granted. Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if my family had moved to Canada 100 years ago. But that would not have been possible, for in 1923, Canada passed the Chinese Immigration Act, also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred all Chinese people, with the exception of diplomats and scholars, from entering Canada.
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