J’ai rencontré Zabrina Law pour Regarde les Chinois en août 2008 lorsqu’elle a visité Montréal avant de partir pour Londres, où elle alla completer une maîtrise. Gradué de l’Université McGill en développement international et en sociologie, Zabrina a également fait partie d’un collectif de femmes de couleur avec l’émission de radio “spitfiyah!” sur la radio étudiante CKUT. On a parlé de famille, vivre (et travailler) à l’étranger, de jouets sexuels (elle a travaillé pour Joy Toyz), d’identités multiples et de piété filiale.

I met with Zabrina Law for Regarde les Chinois back in August 2008 as she visited Montreal before going to London for a Masters degree. A McGill University graduate in international development and sociology, Zabrina also used to be part of a women of colour collective with a radio show called “spitfiyah!”, on the CKUT student radio. We talked about family, living (and working) abroad, sex toys (she worked for Joy Toyz), multiple identities and filial piety.

***

(picking up the microphone as we were already having our conversation/interview…)

Comme les Chinois: … did your parents raise you as a guy. I mean, I heard from (this common friend) that she was also in a family where their father was the eldest son (of the paternal grandparents).

Zabrina Law: (laughs) No, I don’t think my parents paid a lot of attention to the gender because they were both working parents. They rewarded me with toys of my choosing. So they didn’t go out of their way to “filter” these toys, but it was more like media influences on me and me having a desire for a Barbie… or a doll that I could change her diapers. You know, falling into these very gendered roles.

And of course, I had my grandmother at home who I spent the most time with as a child, so, of course I would emulate her and just kinda… idolize her and I always saw her cooking and cleaning, so I wanted to cook and clean as well. And I really wasn’t ever made aware of the gender polarities until young adult life.

And I went to an all-girls school for four years. So, for four years of my life, I didn’t even think about gender. I didn’t even think about power relations in terms of men and women. I just thought about, you know, how to make myself the best individual possible.

CLC: You were raised by your grandmother?

Pretty much, yeah. From the age of a newborn all the way up to grade school, I saw her the most out… You know, she was my (…) caregiver. Both my parents worked full-time and my mother to this day still works twelve hours a day.

CLC: They live in Toronto?

Yes.

CLC: … so you lived with them, but you just never saw them?

Umm. No, I wouldn’t say “never saw them”. I saw my dad much more than my mother did. Because he at some point became a consultant and worked out of home and, you know, he’d be the one driving me to school, take me home from school. He was the one who met my friends, he knew the names of my teachers, he was just much more hands-on than my mother was.

And, yeah, so, in my mind, the most influential male in my life was always so tolerant, always so giving. And that cliche goes that when you finally try to date a guy, you realize that he reminds you of your dad! (laughs)

CLC: (laughs) Have you found anybody then so far?

(laughs) No! Nobody lives up to my father, c’mon!

He’s the best!

Um, but yet, I think that the fact that they both worked, that they were both professionals, and they both attained higher degrees of education, and they both did their graduate degrees in Canada gave them a leg in terms of, you know, the first wave of immigrants in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s onwards.

And that they have Canadian-recognized… they have degrees from institutions in Canada and they speak English with not a detectable accent… if any accent at all, it’s the British accent, because that’s the schooling they received in Hong Kong was all in English, from the British Empire.

So, yeah, if anything, I got pressured to be an academic. (laughs) And not so much a guy!

CLC: Do you want to be an academic?

You know, that path started to look a lot brighter! Like, relative to a 9 to 5 job! (laughs) Setting my own hours, and reading all-day and having my summers off… No, the lifestyle sort of certainly has a leer to it… I don’t know yet!

‘Definitely not one of the math and science streams, which is again where the majority of my family is.

CLC: Oh really?

Yeah, mathmaticians, scientists. Yeah, everybody on my dad’s side of the family has a math or science degree and has gone on… like all the cousins of my generation are either, have a PhD and are a professor, or getting their masters, you know, or on their way.

CLC: And you did an arts degree at McGill.

Yeah. I did international development and sociology, so it’s very difficult to translate to Chinese, like I don’t even know how to say it in Cantonese words?! And one summer, I did an internship in Kenya, and I’m trying to explain to my family the work that I was doing…

CLC: (laughs) Like where Kenya is…

Yeah, where Kenya is, and like it’s not just Africa, and they all though have AIDS… and try to break down those stereotypes. And the language that I am not given the tools to do that in? Because I cannot read or write Chinese. So, a lot of it is colloquial talk.

But yeah, and I was doing something like participatory theatre art on female genital operations in Kenya. So, the language barrier…

CLC: Excision? That’s the name in English?

Yeah. Well, there are multiple names for that. It’s called female genital mutilation. But like, some activists say that “mutilation” is such a derogative word to describe the female body, so they say operation. But they just basically cut the female clitoris off so that she won’t enjoy sex anymore, so that won’t procreate other than with her husband.

Uh, yeah, so it was difficult to just tell my parents and my grandmother that this was what I was doing. Of course my grandma, all she was worried about was, “are you showering?! are you having enough to eat?! where do you eating there?! are they feeding you?!” (laughs)

CLC: (laughs)

So, yeah, that was fun summer. (laughs)

CLC: Anywhere else you went? In the world, travelling, living there.

Yeah, I spent another summer in Spain, where I learned Spanish. You know, this was a bit less… difficult. It was easier for the family to accept, because they were like, it’s a developed country, we know where you’re living, who you’re staying with, and you’re going to school there… You know, whereas in Kenya, I was in the slums everyday and by myself.

But yeah, I know, I think it took some while for my family to realize that I am not like them. I am not as… I am not as naturally studious! (laughs) You know, I am not going to sit in my room and read all day or even in high school, I was not that kind of person, very sociable. And I think that whatever I do, I need to feel very passionate about it? Or at least really like the people, and enjoy the work, and really see the fruits of my labour, before I really get headstrong about it.

CLC: Do you think that if your parents were in a different context, if they didn’t have to immigrate, they would be kind of like you? You know, do things with, like, passion…

… No. (laughs) No, I think that my parents are a result of their upbringing, in the context that they grew up. And my father, he was born right as Japanese invaded, so that’s always a good defining characteristic for him. Out of all his brothers and sisters, he was the oldest, out of all his brothers and sisters, he’s the one that endeared the most, in terms of, the family had no money. You know, poverty, and they were running away. They had sustained on rations, and had one set of clothes.

You know, the ongoing joke with me and my cousins is always the story of our parents, talking together, “you know, when we were kids, we only had *one* toy, and that toy, we shared between all four of us”.

CLC: (laughs) You lived in Hong Kong?

I went there every summer, as a kid, because my grandmother, who raised me, still had her son and daughter there…

CLC: So your aunt and uncle? (laughs)

Yeah, my aunt and uncle are still there, we go back. All my cousins are from there. They’ve actually emigrated in the 90s, after the Hong Kong handover, so there were times when I felt really at home in Hong Kong, and that I belonged, because I had always lived there in the summer, I went to the 街市 (kai si / road market), and I’d bargain, I would see my grandmother tell people to kill themselves at night because she didn’t get the price that she wanted… It’s a really useful skill to be streetwise in bargaining. (laughs)

CLC: What did you like the most about Hong Kong?

The food. (laughs) It’s always the food.

CLC: Where would you hangout?

When I was younger, I was just with my family. Now, I don’t really have friends there. I mean, I’d see Tiffany… I think like I mentioned this at dim sum (earlier) too, I feel like I constantly have to choose between being a local and being an expat there. Because once locals find that I speak English without an accent, they all then suddenly treat me differently.

CLC: Even though you speak very good Chinese. Your Chinese is without accent.

Yeah, my Cantonese is without accent as well, but as soon as I switch or as soon as they hear me speak English, it’s just a different treatment.

And even TIffany and I, Chinese Canadians, look Chinese – she even has like paler skin than I do. I mean, I’m pretty dark. But we were in the MTR speaking English, and we get stared at by everybody, not just the Chinese locals, but the Whites also. You know, they were just so surprised to see Chinese people speaking perfect English in Hong Kong.

CLC: That’s in Hong Kong. You’re not even talking about China. We’re talking about Hong Kong, where people learn English…

Exactly, but just that I feel that the labels are really static and very concrete, almost? I thought that it was very difficult to have multiple identities there. The same identities that I would manage in Canada: very different there.

CLC: So, did you have a show on CKUT?

Yeah!

CLC: Tell me about it… I don’t actually know the show, but I just know that you have a show! (laughs)

The show’s called “spitfiyah!”, it’s a women of colour collective. It’s actually been going on for close to a decade now.

CLC: It’s still going on, right?

It’s still going on. It’s a collective, so it’s usually about 4 to 6 women of colour, giving culture critique to the mainstream media. So, we would do reporting on things like events going on in public sphere that doesn’t receive the kind of perspective that we have. It’s very alternative and progressive. One of my favourite shows was like Asian history month, when we just reviewed a bunch of Asian American magazines. Of course, they have major publications in the Bay area in the States, and you know, very limited distribution up here. You know, that kind of journalism that’s… I don’t want to use the word “reactionary”, because that sounds very almost like violent…

CLC: Reactionary, in the sense that they are reacting to how the mainstream population is perceiving the Asian American culture, Asian Americans?

Totally! Absolutely! And what’s cool about the collective is that we would always meet up and (deviate off?), so we would just be working on stories that we found interesting. So, I covered stories from the shooting in the college.

CLC: Virginia Tech.

Yeah, Virginia Tech. Um, to the travelling play Misoriented that came here. It was a play written by a Filipino Canadian and it’s just kinda break down stereotypes of Filipino women in Canada. So, from the nurse, like the Overseas nanny to the Fresh Off the Boat person, you know, glamorizes popular culture like Beyoncé and rap music and these top 40 bands that are just cheesy to locals here? And then the Filipino woman who wants to… dyes her hair blond and wants to be hyper-assimilated, you know.

So we just offer insides to things like that and just try to push the envelope and make people think about an alternative way in trying to decipher and these images. Images are so powerful. They happen in, you know, two seconds, flat, less than that. And the split judgements that we innately make have been informed all throughout childhood until now from the mainstream media images, you know with race, gender and class. We just try to twist, put on its head, and try to start from the beginning.

It’s a lot of sociology talk! (laughs) Overwhelmingly, a lot of the girls and women involved in the show are sociologists!

CLC: And do you want to do more media after this.

Yeah! We never close the door on this. Absolutely! It’s just hard to carve a role in such a, you know, sphere that has so much movement and is constantly changing.

CLC: I’m going to steer the interview like that (180 degrees turn)… You do sex toys presentations?

Yeah! (laughs) Everything you ask me, I’m like so enthusiastic. But it’s good.

CLC: How did you get involved with that? Well, actually I don’t need to ask you, it’s on the radio show (on CBC Radio One’s Mashup in 2008, on the July 8 & 10 episode “Let’s talk about sex”) right!

(laughs) Yeah, most of Canada might know!

One of my friends had a sex toy party. I went, and I thought it was a great idea and then I hosted one. Then the owner actually came and did my party. And the owner is a Chinese Canadian, and I was very pleased and surprised to see that an ethnic minority could own such a business and be one her own two feet and be also spreading such good news and good word about sexuality.

What’s unique about the company that I worked for, Joy Toyz, is that one of their main mandates is also to be inclusive of the LGBT community and whenever you speak, as part of your training, you never assume that they’re heterosexual couples. You always speak to it as your “partner”, not girlfriend or boyfriend, um, and she also goes through, and she gives a very feminist take on vibrators.

When I do a presentation, I go through the history of the vibrator, so I go back to the twenties. I’ve pictures of antique vibrators, ones that are plug-ins, ones that are, you know, *massive*, the size of like an arm! And are cranks! And going through the history of how male doctors actually invented them to cure hysteria for women.

CLC: Oh yeah? What/why’s that?

Hysteria… this is really fu**** up.

CLC: Oh yeah, is this old, like in the 19th century?

Yeah, around there… And of course, you know, the gendered industries are (that) men are doctors, and women go and see them. And hysteria is — an actual diagnosis in the DSM that was generally diagnosed to women who were moody, emotional, sad — you know, all these very hormonal characteristics.

And they were generally diagnosed to women who had been widowed from the war, who weren’t dating, who had no children. So basically, women who weren’t getting laid. Were diagnosed with “hysteria”, that was really sexual frustration.

So doctors started mainly by manually massaging them, so manual stimulation. So these women would basically go to the doctor.

CLC: And the doctor would… (finger gesture)

Yeah! Do their business. They would basically jack them off and get paid for it! Imagine that job! (laughs)

CLC: Yeah!

And eventually, the doctors were like, wow, too many women are coming…

CLC: … it’s getting tiresome. (laughs)

It’s getting my hand cramps, so let’s create toys for this, machines. And then fast-forward a few decades and now we have companies like Joy Toyz that are completely telling that story and also filtering through the entire industry of sex toys, which is huge, multimillion dollars. It’s just very under wraps because most of them… the biggest market of it obviously is, you know, in Western democratic… in liberal democracies, like in Europe and here.

