Inside Vancouver
Chinatown Syndrome
By Frances Bula published Jan 1, 2010
The survival of Vancouver's Chinatown is threatened by a polarized debate between the Old Guard and the Young Turks. But a new generation seeks a middle way
Saturday morning in Chinatown. Short women carry plastic bags with the green leaves of gai lan poking out. Frail old men shuffle along in runners and golfing caps. Clusters of confused-looking tourists circle aimlessly on the plaza in front of the Chinese Cultural Centre on East Pender.
Across the street, something different is going on. One building draws a stream of stylish visitors, some peering into nearby shop windows with a curiosity and sense of discovery you might see in the bazaars of Kabul. These adventure travellers have come to Chinatown for a star-studded party thrown by Bob Rennie, the man who epitomizes the new Vancouver: condo marketer, adviser to the powerful, exuberantly non-Toronto personality. Here, amid stores selling bamboo fans, posters of Bruce Lee, jade jewellery, and dried products of all descriptions, Rennie has dropped $20 million of his personal wealth. Fixing up the oldest building in Chinatown, he’s created an elegant home for his extensive modern-art collection and real-estate offices. Since it opened in late October, Rennie’s museum has hosted a series of see-my-art-and-building parties that have drawn people down to an area they may not have visited in decades. Some wonder if Rennie’s gallery might signal the shift to a long-promised reinvention of Chinatown.
It might, if Chinatown were any other Vancouver neighbourhood. But its land market functions unlike any other in the region because so much of the property is held by 120 family and clan associations. And the level of scrutiny is unmatched: everything that happens here is heard around the city and even the world, since every piece of family property is linked to people from Marpole to Hong Kong.
This Saturday, along with the art crowd and the developers and the media, several generations of the Yip family have been invited to share caramel hot chocolate on the roof of Rennie’s building. They include 92-year-old Henry Yip, who was born, went to school, and lived in the building until he moved to 12th and Oak in the 1960s; Sylvia Lee, Hoy Yip, and Grace Yip of the next generation; and youngsters Lionel Yip, a Crown prosecutor in New Westminster, and Graham Yip, an intern architect. All now live andwork outside Chinatown, but they share an umbilical link to their building and their old neighbourhood in a way that no other ethnic group in the city does.
“We’d have family dinners here, and that was the window of the kitchen,” says Lionel, pointing to an opening now filled with concrete. “It’s an amazing transformation.” He and others of his age tried a decade ago to figure out a way to do their own salvage job. “But it was just too expensive, too difficult.” Patriarch Henry, hard of hearing but still able to get the gist, adds: “I’m glad Bob bought it.”
James Cheng
Architect, designer of the Chinese Cultural Centre“Chinatown should be looking at trying to do something like Xin Tin De in Shanghai, one of the most successful redevelopment projects in the world. And they’ve got to mix residential in. Also, the Chinese Cultural Centre should be demolished. It never worked. The city could redevelop it and do affordable housing for seniors.”
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There is little opposition to increasing the number of residents or opening up the community to rest of Vancouver – the increasing number of businesses opened by non-Asians in the community attests to that.
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I think the new transformation going on in Chinatown should reflect the diversity of traditional cultures without any racial discrimination.
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I am unfortunately disappointed by the lack of research and over-simplification of the situation in Chinatown. It’s a shame that the thoughts and views of the media savvy are being peddled as the whole story, especially by such an experienced and respected journalist who should know better and dig deep enough to fairly capture the different facets of the truth.
There is general consensus in the Chinatown that development is welcome in community, but there is disagreement in the form. There is little opposition to increasing the number of residents or opening up the community to rest of Vancouver – the increasing number of businesses opened by non-Asians in the community attests to that. There is no desire in the community to lose the heritage and character that defines the area and its significance to the rest of Vancouver. The complexity of how all the different issues inter-relate is lost in this story, and that’s ultimately where the challenges really lie. The community deserves to be properly represented, and this article does little justice to many.
The framing of this piece of writing reflects the incomplete context with which the conclusions were conceived before the insufficient research never was able to clarify.
