Student Projects Featured at Vancouver Museum
This Sunday, June 10, we had a small number of student projects presented at the Vancouver Museum. This event debuted a number of university student projects inspired by the series of important anniversaries in 2007 for Vancouver and Canada as a society connected to the Asia Pacific world. 2007 is the 100th Anniversary of the anti-Asian riots of 1907 that targeted Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian residents of Vancouver, but it also marks the 60th, 40th and 10th anniversary of other watershed moments of change that transformed our society. This diverse set of student projects reflected the rich, and often silenced voices of generations of Chinese and other Asian Canadians, speaking to us about the importance of trans-Pacific migrants in the making us who we are.
This is Vancouver from the 1907 Anti-Asian Riots to Hongcouver: A Century of Change through Students' Eyes.
Here are details of Student Projects as follows:
"The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots from the Perspective of the Victims"
Student: Woan-Jen Wang
Featured in this week's issue of the Georgia Straight, Wang's detective work in finding Chinese and Japanese language newspaper reports on the anti-Asian riots of 1907 allow us to hear again the voices of those who were targeted. Silenced by the dominance of English-language newspaper accounts that skewed reporting on the riots towards the perspectives of the anti-Asian rioters, the forgotten points of view of the Chinese and Japanese are recovered by Ms. Wang, translated into English, and organized into an accessible online database.
"1947 and the Chinese Canadian Fight for Citizenship"
Students: Stephanie Mui and Cameron Wong
Two students discover that the privileges and rights they enjoy as Canadian citizens came out of the sacrifice of a generation of Chinese Canadian veterans who courageously fought for the right to vote, earning full citizenship rights for Chinese in the Canada Citizenship Act of 1947 and beginning the dismantling of legal racist discrimination that had been built in the aftermath of 1907 riots.
"Why Do Indians Love Chinese Food?"
Students: Karrmen Crey and Amy Perreault
A pair of Aboriginal students who graduated from the First Nations Studies Program at UBC look at the long history of relations between Aboriginal peoples and the Chinese who lived in Vancouver and around British Columbia, asking why only fragmented memories of these interactions remain. Showing a clip from their film project, Crey and Perreault explore how food memories provide a rich source to rediscover these forgotten spaces of engagement, bringing to life in particular the community life of Chinese restaurants.
"The New Vancouver: The 1967 Immigration Act and the 1997 Hong Kong Handover"
A series of student projects focus on the new waves of Chinese migrants who have remade Vancouver, in particular the large migrations that followed the reform of immigration to a non-racist, points-based system in 1967, and those migrants from Hong Kong who came before the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Great Britain to the People's Republic
of China.
"Beyond Chinatown: Re-Making Vancouver"
Student: Denise Wong
Building on the work of previous student projects--such as the web-based project of Kaori Lau that explores the neighborhood around Victoria Drive and 41st Avenue.
Ms. Wong shows how Chinese Canadians have re-made every part of Vancouver. Extending well beyond Chinatown, the symbolic and historical heart of Chinese Canadian communities, Wong shows the rich diversity of new waves of migrants and the extensive effects they have had on every part of the city.
"New Voices Project"
Students: Johnson Chan, Viola Chan, Nancy Fong, Eugene Lin, Robert Parungao, Heather Joan Tam, Araya Vivorakij, and Zizian Zhong
The New Voices Project is a group of students whose collective goal is to explore the wide range of new migrants who self-identify as "Chinese," even as the sheer diversity of migrants belie any
definition of what it means to be "Chinese." The students will both discuss the literary volume that they are creating, as well as presenting their installation at the Vancouver Museum entitled "8 Chinese Canadians," described below.
"8 Chinese Canadians"
Installation
Artists: Eugene Lin, Heather Joan Tam, Araya Vivorakij
This installation is a component of New Voices Project, a student-initiated, non-profit community project primarily aimed to publish an anthology of literary and artistic works by self-identified Chinese Canadians of the recent diaspora in Lower Mainland British Columbia.
The participants of this installation are members of the New Voices Project. We are a group of university students eager to find new ways to represent ourselves in Canadian culture and society. "8 Chinese Canadians" is our collective self-portrait, represented through our personal belongings instead of pictorial images. The displayed items here are: things filled with personal meaning; things that reflect our intellectual interests; things that constitute our daily lives; and
things that give us simple pleasure.
This exhibit is ongoing until July 16, 2007.
Chineseness is an important part of who we are, given its social, cultural, and historical meanings. Frequently, traditional Chinese iconographies and motifs are used as representations of Chinese identity, despite their reference to cultural norms of the past and their failure to reflect the changing standards, concerns and values in today's society.
To situate ourselves and reflect on who we are in the present social context, we have chosen to display objects that reveal traces of their owners' cultural backgrounds, social positions, interpersonal relationships, interests and hobbies, and rights and privileges--aspects of our lives that shape our complex, shifting identities.
Lastly, in a society where our way of life is largely influenced by consumer culture, perhaps nothing can be more relevant in representing our presence, participation, and identities in today's culture than things themselves.
This event was sponsored by the Vancouver Museum, the Anniversaries07 Committee, the Initiative for Student Teaching and Research on Chinese Canadians (INSTRCC) at UBC, and the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of B.C.
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