But in America, there’s huge Bible belts, and it’s not advertised. Even a lot of the vibrators, say, they state that this is not intended for internal use, even though it can be safely used as such. They’re usually called “massagers”, for your temples, joints…

CLC: …but they happen to be shaped like (makes phallic shape)… (laughs)

Exactly, so we get creative!

CLC: Yeah, I dunno, I’ve been reading stuff about sex shops in China… Do you know anything about sex toys, shops in China? Or even in Hong Kong, where you lived? Were you already working for (Joy Toyz) when you were in Hong Kong?

Yeah. I was. But I was living with my grandfather. So it was almost like I stepped into a different personality! I wasn’t walking around with my suitcase full of dildos in Hong Kong. (laughs) But, I didn’t happen to see any of that. I wish I did though. What did you see?

CLC: No, I didn’t see anything! (I actually did, for instance in Beijing) I just read the reports and saw sex shops… Apparently, sex shops don’t really advertise themselves in China. You have to look for it. It’s like (called) “Adult” something-something (“health care”)…

Woaw! Do you understand mandarin? or Cantonese. Can you read or write?

CLC: Um, yeah a little bit. I have two levels of (university) mandarin. Approximately the same colloquial Cantonese, but I didn’t need to speak Cantonese at home.

So if you wanted to find these adult stores, could you in China, if they were written in Chinese?

CLC: Yeah, if somebody wrote it down for me! (laughs) Would you like to learn Chinese?

Yeah. I did one level of Chinese, Mandarin, as well.

CLC: At McGill?

Yeah, at McGill. I went to Chinese school all throughout my childhood on Saturdays. The dreaded Chinese Canadian activity! (laughs) I feel like a band of Chinese Canadians, at least in this generation anyways, often have that one thing in common where parents (sent us) to the Chinese school. And we didn’t retain anything. (laughs)

CLC: (laughs) Yeah, yeah, that’s what they usually say.

Yeah, it was just kind of like… I mean, it’s interesting how etymology and how the characters get embedded in my mind. Because when I first learned, I learned Traditional characters. But of course now, in university, we learn the Simplified. So, it’s almost like a mishmash of both…

CLC: It helps you understand the etymology of the language as well.

It does. Only that, my only beef with the Chinese program at McGill is that they didn’t teach you the brush strokes. So it was kind of like you could do, make the character, it doesn’t matter how you write it. But that’s really important, if you want to try to use the Chinese-English dictionary. The brush strokes make a big difference. And it will help you in the end to learn more characters.

So yeah. I always feel like it is one of those things that I want to do in the distance, like move to China and then live there.

CLC: Yeah, and would you do that?

I would. But that’s always kind of like, when do I have time to do that now?

CLC: You have four years (in England). Three years or four years?

I’ve one year in England.

CLC: What are you doing in England?

I’m doing a masters in globalization and criminology. (Editor’s note: she’s done by now, I guess!)

CLC: Criminology?

Yeah… So, I mean, it’s hard to find time to fit in, to satisfy the Chinese desires of my identity, because… I mean, this was always what I was fighting with too with myself: the struggle of “I am Chinese Canadian and I am a visible minority and I am a female”… And you read all these kind of… You’re just so aware of this discriminatory policies, discrimination and how people might treat me differently, because of the physical characteristics that I can’t change. This is just who I am.

And so, I spent a lot of time thinking about it and studying and writing about things like equality policy, and how to “level the playing field”. Things like affirmative action policies and if they’ll really work and really help to make… break down some of the systemic barriers against women of colour, like. But at the same time, I’m thinking, you know what, screw all that. If it’s really going to be equal, it shouldn’t matter… If it’s really a meritocracy, it shouldn’t matter what you look it.

If anything, if you work hard enough, and you attain the opportunities, then you’ll make it no matter what. So it’s kinda like… it’s how I think of, you know, speaking Chinese, learning it more, not so much that it is this kind of emotional connection for me and my home country, but it’s more like how it will make me a better person in this day and age — how will this make me a better representative, what have you for the Chinese community, how will that make me, you know, get my parents more proud of me and my grandparents…

Like, geez, listen, I can’t believe I just said that! This is just filial piety coming out of my mouth! (laughs) But all these things are conflating into one person’s identity that we have to think about and especially when you are transcontinental, when you are thinking about existing in a context, in the East as well as one in the West. You know, it becomes… almost as… you have to trust your gut instincts and forget all about the systemic things and stop being angry! (laughs) People are angry a lot in this scene!

CLC: I’m going to wrap this up… so my last question is: who are you?

Oh Cedric, that’s such a hard one! (laughs)

CLC: That’s why I ask it!

Uhm, I’m Zabrina Law! … and they should have a dictionary entry for that, and they can tell you! (laughs)

CLC: Or a Wikipedia (entry)!

Yeah, Wikipedia entry, there you go. No, I think I’m multiple things in different scenarios and I think that this is the beauty of growing up in this context, that you really have the power to choose. And no matter… I mean, generational and Chinese… Just let me think… I’m thinking as a theorist, I’m thinking academia… (laughs)

This guy Herbert Gans keeps on coming in my mind because he’s influenced my life greatly. He’s a dead white guy (laughs) that wrote about sociology a long time ago. He coined the term “symbolic ethnicity” and I think that’s exactly what has happened to me as a first-generation Chinese Canadian. He says that with each descending generation, ethnicity comes more and more symbolic, such that the person and individual has the power and the perogative and the free will to choose their ethnicity, to choose what cultural, ritualistic activities they choose to participate in.

So I speak Cantonese at home and I speak Cantonese fluently. And I use chopsticks. I know all my favourite Chinese dishes, so I don’t need to learn how to read Chinese at the restaurant, because I already know them all!

But my kids might not have all that. My kids may only just celebrate Chinese New Year or the Lunar New Year, and that might be their only connectivity to the culture. But for me, because I grew up with my grandmother, I lived it and it’s only now in my adulthood where I’m beginning to eke out my own identity away from my family that I’m realizing, geez, I’m not as attached to these Chinese rituals as I was. I did them to be filial.

CLC: Well thank you Zabrina!

(laughs) Thanks!

En mai dernier, nous avons reçu Cheuk Kwan à la chronique Regarde les Chinois. Ingénieur de profession, Cheuk Kwan est mieux connu aujourd’hui pour sa série de films Chinese Restaurants traitant de la dispora chinoise à travers le monde vue à partir du restaurant familial. Se décrivant comme internationaliste, M. Kwan a grandi à Singapour avant d’arriver au Canada comme étudiant en 1969. En 1979, il a participé à la réaction à la controverse des Campus Giveaways du W-FIVE. Après un passage à Montréal, il a vécu successivement en Arabie Saoudite, au Japon et à Hong Kong, avant de revenir au Canada. Je l’ai rencontré à la sortie de la projection de son film au festival Accès Asie et on a parlé de ses films, les diasporas, de « chinoisitude ».

Last May, we welcomed Cheuk Kwan to our Regarde les Chinois column. Engineer by trade, Cheuk Kwan is better known today for his film series Chinese Restaurants on the Chinese diaspora seen through the family-owned restaurant. A self-described internationalist, Mr. Kwan grew up in Singapore before arriving to Canada in 1969 as a student. In 1979, he participated in the reaction to the W-FIVE Campus Giveaways controversy. After a stint in Montreal, he lived successively in Saudi Arabia, Japan and Hong Kong. I sat down with him after the screening of his film at the Accès Asie festival and we talked about his films, diasporas and “Chineseness”.

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Comme les Chinois: Hi, what’s your name?

Cheuk Kwan: My name’s Cheuk Kwan and I’m the filmmaker behind the Chinese Restaurants series where I went to thirteen countries and made fifteen stories about the Chinese diaspora via the lens of a Chinese restaurant owner in each place.

CLC: So I’ve been reading that you really like fish with scallions, green onions…

That’s my favourite Cantonese dish. (laughs) Just because it’s very rare that you get a nice fresh… swimming fish, anywhere. Everytime you get that, it’s very treasured and the best way to bring out that taste, sweet taste of the fish, is just a very simple steaming with soy sauce and ginger and scallion. To me, it’s the most true tasting that you can do with a fish. Has to be fresh of course.

CLC: Pretty hard in Montreal to get fresh fish…

Well, in Montreal you can go to St-Laurent, there’s a fish store.

CLC: Do you know Montreal pretty well?

I used to live here. I lived here between 1980 and 1982. That’s how I met Andrew (Editor’s note: Andrew Lui, now a Montreal-based artist, who was sitting near us during the interview). I lived on Nun’s Island and I working for an engineering firm with a headquarters here. So I was transferred to Montreal from Toronto.

CLC: Originally… I mean, your career is as an information technology specialist… You were trained as an engineer?

I graduated with an engineering degree and then I got into – at time it was computers, information, IT was very popular. So it was very natural for me to become on that side of the industry. So, I spent twenty years until I “retired” and then make this film.

CLC: So, you no longer work in IT…

No, I’m getting too old (laughs). You know what… the thing is that people… the last years I was working, I was basically a manager and the vice-president. So I was supervising 25-year-olds and I know that I cannot compete in the new languages, new technologies. The unique thing that I have was experience at managing, and one day I got tired of that, because of bureaucracy, the whole industry. I had a very bad client from the government and I said, what the hell, I’m going to do something else. That’s when I left engineering.

CLC: So you got the idea to do films, or series of films.

Yup. I always had that idea of… making Chinese Restaurants, for twenty-five years before I started. So this was back in the late 70s. I was… in ’76, I was in Istanbul and I went to this Chinese restaurant. It was the only Chinese restaurant in Istanbul.

CLC: Is that the one we saw in one of your films?

Yes, that’s what inspired me. And I had dinner there and the guidebook had said that the owner had walked from China. That was the Let’s Go Europe guidebook. And it says it’s the only Chinese restaurant in Turkey and the owner had walked from China.

So this is like an urban legend. And I said, well, that’s fantastic! And so, I’ve always kept that in mind.

And my second inspiration came when I was in… having a lunch in a restaurant called “Hong Kong restaurant”, in Mombassa, in Kenya. And then after that I went across the street to the Museum of Lost Treasures. It’s actually exhibition of Ming Dynasty vases recovered from Chinese boats, junks, off the east coast of Africa, during the Ming Dynasty, sunken during the Ming Dynasty. So, I said, woaw, Chinese have been everywhere.

CLC: Is that during the Zheng He era?

Probably after the Zheng He era. That is as you know, I was all inspired, as a kid growing up in Southeast Asia, I hear about the escapades, the adventures of Zheng He! So, I was like, it was in my background.

So all these three kind of components kind of got together and gelled together. It was in 1982 that I went to Kenya. So at that time, I started thinking, someday you know, I’m going to make a story of all these Chinese that went around.

Plus, growing up in Singapore, I was aware of the many Chinese in Southeast Asia. So, my father traded with Chinese in Mauritius, you know, Madagascar. So, I knew all about that kind of Overseas Chinese.

CLC: So, you grew up in Singapore?

I grew up in Singapore.

CLC: You don’t have that much of an accent…

No, but I can put on an accent if you want me to! (laughs)

Then, I went back to Hong Kong – went to Japan for my high school. And that’s where I learned my Japanese. Then, I came to the US for university and emigrated to Canada later on.

CLC: You worked in Canada…

Worked in Canada, mostly.

CLC: Um, you also lived in Saudi Arabia?

I did. I lived in Montreal for two years, between ’80 and ’82, working for an engineering firm, headquartered in Montreal. So, I was transferred in Montreal. And in ’82, I got a job in Saudi Arabia for an American company, an American-French company building a university in Saudi Arabia. So, at that time I thought that I needed adventure, so I thought that I had to go to Saudi Arabia to work. I lasted for about one year and then I got hired by a Japanese company to go back to Japan to work, because I speak Japanese.

So, I lived there for about two years and then I went back to Hong Kong, because I’ve never lived Hong Kong as an adult. So I really wanted to… go back to my roots.

My parents were getting older…

CLC: Your parents were in Hong Kong?

Well, they were just moving back to Hong Kong. So, my father was retiring. So, I stayed with them for two years in Japan and then I moved to Hong Kong with them. And I started my own IT business in Hong Kong, for four years.

CLC: Well, it was interesting, when I asked Saudi Arabia, because it’s one of the more… exotic places you’ve lived in, for an Asian-looking, Chinese person… Was there something that was something remarkable about your experience in Saudi Arabia?

No, not really, because I lived an essentially expatriate existence. In those days, Saudi Arabia was a very closed society. Foreigners couldn’t, you know… We lived in camps, construction camps. Bunch of French, Americans, Brits, you know, foreigners living together. We were very closed, very separated, segregated.

So, the only life that I had with Saudis is maybe a few trips we took on our jeep through the desert. You know, during our vacation, we would go travelling around to Yemen, on the Arabian peninsula, on jeep. So, that was the only kind of contact we have. Other than on weekends, when we go to the market.

But, at that time, Saudi was roughly modernizing. So what you have was kind of current Dubai, where you have the whole shopping centres, very Western. So we didn’t really have contact with the Bedouin tribes.

CLC: I was told that you were an activist in the 70s. I heard that you were involved in that story with W-FIVE reporting about Chinese… Can you tell me more about it?

Before that, I started an Asian-Canadian magazine named Asianadian, and with a couple of friends. That was back in ’78, April Fool’s Day, that was our founding date. (laughs) We published for about six years.

