the UGLY Chinese Canadian

Over the past few years, the UGLY Chinese Canadian has had the honour of meeting a number of people who were from the entertainment and identity making era of this community known as “Chinatown”.

Historians often speak of a “Golden Age” for Chinatown, and often identify several Golden eras.  But the one golden heyday that is often agreed by all, is the time period from the late 50’s to mid 60’s, when families were reunited, and the rise of the baby boom generation.

A number of these people are getting up there in age, and there are many fascinating stories  about the gritty and colourful days of old Chinatown.

The neon lit streets, the cabarets, the business of show business… the night life. The new found pride and identity, and the dangers.

Vancouver’s Chinatown today is a shell of what it used to be.

Many of today’s storefronts have security bars, padlocks and security fences instead of the colourful signage and lights of a past era. And worst, some of the shops sit empty with boarded up windows and doors.

Comparisons have been made between the chinatowns throughout North America, in particular, the chinatowns of San Francisco, New York and Boston. Our American chinatown communities are in a much healthier state than the community we have in Vancouver.

What went wrong?

The UGLY Chinese Canadian blog will initiate a series of blog postings exploring this thought.

Our first in this series will explore the historic context of chinatown as an exotic and mysterious place.  What better place to reflect on this distinction than by reviewing the films made on and made by the children of North America’s Chinese communities – through time and through place.

From last year’s seminal documentary “Hollywood Chinese“, from the PBS program, “American Masters“:

From the sexed-up Suzie Wong to the kung fu fighting Bruce Lee, THIRTEEN’s American Masters tackles issues of race and representation in Hollywood Chinese. Watch a preview:

The 90-minute film illuminates a century of Chinese American cinematic history, from rare silent classics such as Marion Wong’s The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916) to the contemporary critical and commercial success of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005). Timed for broadcast during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, American Masters: Hollywood Chinese premieres nationally Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS. The film features a treasure trove of clips, punctuated with personal accounts from the movie industry’s most accomplished Chinese and Chinese American talent.

“American Masters is proud to share with our viewers the extraordinary stories of pioneering Chinese and Chinese American artists in Hollywood,” says Susan Lacy, creator and executive producer of American Masters, a six-time winner of the Emmy Award for Outstanding Primetime Non-Fiction Series. “Their immeasurable contribution to American cinema continues today with a new wave of critically-acclaimed Asian films and Oscar-winning blockbusters. The film gives strong perspective to this little-known chapter of motion picture history.”

American feature films often portray the Chinese as exotic and devious characters – or simply the “other” – reflecting the entertainment industry’s inherent racial prejudices as well as its fascination with the Far East. Hollywood Chinese features candid interviews and back lot stories from artists in front of and behind the camera, including Joan Chen, James Hong, David Henry Hwang, Nancy Kwan, Ang Lee, Christopher Lee, Justin Lin, Luise Rainer, Amy Tan, Wayne Wang, and BD Wong.

The documentary chronicles the full gamut of Chinese representation in Hollywood. It brings to light the controversial yellowface casting of Luise Rainer in The Good Earth (1937) and the stereotyped caricatures played by Chinese American actors such as James Hong in Bloodsport 2 & 3 (1996 and 1996). It also addresses the eventual trend of Asian empowerment in films such as Flower Drum Song (1961) staring Nancy Kwan and the film-adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1993) directed by Wayne Wang.

Please visit the Hollywood Chinese website for more information on this interesting effort.

A few years back, a character by the name of Chen Weiping, played the race card in his attempts to cultivate a name for himself.

It was a shameful effort of race politics at its worst.

New Canadian Chen had created an ethnic based party on the platform of making Chinese an official language in Canada.

Sounds fairly racist to me.

He unsuccessfully ran under his party “National Alliance Party” in a few different elections – at the civic and federal levels.

A colleague bumped into Chen at one of the Asian malls in Richmond, B.C., the suburb-city next to Vancouver, they wanted to lecture Chen for his insecurity and lack of respect for the country who took him in as a new immigrant.

Over lunch, I asked my colleague if Chen has learned to speak English yet… and I was asked to play nice!

* * * * *

Here is the earlier posting we prepared on Chen Weiping:

don’t like Canada? Then… why don’t you leave.

One of the better pieces of bumph that gets distributed gratis over here, is a paper called the Asian Pacific Post.

We enjoy their style of writing – edgy, provocative and without borders.

Naturally, the Post focuses on Asian related news items, but thankfully, remembers it’s homebase as Canada, eh, – thus keeping readers updated with Asian-Canadian news pieces.

Although the Asian Pacific Post contains the usual assortment of sensationalism and celebrity star gazing …their Editorial commentary more than makes up for this fodder.

Chen dipshit Weiping

This week’s Editorial focused on none other than our current Dung Beetle Award contender, Chen Weiping, the full time “sorry I became Canadian” ai-yah wannabe Politician.

***
Here is the Post’s editorial:

Political Pandora’s box
Asian Pacific Post Fri, July 06 2007

Around the world today, conflicts in the planet’s most violent spots are rooted in race and ethnicity.

The discord is sown by narrow-minded politicians who are fuelled by support within race-based structures that capitalize on ethnic sensitivities and demands.

These groups generally focus on the divisive and discriminatory while ignoring the development of a cohesive society. The plans of Weiping Chen of Richmond, BC are noble in concept but pave the way for dangerous ethnic autonomies, which will only attract the alienated, prejudiced and mutinous as their leaders.

Chen, who hails from Beijing, is a relative newcomer to Canada. He has been here for eight years and works as a real estate agent. He is one of four founders of the newly-minted National Alliance Party which wants to “create better living and working conditions for immigrants and raising the profile of all Chinese living overseas.”

This group is being touted as the first party formed in Canada based on ethnicity – a volatile nadir on our political landscape.

At a press conference to unveil the party, Chen said in Mandarin that his party was not only about jobs for new immigrants, but will also address the lack of support that immigrants feel they are getting from government.

Another one of the founders of this political Pandora’s Box is Locan Wang, a business student at Simon Fraser University who came from China four years ago.
He feels the new party will give the young a platform to get engaged in the political process.

If these are the salient objectives of the ambiguous National Alliance Party, they can and should be achieved within the current political framework.

Most immigrants leave their country for Canada because of political instability that has led to economic disparity. From South Asia to China to Europe, many come here to flee legislated discrimination founded by ethnically charged political entities.

So why would anyone want to replicate a system that has caused chaos and misery elsewhere? Some say it is just a mechanism to advance the interests of the minority group within the establishment. You know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease thing.

Others quantify the move in more sinister projections, involving the national interests of foreign governments.

The key here for all Canadians to remember is ethnically-based political parties – never mind their genesis – rely only on voters’ ethnic loyalties. They tend to be judged by what they achieve for the ethnic group they represent. Hence, this kind of political animal is relatively immune from voter punishment for poor performance, lack of accountability or corruption.

Some of us are weary of the bickering between the Liberals, the Conservatives and the NDP. We are tired of their partisan battles. But we must understand that these conflicts are the essence of an open and vibrant democracy. Transpose these political kerfuffles into an arena littered with narrow race-defined political parties and it won’t be long before we have full fledged ethnic conflicts dominating Parliament Hill!

If Weiping Chen and his band of political princelings are serious about making a change for the betterment of new Canadians, they should develop a party based on ideology and policy rather than personality or ethnicity.

They should not encourage immigrants, particularly new ones, to stand apart from the majority of Canadians. Canada’s future depends on the commitments of all its citizens to a unified Canadian identity.

ASIAN PACIFIC POST

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