Author：Wing Chung Ng

Publisher：UBC Press

Publishing Year：1999

Call Number：F1089.5.V22N576

Introduction：Vancouver has one of the largest Chinese populations in North America. In The Chinese In Vancouver Wing Chung Ng captures the fascinating story of the city’s Chinese in their search for identity between 1945 and 1980.

Ng juxtaposes the cultural positions of different generations of Chinese immigrants and their Canadian-born descendants and unveils an ongoing struggle between them over the definition of being Chinese. It is an engrossing account of cultural identity in a context of migration and settlement, where the influence of the native land and the appeal of the host society continue to impinge on the consciousness of the ethnic Chinese.

In writing this book, Ng shuns the tendency among some Canadian scholars to portray Chinese people as hapless victims of racial prejudice and discrimination and Chinese identity as a matter of Western cultural hegemony. Through not denying the reality of Anglo-Canadian racism, which was especially virulent in British Columbia, his account gives Chinese people their own voice, showing how the Chinese had much to say and to disagree among themselves about the meaning of being Chinese.

In a final chapter Ng goes beyond the Canadian context of his study to engage in a useful comparative discussion of the experiences of ethnic Chinese in various Southeast Asian countries and in the United States, inviting readers to rethink the meaning of ‘Chineseness’ in the diaspora. He closes with reflections on Vancouver’s Chinese community since 1980.