It was a very avant-garde, very forward-looking magazine about culture, assimilation and political awareness among Asian-Canadians. And we did have a kind of pan-Asian mentality, promoting the united front of our Japanese-Canadians, Chinese-Canadians, Vietnamese-Canadians and so forth, and Filipino-Canadians for example.

So, it was promoting the awareness of Asians. This was almost like the forerunner of Asian Heritage Month, and it was really (?) successful, and not financially of course, uh, it was a struggle. But the influence throughout the years, I’ve heard, has been tremendous. I still run into people who say, ohh, “I used to read your magazine when I was growing up”, or “(it) inspired me a lot”.

Recently, somebody wrote a book about this phenomenon, the whole… the name of that book was Voices Rising by Xiaoping FAN (Editor’s note: but we found that the book had Xiaoping LI listed as its author) and she’s a professor now at Okanagan College. But, from Vancouver, she wrote this book, talks about the whole growing Asian-Canadian awareness and sensitivity in the 70s and 80s. And our magazine had a big part in the documented history of that.

*** Pausing for Cheuk to say goodbye to some friends who were at the cafe-terrasse with us.

CLC: So we were just saying that this was a founding experience for you…

Yes, it was a first time that I was… since coming here to Canada, first time that I was really in touch with my community.

CLC: Is it because that when you are actually in Asia that you don’t realize that you’re part of a…

Yes, that’s right… Because you are now a minority in this land. And because I’ve lived in Japan, I’ve had a kind of “pan-Asian sensibility”, because I thought that, you know, old typical Chinese are very racist in many ways. They’re “oh the Japanese are a bunch of uh people”, right? So, I want to overcome that as well. Plus, the entire Asian have to overcome the whole White, the minority in a white society, mainstream society.

So, that was a struggle in the 80s. And then of course in ’79 came W-FIVE. It was a CTV W-FIVE news magazine, had a segment called “campus giveaway”, and the basic premise was that foreigners, foreign students, were taking over the universities of Canada. Uh, (that) when you go to U of T, all you hear are Chinese speaks, students in engineering, in pharmacy. And as a result (according to the report), some students couldn’t get in. So, they interview some people in St. Catharines, Ontario, who said “ohhh, I got 79% couldn’t get in to U of T pharmacy!” and her father was a pharmacist: “ohhh, my daughter couldn’t get in because all these foreigners are taking over our universities”.

But of course you know that in pharmacy, you have to be a resident, you have to be an (inland?) immigrant to enroll in pharmacy school.

So what it is saying is that “here’s a yellow face” and “here’s a foreigner”. So, they are equating Orientals, or Asians, with foreigners. So, we got together and as a group we generated a nationwide protest movement. Then, in six months, we got an apology from CTV for racist reporting and we wanted to dispel the myth that Asians don’t belong in Canada. That we are also Canadians.

And as a result, it led to the founding of the Chinese Canadian National Council.

CLC: The CCNC.

The CCNC… And I think that your neighbourhood society is one of the members.

CLC: Oh, CFS (the Chinese Family Service of Greater Montreal), yes, or used to be.

That’s how I came about it.

CLC: And um, after that you went on with your career, had that on the backseat.

Um, I’m fairly… I’ve always been involved with that. But from ’82, I’m in Saudi (Arabia), then Japan, then Hong Kong. So, I was away from Canada until ’89. When I came back, and I got involved with the Tian’anmen Square, the whole human rights in China. So, that’s where I am today.

CLC: So why restaurants? Uh… why wouldn’t it be laundry houses?

Restaurants are ubiquitous, just because anywhere you go, you will find Chinese restaurants. And it’s also the easiest way for a Chinese immigrant to get his or her hand wet in a new place. You can run a restaurant without speaking the language. You can get your kids to go on the front to speak English or French or Spanish to your customers. You can hide behind the counter and nobody will know and you will be ok. And because it’s a good market – you know, people like Chinese food – so you guarantee some business.

CLC: Or create your own market (or business). I was reading one of the conversations that you had…

Right, right. If you are smart, you create a demand for your food, which is… what marketing is all about: creating a demand for your products. So, you know, what you do is that you do like the Peru guy: an ambassador, introducing Chinese food to the society and thereby increasing your own customers.

So, it’s a two-way street and it’s always very successful. Now, you know, if you are a laundry, you are a very old-fashioned industry that nobody does. Of course you can have other professions, like running a corner store. But that’s been overtaken by Koreans! (laughs)

CLC: A lot of new immigrants are opening convenience stores.

Yup, like a dépanneur. But also, I thought about the… I always joke about that I could’ve used accountants or dentists, but it would be so boring that you wouldn’t want to see! (laughs)

But the main thing about having a restaurant is because that when I filmed this, I had TV in mind. You know, I thought that the biggest thing was broadcasting in TV. And you had to make it interesting. And Chinese food is something exotic, something “Food Channel”, you know… But I incorporate History Channel, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, so it’s got a little geography, a bit of history, a bit of anthropology, sociology. So, everything is sort of thrown in there…

CLC: Did you manage to sell it to these… to TV channels?

Yeah, I have more success in Asia. I sold it to a Asia-wide network (ChannelNews Asia). I sold it to a satellite network in the US. Great results, very little money, but great results. I recently sold it to Channel M in Vancouver, it’s a multicultural channel. And then I sold it to Rogers just a half-year ago.

CLC: That one I heard… (it’s) Omni?

Omni. Rogers owns Omni, owns CityTV now. And so it’s also got a Rogers cable network, Channel 10 or something in Toronto. But they have a few outlets and they’re buying Channel M that I was telling about, in Vancouver.

So, um, I’ve also been on Telus, video on demand, in Quebec, in French and English version.

CLC: Radio, did you say radio?

…video on demand.

CLC: Oh, video on demand. Oh, I see, on the web. So, you asked this question to somebody. You asked him where you would go for retirement. I think it’s Mr. …

Chiang. Yep.

CLC: So, where would you go for retirement? (laughs)

…I don’t know! I would be bored if I go to a sun and sand. I mean, everybody would like to go to Mauritius or Hawaii (laughs).

If I had to find a place to go, I would go to France or Italy.

CLC: Why?

Because I really love the culture and the food there. And I think it’s very perfect to have a… you know, live in a village with a very cheap living standard. I don’t like Spain as much. Lots of people go to Spain because of weather and it’s cheap. But then my wife tells me that I would never do that, because I love big cities. You know, I have to have films, I have to have… culture.

CLC: Big cities? Would you go back to China – or to China?

No, no. Not at all. I don’t have that Chineseness in me that says I want to really go back to China. I see myself as more the global internationalist. So I’m equally at ease in France, in a little village in France, than in Shenzhen. Right?

However, like I said, I don’t know if I would really kind of go to a quiet village to retire. Because I would miss the culture and the arts and movies and the people around.

I mean, Toronto is actually quite nice as a city, as a very multicultural… As you know, fifty percent of Toronto is immigrant, are immigrants, not born in Canada. So that’s amazing… Montreal too!

CLC: Do you have future projects?

Uh, after the Chinese Restaurants, I’ve made a series for a Singapore TV called Expats, Asian Expats.

CLC: You mean Asians who to Canada?

Canada and US. So I made four episodes of that. Because they thought I was natural to do that. Because that’s the same channel who bought my film. So they liked what I did in Restaurants and they wanted me to make this Expats film.

CLC: And those people belong… where was their sense of belonging?

Also very very global. Because I interviewed people like Susur Lee, you know, the restaurant owner?

CLC: Yep, yep.

He was chef in Hong Kong and he came over. So basically, we’re talking about people with mid-life changing, coming to a new land and how they assimilate. So that I had Indian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, all kinds of people, Filipino. So these are sort of Asian expats, because their market is to Asia so they wanna show the home country where… how their natives had gone Overseas.

And speaking about that, there is a… I’ve always said that my films are better received outside of China and Hong Kong and Taiwan than those places, just because, I think, first of all, as an Overseas Chinese, you have this affinity to people like you and me. You know, we sort of know that we’re born outside of China, although we have the Chinese heritage. So our view of China is very different from the people who live in China or grew up in China.

And then to them, we’re foreigners, we’re like not even Chinese. Except when I need to use you. Otherwise you’re maybe forgotten. But to us, China represents what I call a mythical China that we always carry with us.

CLC: A China from many many generations? The one probably of the time when you emigrated.

Exactly. But it’s always that mythical China, it’s an ideal China. You know, wonderful culture, food and… that we hear from our grandparents or our parents. So, what happens is that we all carry that even though we might never speak the language. But we all know how to use chopsticks, eat rice (laughs), so in that sense, it’s mythical China.

In fact, just last night, I was reading a very interesting article. It was an interview in the New York Times with Tan Dun, the composer in New York, the one who did the Crouching Tiger score. Now he’s doing new music for China. He said that, very interesting, “I left China for twenty years, so the China I hold is no longer – the ideal China that I left behind is no longer there, but I still cling on to that China that I know before”.

CLC: … nostalgic.

Nostalgia, idealism. And in fact he said that mostly Overseas Chinese have that kind of mythical China in their back.

… That’s why Chinese don’t see us as Chinese anymore. Because the China that we have is a very China they know.

CLC: I read stories about, or I heard a story on the radio about how Mainland Chinese, that like earlier waves of immigrants from China don’t exactly identify with each other…

*** Cheuk’s friends are now leaving the terrasse cafe where we were sitting.

CLC: Oh, what was my next question… Oh, it’s just the mainland… the new immigrants, they identify very strongly with China, more than immigrants from Hong Kong and immigrants who come from Vietnam. Well, I dunno, we’re all sort of Chinese, but don’t speak the same language.

That’s exactly the kind of topics I’m dealing with in my film. I deal with, of course, the immigrants, the first-generation immigrants. But that more or less has a historical framing. I’m more interested in what’s next, in the next generation.

I mean, you have a very interesting background. You have this kind of background that I was actually talking about in the, you know, the Madagascar Chinese, the Vietnamese boat people, the whole… You know, I dealt with your family problems, you know, in my film. That’s wonderful because that’s exactly the kind of story that I want to tell. You know, what I call the secondary migration, because people went to Mauritius first, and then from Mauritius they come to Canada. So that’s exactly what your both parents were like.

So, it’s that very complicated origins, history that we all carry with us. But there’s one common thread, which is we’re all (of) Chinese descent and that, of course, we all love Chinese food. So, it’s very interesting. You know, I would love to speak to your parents just to see how they communicate, because your father – was he born in Madagascar?

CLC: He was born in Madagascar.

Where that? Tana?

CLC: In Tananarive. But uh, he left Madagascar and never went back.

How old was he? Getting in university here?

CLC: Yeah, he came to university here. He actually finished a degree first and came here.

What year did he come over?

CLC: ’73. So he must’ve been like 25 when he came here

So it’s my generation. I came here in ’69 for my first degree. ’73, I graduated after my first degree and I went for another degree. So, he’s exactly my age (60, we assume) and your mother came as a first wave of Vietnamese refugees. They were coming out before the war ended. When did the war end? ’75? They were the first wave coming out before the Fall of Saigon, so they came to Paris, they came to Montreal. It’s the French connection. So, and then the second wave was after the ’75. Then comes the boat people. Then they go to Toronto… You know, it’s very interesting history.

CLC: Very interesting dynamics – how people just move around.

Yeah, you saw my Israel film, right? I mean, the guy ends in Israel just because he was in a refugee camp in Philippines and then they said, ok, you either go to the US, or Canada, oh but I want to go to Israel. You end up there, and then you see the daughters growing up there. And so, they become Israelis! It’s a twist of fate. It’s amazing!

CLC: Have you been interested in other cultures… not only Chinese people, but like, I dunno. Like the Lebanese? I heard some Lebanese settled in Africa and came over…

Oh, they’re all over! They’re in Trinidad, South America. Lebanese and Indian, and of course Jews, but Lebanese and Indian…

CLC: Italians?

Italians are (a) more recent phenomenon. Because there were Lebanese… There’s a place called Suriname, which is Dutch Guiana. There is a lot of Hakka Chinese there. So, there are Dutch-speaking Chinese in Suriname and there’s a lot of Lebanese in Suriname. How the got there? Well, something about the Dutch, I don’t know, Jews and Dutch. Somehow they came with the boats (in harbours?) from Holland, and they settled there.

This whole transnational migration is very very interesting, to me. Now, of course, the Indians are because of the British Empire. They went as indentured labourers, just like the (Chinese in Trinidad) there’s the migration there.

I mean, there are a lot of people who wanted me to do a sequel. And what I would like to do is something like Suriname, where I want to explore the angle of Dutch-speaking Chinese.

CLC: Or French-speaking Chinese.

Well, French I’ve done a lot. You know, like Mauritius. I’ve done French-speaking Chinese. Madagascar. But Dutch-speaking Chinese, that’s very interesting to me!

CLC: I had this idea running around in head (!). How about going back to China and visit those small cities where, I dunno, 70% of Chinese used to come from? (the figure is actually 50%, for America) I mean, for instance Taishan, it’s such a small city. But I was reading somewhere that, you know, a majority of Chinese in America used to come from that town (or county).

Yeah, the four counties.

