My perception of the world is that racism exists everywhere. We have all seen bigotry and discrimination at a young age. As an infant, I did not live in the land of “utopia”, or the land they called “liberty”, but instead I was born a skinny, yellow faced, Chinese boy who became inspired to travel. No matter how hard I tried to fit into white society, it was impossible for my eyes to widen and turn blue, my skin go white, and my voice become heard…
I lived in a small village in the region of Zhongshan, a not so fortunate region located within the Southern Min Chinese. As I grew older, my family taught me the importance of welfare and how if I ever wanted children, money would allow them to prosper in areas that I never would be able to prosper in. I spent my days wandering the streets of Zhongshan, and saw ample amounts of posters encouraging people to voyage overseas for new, wealthy jobs. What my family was keeping from me was that my sister, a young, sheltered little girl who was only twenty at the time, was forced to marry a man living in a place called Vancouver. These things were called “Paper Familes.” This was when wives travelled to join husbands, sons followed uncles, and nephews followed distant relatives in order to migrate all over the world. Those who were not relatives by blood could be adopted into these family ties, so that an older man who was helpful was called “uncle.” Despite agreeing to marry an unknown man far flung beyond the horizons of Zhongshan, she didn’t like this idea. “Mom, I don’t even know who I am going to marry! Is he going to treat me like a wife or a maid, is he old, is he handsome?” These were the common worries that my sister had. I thought this was unfair for her, but my parents proved a good point. If she won’t take her chances, how will she know she will not find jubilance and success beyond what Zhongshan could offer her?
This inspired me to voyage across the seas and see for myself what was in store for me. At the time I thought Vancouver would be a city filled with prosperity, happiness, and tolerance, but the oblivion and cluelessness ahead of me did not forewarn me from the racism that happened while I arrived in a small, poor, and secluded town in Vancouver. The whites were coming. They were coming to get us.
Days, weeks, and even months went by, but the only thing I could see was the horizon and the reflection of the sky. If I didn’t know any better I would’ve thought I’d never make it over to where I wanted to go. “Finally, Da jia, everyone, we are here!” Written above on the sign said Chinatown, smudged in a dirty, disgusting, brown and mossy green colour. “Chinatown? Is this really the place everyone was talking about? It looks like an absolute garbage dump, used as grounds for human wastes and other unwanted things!" My vision proved my expectations wrong. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, the Vancouver I see in my mirror, is not the Vancouver I see in my mind.” I wish my perception could lie to me, and just show me a little bit of beauty in this town. Since I was disappointed over the amount of dirt and lack of cleanliness this town had, I strolled around the place. I met new people, and surprisingly everybody was exceptionally nice. The people in this town had personalities the dirt in the town did not reflect. These people were all innocent immigrants who all wanted a better life for their children, and the children who came after that, and the children who came after them. I heard stories about how only ninety people lived in Chinatown, and how significant merchants like Wong Soon King and Chow Tong, helped build Chinatown from bottom to up in Carrall and Dupont Street. The history of this place was fascinating! The Sam Kee building was especially noticed because of its architectural ingenuity, and the pioneering spirit of the Chinese Canadians.
It was a long day, so I slept in a cranky and slightly fractured mattress on the floor where all the cockroaches roamed. My mind was not at ease. The beds weren’t beds, the ground was dirt, and roof looked as if it was going to collapse. Tears could not stop streaming down my face. Despite how many people in this area were genuine and warm-hearted, I was alone. Migration meant being alone. That was what I feared of. For six months throughout the whole voyage, I was all alone. Without my parents, my sister, only random villagers from Long Do who didn’t even speak my dialect. The only thing I was able to do now was turn my face, breathe into the pillow, and cry myself to sleep. My options became more and more limited as days went by, and the people who didn’t like us crept up closer and closer.
The growing city soon needed us, the Chinese, to run businesses. Our transportation network soon moved Chinese goods throughout the province. The whites who employed us constantly would gossip about how gross we were, and how we didn’t belong in Vancouver. Their words would come out around the town, and they were harsh but they didn’t bother me. We were generally abused, yet everybody employed us. I came to realize that Chinese workers were the easiest to use. We were badly kicked and knocked about. “Garbage,” that’s how alienated I felt. Newspapers flew around and one of the headlines said, “Warning, Chinese presence in Vancouver lowering property values.” My guise was shed, my optimism plummeted. Voyaging over to Chinatown was a dumb idea after all. What the hell have we done to deserve to be recognized as not even a person? Even under the law, there were exclusion acts to prevent the Chinese from coming. We were their slaves, all the dirty work was done by us.
One dreadful day, the Asiatic Exclusion League came marching down the streets of Chinatown. Every door in the town was locked. The nervousness of hearing the sharp stomp of shoes engulfed in our ears. The anticipation of hearing the door break and snap back was scarring. We had nowhere to hide. Brutal white men came down our homes, beat me and dozens of other Chinese immigrants, smashed windows and wrecked stores. We were chased out of town, order was not restored for several days, and all harmony was lost.
Although the population grew immensely in Chinatown, it has not been the same since. More and more people left the town not because they had anywhere else to go, but the racism and attitude towards Chinese immigrants were egregiously horrendous. Gentrification were marks left on the buildings of Chinatown, and the Vancouver that I dreamed of was shattered by the Asiatic Exclusion League. I realized that the pretense of acceptance towards Chinese Canadians only became a catalyst to the marks of discrimination and racism. We didn’t belong here, only the white supremacists who marked their “Whitetown” territory did. Departure was my only option, but little did I realize that generations down from mine, I’d see kinship and my own blood back in the same city where I suffered in.