CLC: Have you been to that area?

No, I’ve been to Fotsan, Foshan (佛山). And, uh, I’ve not been to Toisan, but I was in Foshan. But, you know, it’s not surprising because nowadays they’re all built with money sent back. You know, people are donating money to build schools, help the village out.

CLC: Even back then, you mean. At the beginning of the century. In your movies, you didn’t go to, around Asia, where there are strong, big (Chinese) communities.

Yeah, because I came from Asia and so to me, it was less exotic than going to Norway. So, my priority was that I want to explore the, to me, exoticness first. I would like to do one in Japan, because I grew up in Japan so I know that place well. And talk about Sino-Japanese history well. I’d like to do…

I wanted to do one in Indonesia, but people told me it was too dangerous, because of the anti-Chinese sentiment. If then if you go there, you arouse suspicion and, you know, you bring trouble to the Chinese restaurant owners.

I can do it in the safer countries like Singapore, because I lived there… I have a problem in life is that I don’t want to do things that I’m too familiar with. I’m a photographer also. But when I take (pro?) photos, I don’t want to travel to places that I know. Because to me, it’s too familiar. I like to go to an exotic place and say, ok woaw, it’s interesting…

CLC: You’re a photographer too?

I’m a photographer too. I like amateur photography.

CLC: We’re going to wrap this up with the question: who are you?

Uh, very good question! I guess that I have to say that I’m an internationalist. I’m neither Canadian, nor Chinese. Even less Chinese-Canadian. I think I’m more internationalist. I see myself that.

And the best… Mr Jiang (in Argentina) is the one who pretty much echoes my sentiments well, what he said. He was, to me, the most deep-thinking character that I met. I had a wonderful conversation with him about music, about Wagner, about Mahler, about Beethoven. And, you know, his favourite movement was Beethoven’s 9th. Because we were talking about brotherhood, you know, with the whole chorus about brotherhood.

And that was his thing. So, he wrote a manifesto, an internationalist manifesto, about Chinese and being an internationalist person. So I really adopt his thinking.

CLC: Well, thank you Cheuk!

You’re welcome!

Au mois de mai, à ma dernière journée à Hong Kong, j’ai rencontré Ashley Wong pour ce prochain Regarde les Chinois. Torontoise de naissance, autrefois Montréalaise, et à ce point-ci Hongkongaise, elle a travaillé pour une organization artistique en nouveaux médias appelée Videotage jusqu’au début de cet été, et je venais de participer à Folktales From Many Lands, un de leurs projets à ce moment. Nous avons parlé le défi de trouver de l’espace et son propre espace à Hong Kong.

Back in May, on my last day in Hong Kong, I met with Ashley Wong for this next Regarde les Chinois. A Torontonian by birth, she was once a Montrealer and at that point a Hongkonger, she worked at a new media art organization called Videotage, and I had just participated in Folktales From Many Lands, one of their projects at the time. We talked about the challenges of finding space and one’s space in Hong Kong.

***

Comme les Chinois : What do you do?

Ashley Wong: I’m the project manager of Videotage, a media art organization.

CLC: In Hong Kong…

In Hong Kong.

CLC: So where were you from originally?

I’m from Toronto, I grew up there. And then lived in Montreal for three years for studies.

CLC: How did you end up in Hong Kong?

Basically well… My parents are both from Hong Kong. I never spent much time in Hong Kong – I only went once when I was very young and when I finished school, I decided to come here to travel and see what’s going on in China, and kinda (laughs) connect back with my… my background!

CLC: So did you have any expectations; were you looking for a job when you first came here?…

Actually, I came here without a job, so I kinda came just on a whim. And just started looking and found a job within two days! And it’s actually quite easy at first. There’s a lot of opportunities here compared to Canada.

CLC: And do you like it?

Uh. (laughs) It’s kind of a love-hate. It’s definitely different when you live here from when you are just visiting. But ah, I guess if I had some more distance from it, I would like it more.

CLC: Do you like your job?

It’s okay. It’s been very difficult for me, but like…

CLC: How long have you been here?

I’ve been working here almost a year (editor’s note: it was May 2008 when this interview was recorded), but it’s just the situation at the organization – it’s quite strange. But, in general it’s been a very good experience and I would’ve never been able to get the chance to kind of engage in quite a place in Canada. I mean, there’s a lot of opportunities, potential…

CLC: …here in Hong Kong.

Yeah.

CLC: Why is that?

Um… Well in the arts for one, I don’t know for other fields, but there’s a lot of room to grow. They’re still developing, so they need people to help really build the art scene here. In other places, the art community is already well-developed; there’s already lots of people in these positions. But in Hong Kong, you can just come in and pretty much do whatever you want and just give it a try – which is something you can’t do in other places.

CLC: I mean, Hong Kong, economically is as developed as Canada, but why – do you know why – there’s so much space in the arts, I mean.

Well, it’s not that… There is a lot of space because there isn’t much happening here, there’s not a lot of…

CLC: …people are not interested?

Um, there’s not support from the general public. It’s very difficult to… There’s very few venues and there’s very little support from the government to open up to more cultural activities, and it’s very difficult to get permission to do things that are… the usual things that people do.

So it’s a very difficult environment to work with because there’s a lot of restraints. Because of government and policy, the public…

CLC: You have to ask permission to do certain types of things…

Yeah, for sure. Like if you want to get a space within… Like the only space – a lot of them are in malls, and if you ask permission to use a mall, they have to see what kind of art you are going to put in there, how you are going to place it. And like they don’t want to offend anyone, and you’re very limited… it’s such a long kind of bureaucratic process to deal with this kind of people. And the only kind of art that they understand is like very traditionnal paintings, drawings or things like that.

Even here at the Cattle Depot, it’s a government building. It’s a Heritage site, it’s kind of a former _cattle depot_ where they had cows – not sure if they slaughtered them. Basically, we have to gain permission from the government property agency just to use the outside space for events, and we have to submit proposals just explaining what we’re doing, what we’re going to build in the space, how long we’re going to use the space, how many audience… They’re usually very paranoid about bringing strangers here or strange events and stuff.

CLC: I mean, that’s arts, it’s bound to be on the side (fringe?) of society.

Yeah exactly, but they don’t understand that – if you say something that’s a little bit strange to them, they give you a very hard time to do anything. And even when this is the cattle depot artist village, they still have all these, like, restrictions to what you can do here.

CLC: When did the Cattle Depot Village start?

It started about seven or eight years ago.

CLC: And who were the people behind it?

Um… Well, there’s five organizations here. It was basically offered when… a lot of these organizations were located on Oil Street (油街) in North Point (北角), and they had to get kicked out because they were renovating the area and the government decided to offer them this space in To Kwa Wan (土瓜灣) and to rent it out to art organizations for cheap. So there’s five art organizations and a few other art studios here.

CLC: So it’s not easy to find space to do events. Do you think there’s a lack of space in Hong Kong?

There is definitely a lack of space in Hong Kong. It a very compact city, the apartments are very small, but like, it’s also the fact that there is no free space, like no space where people can just… go outside in a park, I dunno, play your guitar (laughs), or like have any sort of cultural activities, because all these parks, or the few parks that there are, are very highly secured and there’s really no space where you can just go and hang out.

When you go into venues for either events or artistic projects, you have to again through this bureaucratic process of getting permission from these corporations or people who own these buildings, property owners.

CLC: So what are your plans? … You are quitting Videotage…

(laughs) Well, initially I only planned on staying in Hong Kong for six months. So I already outstayed my intention by a year! So I think I’ve learned hell of a lot being here.

CLC: Like what?

Learning about China. … Just being here, you absorb things that you don’t really notice or that you didn’t know about. Like, international relations… also geography of where the places in Asia are, and the relationship to different places. Like how Chinese people see Japanese people, or the relationship between Taiwanese and Hong Kong, our relationship to the Philippines, Filipino, … Australia, and Thailand. It kinda makes sense now. A kind of geography, cultural…

CLC: I mean, you grew up in Canada. I also grew up in Canada, and I sort of understand that Canada focuses on North America, Europe, so we know how the relations go between these countries. And Asia is kinda foreign.

Yeah… And you start to understand the trade… just the relationship between countries and the politics as well that affect trade and what we get are kind of the information that we access to. And it’s also the relationship between China and Europe, which is something I didn’t realize was actually closer than America to China obviously. A lot of the information that we get is European.

CLC: Because Hong Kong is a former colony?…

Uh, but in general China has more ties with Europe than with the US. Like the countries are more… benevolent (laughs) with each other.

CLC: Are you going somewhere else?

… Uh, not sure yet. Probably Europe next.

CLC: Thank you Ashley.

Ok!

Dans ce prochain Regarde les Chinois, j’ai fait la rencontre en mai dernier de Paul Zimmerman, un Hongkongais d’origine néérlandaise depuis 1984. M. Zimmerman fait partie de l’organisation à but non lucratif Designing Hong Kong qui fût à l’avant-garde d’un débat sur l’espace ouvert public qui fit rage depuis le printemps dernier. Directeur-général de Jebsen Travel, il se présente comme candidat du Parti Civique pour le siège de représentant au tourisme du conseil législatif de Hong Kong lors des élections du 7 septembre. Dans l’entrevue, M. Zimmerman a beaucoup parlé de politique en développement urbain à Hong Kong, un sujet qui le passionne depuis son implication avec divers groupes, et de l’univers particulier de la Région administrative spéciale.

In this next Regarde les Chinois, I met (in May 2008) with Paul Zimmerman, a Hongkonger who came from the Netherlands in 1984. Mr. Zimmerman is part of Designing Hong Kong, which was at the avant-garde of the debate on open space that raced through Hong Kong since last spring. Executive director of Jebsen Travel, he is running as the Civic Party candidate in the tourism functional constituency of Hong Kong’s LegCo (legislative council) on the September 7th election. In this interview, we talked a lot about the politics of urban development, a topic that he is passionate about since his involvement with various groups, and the unique universe of the Special Administrative Region.

***

Paul Zimmerman: I was born in Holland, and arrived in Hong Kong in 1984, and ran a graphic design company, which I sold in ’98. I worked as a consultant for a while, and one of the projects I worked on as a consultant was Design(ing) Hong Kong Harbour District. It was a research project into why, or what we can do better in the harbour front. Because we realized there were only two places you could eat and drink: it was the York Club, where you could drink a beer if you were a private member, and there was the Fleet Arcade, that’s where the American Navy arrives – there was a McDonald’s there.

Comme les Chinois: Ok.

So these were the only two places on the hundred kilometres of waterfront that we have in Hong Kong that you could eat and drink. And the government had just announced West Kowloon, and we felt that West Kowloon…

CLC: West Kowloon, the landfill… (reclamation project)

Yeah, well, the West Kowloon project is the cultural district project where they were going to build sixteen venues on a forty-hectare piece of land, or at least some twenty hectares of it…

CLC: When was that announced?

The discussion had been on since 2000, around 2000, and we looked at it, and we thought it wasn’t such a good idea to build such a large complex with one goal, and all these cultural venues when we knew that people in Hong Kong don’t have, want the experience to build a nice waterfront, and they don’t have the experience to build lots of new venues or managing venues that they are promising. Because it’s always been a very bureaucratic management.

So we thought that that was going to be a bit of a white elephant. So, we started this research, to kind of like say, what can we do better about our harbour front. At the same time, we kind of look at how we can break open the Kowloon West project, move the things around the harbour, and so on.

CLC: Who’s “we”?

“We”. Well, there was a certain number of people that were very concerned about urban planning at that time, around the waterfront… There were Mr Po Chung (CHUNG Po-Yang 鍾普洋), who was the founder of Creative Initiatives, who used to be the owner of DHL International here – he just sold it. He was concerned. Christine Loh was concerned, Nicholas Brooke was concerned. I mean there were a lot in the property industry that were concerned. We have found as we… the small group kind of grew, people who were concerned and so on.

There were lots more people that came in the project. They started to come to seminars and so on. That group has now grown – we have maybe a mailing list of about 5000 names.

CLC: That group’s Designing Hong Kong…

Designing Hong Kong, yes. People that are concerned with the urban environment in general… maybe coming from different directions, in what they are concerned about, but they are concerned about the shape of the urban environment.

And so, that’s how we started. From that project, I didn’t know anything about urban planning. I had just run my own company. During the project, we became aware of a couple of fundamentals in Hong Kong, one is that the topography is very very difficult, you know, where any other city has a city centre, we have a harbour; every other city has ring roads, we get mountains. There are narrow strips of lands – it means there’s not much land around the core areas, so you have to go outside if you want to grow. People want to be in the core area, so you have a high-density, in very narrow strips. So, how are you going to manage that.

With the agreement to not do any more reclamation, in 1997, there was certainly a finite (amount) of land. Previously, for 150 years, Hong Kong, when it needed something, it just reclaimed land. So, they would always increase the land mass by reclaiming the harbour, for 150 years. From the first piece of land sold, that’s how it operated, because people were building piers, and then warehouse… they always run further into the water.

So soon, it was no longer the case. So, that was a big change in the government, it was very much dependent on premiums. So, land, creation of land created income for the government. 40% of its annual revenues come from land-related incomes, premiums, rates, rentals. So, in terms of planning, the government tends to plan for their financial gain, rather than for the public good.

Of course, you could say that everything they always did was for the public good: they were building warehouses, more housing, and more roads, and so on, but it was never aimed at building a nice living environment, which in a very highly dense area means that you have to make decisions not to build, to build less, or to create more space. And that is where it costs money in their calculation. They could’ve sold it, and built things or built roads so that they could sell all the lands, y’know.

CLC: Is it the same situation in the rest of China?

… In fact, there is a some comparison with the rest of China that you could make. The topography is easier in China, because it is small city surrounded by agricultural lots, and everyone is very happy to sell their agricultural land when you get a lot of money for it. Quite often the ownership of agricultural lots might already be in government’s hands or there might be… there are various ownership forms that makes it easier.

So, people can go outwards quite easy. The comparable really is the fact that government quite often makes money out of land sale. Often the village or the town make the money when the lands are sold. Therefore, there is a planning gain in terms of financial income that’s there. But in terms of the topography: probably not. Because they are pancakes, when we are squeezed onto small pieces of land.

We can’t go outside. Shanghai keeps growing, Pudong, you know, it’s farmland…

CLC: Yeah, Beijing…

Everything just keeps growing on the outside.

CLC: So Hong Kong is pretty unique.

In essence it’s pretty unique. And it’s confined by its topography, more than anything else, because if we had a flat piece of land, then maybe we would’ve just grown out into the New Territories much more. But because there are mountains in between and so on, and there was historical aspect in that the New Territories came in later.

CLC: I was told that transportation routes are very important. Every time they built a new subway line in Hong Kong, they develop a whole new area.

Well, that’s how they did that. New town development and rails was combined. There was a decision to build a new town, and at the same time you provided the rails. So, it was always a joint decision. And it was good, because the rails was financed by building a new town, and you had people to use the rails because of the new town. It all worked together.

There a problem there now. It means that rails decisions have always been made on the basis of: What’s the patronage? How many people do I have live near the station? If I get enough people living at the station, then I build the station. It was never based on, like, I build rail because I can avoid people from using their car. And I subsidize it because even if there are even ten people, I don’t want them to use their car. Therefore, I subsidize it because there is public benefit, not only a financial benefit – they pay for their trip – but also a public benefit – less pollution, less road use, I can use other space in the city for other uses. That calculation is not really there.

So, one of the problems that we have now is in urban areas, we tend to build roads before we build rails. That’s another issue.

And now, in the built-up areas, to say, well, can you put more rails. And they say, well, how are we going to finance it? Because normally you finance it by building on top of the station, but if you put stations under existing buildings, then who pays for those stations, and who finances those rail? Because there are certainly still no more development to finance the stations, so the public will have to subsidize it – that’s not an easy decision.

The history, legacy of rail, town building, is somewhat of a problem right now. I’m sure we can get over it.

*** Mr. Zimmerman’s assistant brings us some oranges at this point.

CLC: So what has your organization done so far?

Well, we’ve done the… various things. We did a research in Designing Hong Kong Harbour District, we’ve organized seminars and conferences, we participated in the Harbour-front Enhancement Committee, which is a government organization. We’ve made submissions to the town planning board. We’ve made submissions to Legislative Council (LegCo), submissions to the District Councils.

CLC: Did it have any tangible effect?

Um, yeah. We’ve moved people’s mindset. But, you know, with this type of stuff, if we can move the outside by a metre, we may be moving the inside by a millimetre. So, the tangible effect… and also, the impact of those tangible benefits are not immediately measurable or see-able. Most of these infrastructure and development projects will take ten years, fifteen years before people can see them. So, in that sense, it’s not all that easy.

But there are tangible impacts. There is now a little dock park on the waterfront in Wan Chai. There’s a temporary park in West Kowloon… I mean, there are things, things are improving. And the government has focused on it. The way they talk about it – now they talk about the waterfront as an asset, previously it was not – it was like development potential.

So, I think things have changed in that sense. But it’s not as tangible yet, because it won’t be until fifteen years that we can walk around the harbour-front, and areas that we can go. We talked about twenty years ago, that’s why it’s now this way, you know! (laughs) These things take time, and it’s hard for people to see.

Maybe by that time, people will have forgotten what would have been if we hadn’t. So, in that sense, it’s hard to add one and one.

CLC: Are there precedents of these sorts of activities in Hong Kong?

Well, I guess so. More immediate ones, in Hong Kong. Of course, in Designing Hong Kong, we’ve done other things, not only the harbour-front, also we worked with Heritage… the Heritage Watch, so, trying to save Queen’s Pier and the Star Ferry. Now, both have been removed but Queen’s Pier will be rebuilt, it’s been saved.

We’re trying to save the street markets in Graham Street. Now, we have a commitment that it will happen. How will it happen, and will it happen on time, are issues. We’ve set up a Save the Street Market -dot- com (savethestreetmarket.com). We got a whole group running, people who are fighting to save the street market. There are all sorts of activities that these people are organizing, from fashion shows in a street market, to an artist live impression show, all kinds of things to try to get attention for the market.

Again, we made lots of submissions. Now we have the activity on open space, two seminars that really sparked a debate in public…

CLC: Was it your organization that initiated the whole debate (currently taking place in Hong Kong on public space)? What happened – I didn’t really follow the beginning of it.

Well, in the beginning, we organized a conference on this, one in January, and one in March. And there was lots of different groups of people involved in those two conferences. And it’s kind of stimulated debate among some people, to the point that one of the radio stations set up a program in the morning and they talked about open space – because there was some people that knew about Times Square, the Times Square piazza. But there were already lots of other open space, individual issues pending like, or simmering in the background. Like, I knew that IFC had an open space, and that somebody had been fighting IFC and had been already () the government for one and half year.

We knew of some of them out there, that there were discussions. So, when we came up with the topics for the seminars, we were aware of those. By having the seminars, it sort of galvanized the idea in some people’s mind, and then, Commercial Radio Two do their program, and bang-bang-bang, it was this fire that went on, race very very quickly. We put in our submission in LegCo, which sort of formalized the debate.

So, did we start it? It was something that was ripe. It was just a little match that we put in there.

CLC: Basically (to recapitulate), it was that the government gives tax benefits to companies to develop a land, and in exchange they build open spaces, public spaces…

Well, for the government, again, they’d rather sell the land available for sale that they have to developers. But on the other hand, the government has an obligation to create public open space – it’s for the health and benefit of the public. There is a standard of about 2m² per person that you need to provide in every district. So, for the government to provide that by having to develop or create or reserve some space within their development and designate it as public open space. And in that way, the government can try to meet that requirement.

Basically, there’s a shortfall of public open space in almost every urban district. So, because of this shortfall, the government is under pressure, they gotta find solutions… and the developers are pretty happy with that because, one, if the government were to put a park in front of their building, then they (the developers) would have no control of the park.

But if they can put the park, say, inside their building, they can design it to what they like, they can put the security into what they like, they can basically manage and control that space to their benefit and their style. So the developers are happy.

And then in some cases, if they provide the public space, they get compensation for that, an additional gross floor area. They like that too.

So, it’s a great one for the developers, although they can complain about it, because of course, there are lots of controls, and the government wants all kinds of things and wants them to do it. So it kind of force them into accepting some of these deals. So the developers are not always necessarily happy with it.

But, you know, they have a benefit, and the government has a benefit – but the public loses out dramatically. What we need is public open space at street level, proper parks, space for people to breathe. We need wider sidewalks!

We need street widening. Every time you build a building, you should widen the street because, y’know, there was an old building that was only two stories, and now you put a fifty-story building there! You should widen the street around the building. You are going to have a hundred times as many people coming in and out of that building! The street should be wider, but the government doesn’t do that. They consider that a loss when you do that.

Also, basically, it’s the final plot ratio, so this is the side, and times… it means you can build as many in that block. If you say, you gotta setback, is it still plot ratio 10? Well, it means a smaller building. And the developers are not happy with that, and the owners of the building are not happy with that… the government doesn’t like it because they get less premiums.

So those two on that side are against it, but as a result the city is dying because we don’t have enough circulation space in the streets. It’s getting too crowded. And we don’t have proper open space that is healthy, accessible, open, good amenities, and is free. It means it’s truly open, truly public, not that there is a security guard that tells you that you can’t eat here. “‘xcuse me, it’s public open space, I want to eat, I eat!” It’s the street, it’s public!

CLC: Well, I notice in the newspapers that these property owners, they changed the signs from “You can’t sit here” to “Be careful of the flowers”…

Well, they did, because now they have more pressure. The fact that they have more pressure doesn’t mean that the situation has really improved. It’s still, there’s this obvious problem: we are not dedicating enough of our lands for public open space. And there is a collusion of interests, not necessarily “collusion”, as in illegal working-together, but a collusion of interests – government has an interest to sell the land, rather have it (the public space) inside the buildings. Property owners are just happy to take the inside of building (open space). Both of them win, public loses and they have no voice in the game.

CLC: Do you think they mind? Maybe they like living in a place that’s super-dense…

Well, there are things that the public of course finds nice and interesting about Hong Kong, you know. Just take this the other way around: if I am going to buy a flat in a building, I want that building to have playgrounds for the kids, have a park and a sit-out area for me as a resident. But that’s a different things. In the old days, there were buildings put up here in Hong Kong that didn’t have enough of a lobby space. They didn’t have enough space for the lift lobby, y’know. Buildings were just built to maximize the sellable area, or the rentable area.

So then they had to develop a building code. Basically you had to do a minimum standards. Sure! Maybe that in these very large complexes, the minimum standard should be that there is a park inside the building. If there is 10,000 people living in a complex, then maybe there should be a park inside a complex rather than have 10,000 people looking for a park outside the complex. So, you know, that kind of makes sense.

The question is, whether that park is a residential open space or whether the park is an public open space. I you say that the park is a residential open space for the people who live there, fine. You know, the piazza at Times Square, if you say it’s for circulation space, because I’ve got this building, 200,000 people walking through here, fine, yeah you need that. But that doesn’t make it a public open space where people can have passive recreation. It’s circulation space. Residential open space, circulation space, they are not counted as public open space. I still need my 2m² of public open space outside! But if I start counting all these things as public open space and not build any park, then I have a city that does not have enough space.

So, you have to be quite clear about that, the distinction…

CLC: How do you see the future of…

Well, I mean, this debate is fantastic of course! Times Square this morning are going into the newspapers advertising about their deed, saying that it’s private lands. They say, its allocation as public land occupied by a private (inaudible) is misleading! You know. It says clearly that it is private property! So they are making it clear!

So, that’s a good start. Because that means that if the government then says that public open space under private control… Well excuse me, if you have public open space, on private land, that ain’t very good! Can we have public open space on public land. Because obviously when we put public open space and private land, we’ve got serious problems! Because there’s all these controls and management issues.

For us, it’s great. But then all these developers get upset about, and the government finds out… Then the public says it’s inferior open space, and then the government will have to provide superior open space, which is public lands used for public open space!

That’s all we need! And it takes time and effort, and the government says that we have limited land, and that I dispute entirely, because the government has many properties throughout Hong Kong that they are demolishing: the Central Market, all the reclaimed areas, cargo bay working areas that they are no longer using. There are lots of government properties all over Hong Kong that are taken away, and that they are trying to sell. They don’t have to sell it: make it public open space!

Every time that there is a redevelopment, there should be a good setback rule, so the street is widened. But they don’t do anything, still aren’t doing anything. We’re fighting, we’re fighting…

CLC: How did you personally get interested in urban development?

I decided to stay here. I had sold my business, and I decided to stay here in Hong Kong because I thought about leaving, just because I’ve been here for a long time and I come from Holland, originally.

CLC: When was that?

2000. After I sold my business, done my earn-out. So, sold it in ’98, earn-out 2000, finished. I had a chance to leave and I look around, and thought, do I go to Holland, do I go to Australia, do I go to China, do something different? In the end, I came to a conclusion and I want to stay here. Because I think it’s a great city.

Hong Kong has the potential – as for me, Hong Kong is the most beautiful city in the world, except for the urban environment. Because we got our mountains, our reservoirs, our seas, our islands, our coastlines, natural coastlines… I mean also, look at our biodiversity here, in terms of wildlife, birds, marine life, whatever, it’s there. We got more different types of corals than anywhere else in the entire area. There’s not much of a life right now, because we destroyed a lot. But if we let it come back, it will all come back. There are more insect species, more bird species…

I mean, really, Hong Kong is a very unique… Topography-wise is unique, but also the location is unique. The climate, where we are… so Hong Kong has lots of it going for it. So if we can fix our urban environment… For me, fixing the urban environment is like, you know, I bought a house, I fix it, I make it nice. I make my balcony nice, then I want my building and my neighbours to have a nice building. So, we fix up the building. Then I want my street nice. Here it’s like, then I want my street nice. Here I like the place where I live, I like it to be a nice place! I don’t like it to be ugly.

So that was my pure motivation and it was also, somebody has said to me, after I sold my business, what do I do next with my life? And then he had this very simple rule. He said: the first part of your life you learn, the second part of your life you earn, and the third part of your life you serve! I serve… Hey, (so) you do something for the community! You know, you do something different. You make some money and now you do something different!

So I never was involved with NGOs or anything like that. So now I got involved in Creative Initiatives and started to do some NGO work, and this project comes out out, didn’t make me any money. (laughs) But, you know, I thought it was a very nice project about how to make a nicer harbour-front! So, that’s how I got involved.

But as I got involved… then, you know, I am a passionate person, but I’m also, I run my own business. So, in business, it’s very simple, if you see something that is good, you get it done! You get everybody to do the things right. But when you work with this harbour-front issue, then I found everybody to know exactly what needed to be done. But we still can’t get it right!

And then you find that the government is working against you, you know… for land premiums reasons, for the fact that they’ll have to change internal procedures, which is really tough, it’s hard work for them – for the fact that they’re not be concentrated on it, they’ll have other things to do, they don’t think it’s important. Or just because _you_ came up with the idea and they didn’t come up with the idea… So it’s not invented here. So it’s your idea, not their idea, why touch it, we’re not going to support you because then we look like weak government.

You know, there’s all kinds of psychological things, all kinds of reasons why the government certainly is not doing it. But then I am a tough bastard! (laughs) You know, if people start pushing back at things that I know are right, everybody tells me it’s right, and everybody keeps telling me, everybody I meet! Doesn’t matter, if we’re working with government, their own property (?), the general public, all these people agree with you, that these are the kinds of things that we need to do. But we can’t get them done because we got this push-back from government, then I push harder, so you get more determined, you do another thing, you keep going.

CLC: Well, thank you Paul.

Cheers!

The Regarde les Chinois series made a stop in Hong Kong in early May to meet Roland Soong. Shanghainese by birth, but a resident of New York for thirty years (until his return to Hong Kong in 2003), he is the blogger behind EastSouthWestNorth (ZonaEuropa.com), a site that welcomes tens of thousands of visitors on a daily basis, and which you have probably read if you are interested in China. Every day, aside from his regular job as CTO for the world’s second-largest media research company, Soong translates articles from Chinese-speaking newspapers and blogosphere for the benefit of English-only readers. We obviously spoke about media, but also of Lust, Caution, whose author of the short story it was inspired by, Eileen Chang, was a personal friend of his parents, and of other topics, like prostitution in Hong Kong, the coverage of the then-recent Tibet riots, the origins of ESWN and foot racing. This interview was conducted on the Thursday before the Sichuan Earthquake, which is why we didn’t talk about it (it made the site fall, but it still wasn’t the year’s most popular item, as explained later by Mr. Soong).

La série Regarde les Chinois s’est arrêtée à Hong Kong pour rencontrer Roland Soong au début du mois de mai dernier. Shanghainais de naissance, mais résident de New-York pendant 30 ans (jusqu’à son retour à Hong Kong en 2003), il est le blogueur derrière EastSouthWestNorth (ZonaEuropa.com), un site qui accueille des dizaines de milliers de visiteurs par jour et que vous avez sans doute déjà visité si la Chine vous intéresse. En marge de son travail habituel comme directeur technique de la deuxième plus grande compagnie en étude des médias au monde, Soong traduit quotidiennement des extraits choisis de journaux et de la blogosphère sinophone. Nous avons bien sûr parlé de médias, mais également de Désir, danger, dont Eileen Chang, l’auteure de la nouvelle sur laquelle s’est basé le film, était une amie personnelle des parents de Soong, et de d’autres sujets, comme la prostitution à Hong Kong, de la couverture des émeutes d’alors au Tibet, des origines de ESWN et de la course à pied. Nous nous sommes rencontrés au Pacific Coffee du IFC – je n’ai même pas eu le temps de partir mon enregistreuse que l’entrevue démarrait. Cette entrevue a été réalisée le jeudi précédant le séisme du Sichuan, ce qui explique pourquoi on n’en a pas parlé (qui fit tomber le site, mais qui n’est pourtant pas l’item le plus populaire de l’année, comme M. Soong l’expliquera).

[Fait intéressant: bien que cette entrevue ait été réalisée en anglais, l'un des premiers articles jamais écrits sur Soong et ESWN fût publié en 2005 dans Alternatives, un journal en français publié de Montréal! (voir article)]

***

Roland Soong: I was interviewed as well in English. That’s not too unusual, but usually, ordinarily, if you say that someone speaks only English, the Chinese press would not interview that person, because he is probably not of interest to their readers. But somehow, I do get (coverage from) both. And the other bits happen to be with Mainland Chinese media, as well as foreign media. So like, there is for example Reuters media. So again, it’s a little unusual.

Comme les Chinois: And on BBC, there’s your interview…

Yeah, there is a BBC radio interview. These kinds of things really tend to, how shall I say, cross-pollinate? Cross-pollinate, in that, maybe my first interview was with the BBC – and I don’t know how they found me, but they did it! It’s a little unusual, because here I am in Hong Kong, and the interviewer was in London. Because it is radio, you just do it by telephone. So, but to ensure the quality of the voice, I had to go to the Radio Hong Kong, where they put these studios and then, you know, you make the connection and it becomes kind of noise-free…

Yeah, so it was like BBC Four or something. Like, (the Chinese-language media) would be, so what, who cares! (laughs) Like, they think BBC, OK, it’s a bunch of listeners in the UK – what do they really care about what a Hong Kong blogger has to say. But oddly enough, that program is actually broadcast on RTHK 4 or something like that, like every Thursday night. They don’t broadcast everything, but they take parts of it.

CLC: It’s syndicated…

Yes, syndicated. And so, on that particular Thursday night, the publisher of, what, Next Magazine (website) in Hong Kong, somehow listening to it, and then in the morning, went back to the office, got one of the reporters and said, OK, now you are gonna get me an interview with this guy! (laughs) So that was how I got into the, like, Hong Kong media!

CLC: Oh, so that’s how it started. But you only wrote in English… You translate articles from Chinese. You write comments as well, right?

Yeah… Well, not a lot, because it’s problematic for me to start saying things, because my objective is really… I have lots of time, so I read a lot, and say, well that’s interesting and I haven’t seen it in English before, so let me translate it. OK. But somehow when I say something that something is of interest, it doesn’t mean that I agree with it. It’s of interest in the sense that, um, “ah, this is interesting right here, it’s unusual”, or it’s of interest because “woaw, everybody is talking about it” and you don’t hear (anything) about it in English. So I think, you know, that the people who can only read English are entitled to see what the Chinese are talking about. So, I go do that translation…

CLC: How do you choose your articles?… You choose them based on how popular a topic is?

Yeah… And the substance, it’s not as if I… There are some things that I just intensely dislike, like stock markets! (laughs) Stuff like that. And also what you call high politics.

CLC: Hype politics?

High politics, … high-level. Because I really truly do not understand it, in the sense that, um, you can say, OK, the Chinese government is meeting with the special envoy of the Dalai Lama, and then a whole bunch of people start speculating as to what the strategy, tactics and possible outcomes are? … I don’t. I don’t have a clue, I mean, and I don’t think they have a clue, so I don’t think I want to waste my time on this? And all this stuff is, you know, it’s a senior government official, so whatever, talking behind closed doors – who knows what they are thinking, you know, why do I wanna start guessing? It’s not useful. So, I kinda avoid that? You know, like, if you ask me what do you think of these talks: I don’t know? I really don’t know! (laughs)

Uhh, you can force me to give an opinion, but I will probably follow it by saying: “that’s a waste of time?” (laughs)

CLC: You’re not a reporter, you’re not…

Yeah, just that I think, you know, that I am not a reporter, even though… my job is related to media. It really has more to do with media planning? With respect to allocation of advertising money and all that, budget…

CLC: That’s your regular job?

Yes. Like optimizing, um, you know, like… I have a million dollars to spend on Coca-Cola, which I spend on websites, CD, radio, newspapers, magazines, um, whatever. So, my company really goes about collecting data that helps, people, let’s say advertising agencies, that make this kind of decisions. That, in turn, I do have a tremendous appreciation of the differences among media, what is more effective in one media as opposed to another? And also, what makes a successful newspaper, as opposed to one that is failing? There are issues of how a smart newspaper has to actually make a clear statement that it has some kind of position.

I mean, in Hong Kong, you can brand yourself as a pro-democracy or a pro-China. Or you can even brand yourself as a newspaper that is absolutely neutral, fair and balanced. That’s OK, but you gotta do it. Then you ought to pick up the issues that are emotional, makes people angry, or feel something about. It could be like, “oh my God, they are taking away our freedoms”, or “oh my God, they’re insulting China”. (laughs) You gotta do that, you know!

CLC: To get different markets… you define yourself as a pro-China or pro-democracy…

Or pro-nobody and just pro-people. (laughs) Yes, I am pro the general interest of the population, and I can swing this way or that way on specific issues, blablabla. And that’s OK. It just means that my sole part of it is really helping the newspapers or television stations to position themselves, um, based on the information I have.

So, a lot of it… So, I’ve done a lot of so-called “tracking” studies. You do that every week, and every time you do something, I can sort of track what the changes are. So, in a television station, it is fairly straightforward. Let’s say the stuff that relates to public opinion are the talk shows for example. And it is largely driven by personality: who is effective and who is not?

And sometimes it is effective because he’s persuasive, or he’s effective precisely because he is irritating, and their viewers are actually happy because they are irritating the other side. Every time that you say something totally outrageous, you say, “great, the other side will be really really upset”.

So, the tracking studies actually track many changes. So, (let’s say) we just had a personnel change: so you basically look at favourable ratings – you know, is it going up or down, that kind of thing… What does the competition look like as a result?

CLC: And sell that information to … (inaudible)

So part of it helps, because when I want to do stuff for my website, I pick up a newspaper and I kind of guess what the tricks are? Like, why are you saying this, it looks wrong! (laughs) There is a reason…

CLC: What’s your scope though? I mean, you look at newspapers in Asia, in Chinese language… or anything? Because I’ve seen in the top (of your website), links from American newspapers?

It depends. Part of it… You have to say what’s going on right now… So I do look at a whole bunch of things, but (for) some of them, if there is nothing going on, I would say “forget about it, OK”. Then will only pick up on some minor issues. So, if you look at this year, then I would say this year there were really long-term, extensive series of events, and they are completely different.

[Important editor's note: this interview was done in early May, actually just four days before the Sichuan earthquake - which intermittently overwhelmed ESWN because of pictures directly hosted on Mr. Soong's website.]

The first series of events, which is the stuff like the Edison Chen photos… I look at that particular case when it first started up, and I started covering it, and people start writing in, saying “Are you crazy? This is nothing – why are you wasting your time on this?” There are more important stuff going on, like the…

CLC: Snowstorms in China?

Snowstorms in China. Like, “why ain’t you talking about?” Because I don’t think you have anything to say. Everything that has to be said about it is basically in the newspapers… But then, I look at the Edison Chen case, and I said “Oh my God, this is it”. It’s not the sort of lurid part of the scandal, but it’s actually about something that, you would say, I was trying to work on, but could never get an effect on. It has to do with the censorship, or the classification system in Hong Kong.

Namely, you can publish something, and you could get into trouble depending on how a certain obscene articles tribunal, consisting of a couple of people, or adjudicators, decide to classify it. Is it indecent, is it obscene or is it neither? And you could get fined for basically publishing indecent or obscene material. Um, it’s weird, it’s a weird system, because it is totally a function of two people randomly selected, and you have inconsistent outcomes.

CLC: It’s an arbitrary…

Yes. But I could never get, regardless of how I pushed it in previous cases, I could never get out the contradictions and the absurdities out, in a manner that is sufficient to arouse public outrage? Along comes this thing, I say, well, it’s movie stars! (laughs) And you got the tabloid magazines. This is very different from, let’s say, a previous case, with the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) student newspaper. And they had no pictures, but an article describing something, and it was just considered indecent… You can talk about it, look, nobody’s ever read that newspaper! (laughs) It’s so abstract! It can talk about it and say “it doesn’t bother me!”

But except once it starts showing in like…

CLC: Mainstream newspapers, with photos, and it’s concerning stars… it becomes a big thing.

(laughs) And it’s not one photo, but whoever was doing it was releasing it in bits, and doing the entire process, all the contradictions and the absurdities start coming out. Like, what were the police doing? It was like, how could you put the entire commercial crime division to work on this case? And if you were an ordinary citizen, you would not have cared less! Tell them: go away, we don’t deal with this!

But because it is a movie star, it’s a public affair, the police put all this stuff together. It’s a question of…

CLC: Do you remember a story that you covered, I think it was last year or before, when they publicized … (it was) a website for hookers, prostitutes. I don’t quite remember it. Can you tell me more about this case? You did a Google search and how it was possible for you to do it… (Note: woaw, I was clearly mixing many cases together…)

(Here is the piece I was talking about – here is the website that we are talking about)

This is another piece of what I consider as absurdity in Hong Kong. Let’s say, what is the law with respect to prostitution… under very restricted circumstances it was perfectly OK. And namely, they would not want to interfere the fact that two adults decide to go to bed and afterwards the man wants to give money to the woman. There are perfectly legit reasons and you really can’t distinguish between the two situations, so they started saying that it was alright.

What is criminalized is in fact… you cannot run a brothel, like, hire ten prostitutes and put them in a stable, so to speak, let your clients come in and make their selection. The specific crime is not so much prostitution as profiteering out of immoral conduct on the part of other people. So, that’s possible. Or you can arrest a prostitute, maybe because she is a tourist from the Mainland and doesn’t have a working visa… You know.

But there is a perfect way to run, for an individual entrepreneurial woman to run, to conduct a business as a prostitute. And the way you do it is, you rent a single room, somewhere, and you start advertising. And your advertising could be, let’s say, you stick little posters down on lampposts and stuff like that. You know, “#700, on Main Street, Apartment 12F” or something, you know. And you have a deep description of your skills. So it would be in, uh, some other obscure language, like “expert flute player”. (laughs)

CLC: I see!

Stuff like that! (laughs) Once you know it, you’re like, let’s get on with the show, hum! (laughs)

CLC: And if I come from Overseas, I think, you know… First time I came here (in Hong Kong), I was like, to my aunt, oh hey, we should go sing some karaoke there! And she’d be like, “no, no, that’s not what you think!”

Another way is downstairs of your building, you have red neon lights.

CLC: Yeah. Or like I’ve seen on the Mainland (Note: near a posh residential area of Shenzhen, actually), they have this purple light in stores (that serve as brothel).

Yeah, you can’t do that here. Because that becomes simply… if it’s a store, and there’s more than one person, then it becomes basically, what we would call… If it’s actually a different person that is renting the store, then even the landlord can get into trouble, because it’s against the law to profiteer through the immoral behaviour of others.

Um, so, the thing is that once you start doing them, the neon signs, the police comes around to remove them, on the basis that they are too big. (laughs) Not because it’s advertising prostitution services, but because sign is too big, or it’s not authorized, you have no license to put up the sign. They come and remove it, but then there are… the problem is that signs are not very expensive. There are in fact services that you would call, and they will say that “we will replace a sign within six hours”… (laughs) No problem, it’s just a couple of hundred dollars. Like, six hours – it’s like those computer repair, the warranty, you know, “this is Dell Computer, if you want, if you pay X hundred dollars, for the next three years, we guarantee that a service person will appear on your premises within half a day”. (laughs)

CLC: Do you think it says something about Chinese society? Hiding, you know, all those contradictions? Kinda say that there’s no prostitution…

(long pause) I think what is interesting to me is that this is really more about the… an obstinacy for adhering to the concept of the rule of law in Hong Kong. Everything goes by the book? So…

CLC: Do you (Hongkongers) do that by contrast to the Mainland?

Actually, to the Mainland, there’s a lot of discretion, say, “OK, you’re a prostitute”, you know… “But I am just sitting in a coffee shop, why do you think I am soliciting?” … “It doesn’t matter, I think you are”

But in Hong Kong, it’s like, uh, you see the police basically reading the code of law and then you have this slow evolution of every process, whereby… because it’s a matter of always test and trial. Someone tries, pulls a new trick, you get arrested, you get prosecuted… You go through the court system, and someone just says, “but that’s ridiculous, police can’t do that”, and this is how it works out to be… It’s possible for individual female entrepreneurs to rent a single room to start actually a one-person-per-room. As soon as there are two persons in two rooms in a single apartment, it’s no good. So, what you have to do is rent an apartment, partition it into separate rooms, to make sure that they are not joined, and then all of a sudden, it’s OK.

So, I mean, that process has obviously evolved over time, because they, the police probably kept busting brothels with multiple rooms, and someone came up with the idea, why don’t we partition these apartments into different rooms? And then the police came in and arrested everyone all over again. You go through the court system, and the judge says, “but, they’re in disconnected rooms, there is not a single premise! you can’t say they’re running a business”. (laughs)

Then, when you treat this problem as one of advertising reach, and effectiveness, then you realize, OK, for me to put up little slips of paper on lampposts, or neon signs to the entrance of buildings, the reach is low, and it’s only seen by people who walk by, and the effectiveness is also not really good, because when you actually look at those buildings, there are about eighty signs! Why this one, as opposed to that one?

CLC: So, people came up with the website, with reviews from customers. And then they got into trouble.

Right. And they would not have gotten into trouble, because all you have to do is host that website server outside of Hong Kong and there isn’t a thing they could do about it. But people who did get into trouble… because you have to put the contents, so there are salespeople who visit the prostitutes and say “you want to advertise? and it’s only a dozen dollars (HKD – about $1.75 CAD or USD) a month and you make more than that in a single day. You do that, and you can increase your reach. You can add your photos, and your specialization on it, so that people can at least see what they are getting, and so on.”

So, ok, one, there is the salesperson, and after the woman says yeah, then they will go down and send a photographer. So the people who got busted in that case are the photographers and the salespeople, and the owner is actually still free! Because all you can say is that you are running a website, but the website is not in Hong Kong, sorry.

CLC: I know that you’ve lived in New York, before coming (back) to Hong Kong. Can a situation like this happen in America or somewhere in the world? Or is it specific to Hong Kong and its idiosyncrasies?

(pause) In New York… I mean, don’t be ridiculous – I don’t know about websites, but in the pre-Internet days, you can buy a copy of the so-called alternative weekly, known as Village Voice. It’s a pretty famous weekly magazine, because it does actually contain some interesting contents? Like, about the arts, Greenwich Village, or East Village, or stuff like that. It’s a pretty thick newspaper, so if you say that at each week it comes out at 80 pages, maybe the last 40 pages are classified ads, because that’s where they make their money. There are perfectly legitimate classified ads, such as apartments to rent, and stuff like that, and then you have pages and pages of escort services, or massage services, and there are photos… so what’s the difference?

CLC: Yeah, and they can’t get busted…

No. It’s a massage service, it’s an escort service…

CLC: So, you lived in New York – for how long? Were you born in Hong Kong?

Yes.

CLC: And you moved to New York or somewhere else?

No. I grew up here and I lived for about seventeen or eighteen years, and then I went to study in Australia, Sydney, for about three or four years, and after that I moved to New York, where I lived for more than thirty years. I came back to Hong Kong in 2003, because my mother who was living here had a stroke, and I was taking care of her.

CLC: So you came back. And you are working for a company in Hong Kong?

In New York, but it’s sort of a globalized world – you don’t have to be anywhere.

CLC: Uh, what made you start the blog?

(Pause) It’s actually fairly easy for me, because I had a website… a couple of websites, since 1995 or something like that.

CLC: Zona Latina?

Yes, and a track-club website.

CLC: A what?

Track-club website… running website?

CLC: Oh ok.

That’s a New York City running club. And that’s actually closer to the blog than Zona Latina. Because it’s all random, like gossip news, like so and so run such a race, and whatever whatever. You know, and it’s a little bit funny, because it’s not totally true. It’s more like so or so run a race in Wisconsin.

CLC: Run races? You mean, just like (upon) hearing rumours of races…

No, no, no, it’s like I had a team, and it’s like a couple of hundred people. I write gossip about them.

CLC: About the track community?

No, it’s just my club – I don’t care about anyone else. It was just a little bit weird, it just had a very strong personality because it was a little bit what you call quirky. You know, it’s like, a lot of stuff tends to be really really funny. For some reason, the stories that I want to focus are the really weird ones? So, I have one teammate, who was in the business of collecting lost gloves. You know, it’s winter, and once in a while we lose gloves, don’t know where it went.

CLC: Heh.

And it’s lost somewhere, and she just collects them. Then, periodically, she would make an announcement, and say, I am bringing all my gloves down to the playground to the corner of 72nd Street and Broadway. I welcome anyone – you can come down and if it’s one of your gloves, take it, even if it isn’t, take it anyways. So, she got featured in the New York Times, who wrote this follow-up… Like, why are you doing that? (laughs)

And, this stuff about people running races? You have tons of people running races. These people are runners, and runner do run races. It’s one thing for you to… They are mostly New York City residents, so you can run local races – on Thanksgiving, you go race somewhere.

CLC: You ran also?

Yeah yeah.

CLC: You still run?

No. Knee problems – very bad knee problems.

CLC: If you were able to, would you run in Hong Kong? Do you know good places to run?

It’s actually very good, because there is so much. Ordinarily, you would advise people to… Running tends to be longer distance. There are certainly plenty of tracks around, but that’s kinda, you can’t run. Unless you want to run like 50 laps. (laughs) It’s not good, because you keep … that’s not good, because you keep running… That’s the reason for my knee problems, because you keep turning that bend. I used to run indoors, which is even worse, because the tracks are bent. So, that could really… (laughs)

CLC: In my city, you can’t run in the winter.

Yeah, but like I have the indoor tracks in New York.

CLC: Yeah, you have to stay indoor… But you can run outdoors in the winter in New York… It’s not too cold, it’s not like in Canada.

It snows in New York but it’s pretty much…

CLC: Clear most of time?

No, I mean they’re very quick and efficient about cleaning. Like, it doesn’t snow that much – it’s not like 3 feet of snow and then (laughs) you can’t do anything about it. So, they may have, let’s say, very typically six inches, then the plows come out, you know, the salt spreaders, the plows, whatever. And you basically have the roads cleaned out.

We also run… It’s actually best to run in the snow, actually, but sometimes… because the snow isn’t really that deep. You know, so we’re really talking about…

CLC: It’s squishy, (but) it’s (also) kinda like irregular, might hurt your knees sometimes (I was thinking about hardened snow, which NYC may not see much of, perhaps). I’m not a professional runner, unfortunately… Um, did you see Lust, Caution?

Yeah, of course, I had to!

CLC: Did you like it? Did you see the rendition of it?

I actually saw it here (at Palace IFC – since we were at IFC’s Pacific Coffee). Because they had the premiere, so I guess that they felt they had to give me a ticket. (laughs) Actually, when the publisher first told me that Ang Lee was going to make a movie, and I hadn’t read the so-called short story carefully before, so, I went back and looked at it… So how are you going to make a movie out of this? (laughs)

So, Ang Lee has actually significantly expanded it, but in a way that, I take, he necessarily had to. Because otherwise, it was way too subtle in an audio-visual media. You can’t really communicate… Because you can’t really have the kinds of monologues that, you know, a first-person observation, that you could have in the novel. So, you can’t express these, can’t expect the actors or the actresses to communicate through facial expressions or hand gestures.

Um, so usually people would say, oh, there are those three bedroom scenes that were not in the book. That’s somehow, I felt, they just had to be there, because it’s not the identical bedroom scenes, because it clearly shows the shift in the so-called power relation, power, politics if you will, as it starts off with the man being dominant, and then by the end, it’s really the woman taking charge? But without that, you couldn’t really tell what exactly had really changed.

And, you know, it has been asked enough that, how do I feel about that – how do I think Eileen Chang would’ve thought – I felt sorry? (Editor’s note: lost with the recording…) Or let’s say even my father would have thought about it. I think the answer is, um, they wouldn’t have minded, because both of them were actually script writer. My father was a film producer.

CLC: In Hong Kong.

Yeah. Some of Eileen Chang’s scripts were actually adapted. Because at one point, she needed to be as prolific and productive as possible, so how many stories, sketches you have to mind, that’s easy. Just go to the classical English-language novels, such as… You actually read some of the film scripts and you can detect a really Pride and Prejudice and stuff like that (inaudible).

But, clearly, doing (during?) the process, she appreciates that she is writing for an audio-visual media, in that, how do you capture the essence of Jane Austen, and that you have to do something, because it’s audio-visual.

CLC: They (in Mainland China) censored the movie, but they censored it after it came out. They let it show for a bit, and then decided to… I mean, Tang Wei cannot (perform in China anymore).

Yeah, there are several things going on. I believe, one, Ang Lee probably, before it ever came to Hong Kong, probably did something, some form of censorship, because some of the photos – there are photos out there that did not show up in the Hong Kong version.

CLC: Photos?

Photos from the film, scenes. And, specifically, and I don’t know how well you remember. It’s somewhere at the start of the movie, when Tony Leung first showed up. He was so-called “at work” and he’s coming out of some kind of dungeon, and his aide is right behind him. And so what was censored was what happened inside the dungeon, where there were some torture scenes and some people being beaten, woman getting stripped naked, blablabla.

Now, you would say, was it necessary? Would that have been necessary? See, he filmed that originally on the assumption that … without that, what Tony Leung does in his day job is quite abstract. You need to be someone familiar with Chinese history – not so much official history, but so-called popular folk history, about what happened during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, you know, these sort of legends about people, number 76, … you know, that particular building, later on, you can see him come out it.

The place is well-known. People would say that they hear people screaming all day and all night, that kind of stuff. Since that was removed, it’s kind of actually hard for an American to appreciate, like, what is he doing – he is not such a horrible person!

CLC: By the end of the movie, you see the people get shot in the quarry…

But that’s not him. He might have signed the order, but it’s a little bit fairly different from basically (being) in the torture scenes.

CLC: In the dialogues, I think I remember one part where he was describing (the torturing)…

Where he said to her, “what do think I was doing”, you know… Like, I think, the dialogue, she says “you’re late”, and he explains “what do you think I was doing? I just arrested, bla-bla-bla, and made him talk, bla-bla-bla”. Hmm, but I think he took it out, I am guessing, because he didn’t want to be accused of gratuitous sex and violence. (laughs)

CLC: (laughs) (since) sex is already there.

Like, the three bedroom scenes, you could say that it’s not gratuitous, because he needs to indicate a shift in the power relationship, so on and so forth. If you just show people being tortured, beaten and raped or whatever, then…

CLC: Yeah, I thought that the sex scenes were not gratuitously there, and they were there for a reason. I didn’t know the reason, but it just felt natural in the flow of the movie as well! Hmm, I have a bunch of questions about media in China and the Western world. Since things are so censored in China (!), I found through the articles that you translate that a lot of news are being transmitted through BBS (bulletin board systems), through unofficial channels. Is there a sort of “free press” in China, but not officially?

(long pause) … no, it depends on what you mean on the specific item. There is a lot of software… OK, I mean, at issue is, they have a, what, 220 million Internet users. I don’t know. And they start talking at the same time, I don’t know how you are going to control it. So, about all you can do, … y’know, people talk about, oh, there is this legendary or mythical Friday morning meetings, where all the managers of the major web portals or forums are summoned to talk to the, whatever, the guys, the officials in charge of the Internet. You’re summoned there and handed off a list: OK, this is what must be avoided.

Fine, OK, (and) these guys go back and put in the filters or tell their workers that whenever someone writes about this, delete it. OK, that’s fine. Let’s say it’s true – I don’t know whether it’s true, but people keep talking about it. And on suddenly breaking events, incidents, they will just pickup the phone and call and say – you know, you can’t wait until Friday – so you could call, call and say that this subject is off.

So an example would be… But your problem is this: I’m going to come in on Friday, and you are going to hand me a list. How long is that list going to be? It’s not going to be 650 pages. Let’s say five pages, and it covers 150 items. That means that the web portals guys say, fine, then it means that everything else not on the 150 is free game, until someone calls on the phone.

So, a lot of stuff just goes right through. What won’t they allow you talk about, there would be things like, oh, this is the 17th Congress of the Communist Party. No discussion – doesn’t matter whether it’s good or bad, just no discussion, just in case. Alright, fine, that’s off the table, you can’t talk about it. But then, all sorts of other things are on the table! So, if some guy wants to say, well, you know, I really don’t like what the French did with the Olympic Relay, so I am going to start a boycott of Louis Vuitton, and then someone else – you know, the discussion starts, and someone else says, “how are we are going to boycott that? I can’t afford it – I can’t buy it anyways!” (laughs) “Oh yeah, maybe you are right. So then let’s see what else is related to LV.” So they say, “Oh, LVMH, the holding company, has bought some stocks in Carrefour – we can boycott a supermarket, can’t we?!” (laughs)

That’s off their attention, until it got so big. Then, you know, someone picks up the phone and say, “wipe it out”. But then that’s only going to be (-inaudible- “tentle?”), because it’s absurd. It’s absurb, because if you get on Google China, google.cn, or the local Baidu search engine, and you look for Carrefour and you can’t find it, it just also wipes out their business. You have a real website, but suddenly you can’t get to it! Nothing on Carrefour, sorry!

CLC: It’s very dangerous to mess with China!

No, it’s… I think some things are not allowed, but there are all sorts of other things that are going through. So, you would say, are they allowed to talk about Tibet? I don’t see any problems.

Um, sometimes someone gets nervous unilaterally and they would just stick in a filter, nothing on Tibet, which is in Chinese, 西藏 (Xīzàng). So, it’s like, ok, you won’t let me type in 西藏 / Xīzàng.

CLC: So, you’re going to write something that sounds…

Right. Just initials, Z.D. (?) or, since 西/Xī is west, there’s a lot of talk of 东藏 “Dōngzàng”.

CLC: Is there a danger that … Because, that slight little small little things that bother these Chinese netizens can snowball into a really really big thing. The story of Grace Wang, that little girl on CCTV.

Very yellow, very vulgar? Um, you think it’s a lot of people, but actually it isn’t. The issue is the base – the base is 220 million. 0.000001% (!) is 20,000 people knocking on your door! (laughs)

CLC: Oh, that’s nothing, eh! (laughs) Everything is so big in China. It’s hard to control all that mass of people. How do you see the future of Chinese media?

(long pause) I think that eventually, all the controls will be gone. It’s gotta be so ridiculous, in the sense that it’s only humanly possible for, let’s say, the guys to say, “that’s the list of the week and everything else is ok”. At some point, it’s just ridiculous.

So, if I want to think about how it would happen, I might want to think… I look at what people are talking (about) today, what they were allowed to talk about on the Internet, five years ago, ten years ago, something like that. You can’t… I mean, just go to any BBS, and say, if I take this stuff, copy it, and post it on a similar BBS ten years ago… (laughs) You know, just take 100 posts, and put it there: well, I think 99 of the people would be arrested! (laughs)

CLC: Things change a lot… And what do you think of the perception of China in Western media? I’ve been “fed” with Western media, and coming to China made me a little bit paranoid about everything that I did in China. Now, I’ve stayed in Asia for my fifth week, and I think that everything is “normal”, and that you have to cause a lot of trouble to be in trouble. What’s my question… What do you think of the perception (of China in) Western media?

(long pause) That’s a very difficult question to ask, because it assumes Western media refers to some kind of, sort of like homogeneous entity? It would be equivalent to thinking, to asking what does the TV media in the US think about the Democratic Party candidates? … Well, what do you mean, Fox News? (laughs)

Uh, you know, it’s not the same. If I was to say, what about the Western media, you can say that some of them are, just by screening the contents, you would say, this is clearly driven by certain political positions, because absolutely nothing good comes out of it. So, I would list, ah, that whole Radio Free Asia. OK, it’s just human rights violations all the time. OK, nothing else ever happens.

Then, you have some other things, which you would say… well, you guys are kind of… Like, I understand, but always find it, you know, rather bizarre. You could take the big American media, like the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal. It’s actually fairly difficult to read, in the sense that you need to understand that they are divided into the news department and the editorial department. And the guys who write the editorial, a lot of times, I must say, you must not read the news in your own newspaper. Because your assertion is totally contradictory to what the reporters are saying! Like, it’s just sometimes, for whatever reason, the guys who are the senior editors just want, have certain positions, and it’s the mission of the newspaper to advance those positions. And ground reality has nothing to do with it.

So, maybe the Chinese people have a lot of difficulty understanding that? You know, they would look at the editorial and say it’s totally wrong. And the Americans would say, why? it’s an editorial, it’s an opinion. Who says there are no rights or wrongs about opinions? It’s not reporting, and the Chinese can’t really distinguish between that?

You also have a… there’s a difference in emphasis. So you see really the contradictions being brought out, especially now, with the Olympic Torch relays. ‘Cause you have been, during this period, travelling…

CLC: I’ve been following it with Hong Kong press. I’ve been reading, you know, the South China Morning Post. It’s one newspaper, I guess – one newspaper in Hong Kong. A place where you have people who are pro-Beijing, and people who are pro – the other camp.

Yeah, they tend to be way too careful.

CLC: Oh yeah, in Hong Kong they are too careful?

No, no, careful in the sense that it’s right. It is… you don’t know say anything that you don’t know. I don’t mean the opinion part, but the journalism part. And so, in that sense, you would say, well, I read the whole thing, and I have no idea what happened, because you simply completely refuse to speculate or even say “rumour has it that” because you couldn’t do anything.

CLC: I think I would say that the way that Tibet was handled was that, you know, by not allowing journalists, you don’t know what’s happening, in the West, and you can speculate in the West that something bad must be happening, since we are not talking about it. Like, nobody knows what’s really going on.

Well, I don’t know if you buy that. OK, so why can’t you tell me that you don’t know what’s happening, instead of making stuff up? (laughs) So, what Chinese are lashing are that we have all these instances where people are making stuff up! And therefore, we will refuse to believe in the Western media anymore. You know, this is treating the term, the concept of Western media as it was a homogeneous entity. “Just because some Western media are making stuff up, then all must be…”

So, I don’t think everyone’s making stuff up, but clearly you can’t write a piece of reportage that in fact says, “we have no idea what’s going on, because we’re not allowed in there”. So, you end up… So what does it mean for you to be fair and balanced when it gets to something (-inaudible-). Two sets of press releases: one from the Chinese government, one from the Tibet government in exile. You look at it, and then you say, you know, even superficially, this is two packs of lies! (laughs) It defies physics!

CLC: It would be interesting if one (a non-Chinese reader, we assume) could read news simultaneously in China, if Google Translate was a bit more faithful to what the original article was. I would like to read editorial from respected Chinese newspapers, and make an opinion from what I read from local media. I hope that someday we have the technological means…

It’s far away!

CLC: You think it’s just a communication problem? People don’t want to dialogue? …

Well, the whole thing is fairly complicated. Part of it is people are… what was it, the thing I was just telling you about: the term is chickens talking to ducks. You know, I have a… maybe the Chinese have this issue about Western media should not just be making stuff up? Because some of this stuff is very straightforward, elementary, basically journalist ethics or something. I mean, the behaviour is simply inexcusable. I think, you know, the answer is not… is just acknowledge it. Because you can’t defend it. You know, like just lifting a photo from Nepal and say, you know, Chinese police beating Tibetan monks. It’s that simple.

So, when the Chinese say this is what’s in Western media, you just say “it’s wrong, whoever picked the photo was either… stupid or getting out of line. Let’s move on with it.” But no, instead, the answer is “this is happening because Western media is not allowed to enter Tibet”. And then, all of a sudden, they are totally stuck, because then the other side says, we allow you into Tibet and produce this kind of stuff?” (laughs) Because you won’t know up to it (-kinda inaudible-), and just move on! If it’s just wrong, just get over it. No big deal, it’s wrong! You can’t say it’s alright, or pretend it’s not there! (laughs)

CLC: I’ll wrap this up. Woaw, it’s been an hour! So, my last question would be, who are you, how do you describe yourself?

Who am I? (laughs) I think, my life experience is I just happen to be someone born in China, grew up for quite some time in Hong Kong. So, I’m someone who has, who knows the Chinese language and understands some of the values. But I have also lived a much longer time Overseas, mostly in the US. So, that relative experience of having lived in two different places meant that I hold a certain amount of relativism? Don’t tell me (that) certain Chinese values or American values is absolutely and universally applicable to everybody – I don’t believe it. Because they are clearly different. I don’t know which is right or wrong: they are just different.

Um, so having said that, I am today, through historical circumstances, family circumstances, living in Hong Kong, with the luxury of plenty of personal time, not having to worry about working hard to earn a living. You know. So I find myself being able to spend a lot of time on my blog. And my hope on the blog is really, a lot of time, by virtue of the fact that I can read Chinese. And what I read in Chinese, what the Chinese are saying, is often not being represented in English. So, my website is there for a way of presenting to English-only readers about what the most hot… the most interesting or popular Chinese news are, and the most significant events of the day, so to speak.

Regarde les Chinois complète sa tournée de Beijing avec cette sixième et dernière entrevue. Née à Hong Kong, grandie en Californie méridionale, et définitivement une New-Yorkaise dans son coeur, Fiona réside aujourd’hui à Beijing, où elle travaille et maintient Quirky Beijing dans ses temps libres. C’était mon dernier soir à Beijing, après deux semaines passées dans la ville, et Fiona a bien voulu répondre à mes questions, malgré le rhume récent qui l’a tût pour les deux derniers jours. Nous avons parlé de ses jours comme enseignante d’anglais langue seconde entre 2006-07, de ce qu’elle pense de la vie d’expatrié en Chine, et de Beijing et de son côté inusité.

Regarde les Chinois completes its tour of Beijing with this sixth and last interview. Born in Hong Kong, grown up in Southern California, and definitely a New Yorker at heart, Fiona now lives in Beijing, where she works and runs Quirky Beijing on her free time. It was my last night in Beijing, after two weeks spent in the city, and Fiona answered my questions despite nursing a recent cold that totally silenced her for the past two days. We talked about her days as an English second-language teacher in 2006-07, what she thinks about expat life in China, and Beijing and its quirkier side.

***

Comme les Chinois: So, you’ve been living in Beijing for two years? How do you like the city?

Fiona: Um, actually, I’ve only been living here for nine months. I’ve lived in China over two years now.

CLC: Um, right. So, you started off as an English teacher in Changchun?

Yeah, and then we came to Beijing. But I can’t say I particularly like Beijing. (laughs)

CLC: How come?

Too big, too smoggy. Um… I like smaller places! (laughs) Inconvenient too…

CLC: But you come from New York, I mean, lived in New York before coming to China. It’s funny for you to say this.

是 (shi, or just “Yes/Correct/Sure” – as Fiona occasionally inserts simple Chinese words in her speech… or did she mean “Sure”?), but it was more convenient to get around, and shockingly the traffic was better in New York, because you can always the subway. You also take the subway here too, but it’s really crowded, it’s not a pleasant experience, and as you pointed out too, the interchanges don’t make any sense. (laughs)

CLC: Hey, so you are the founder of this blog called Quirky Beijing. Tell me about the blog.

Well, the tagline for Quirky Beijing is “finding the …”. What’s the tagline again? (laughs) “finding the gently offbeat in a decidedly uncute city”. It came about because I was really looking for a few things. You know, a more, kind of, indie, twee sensibility, which I wasn’t really finding here in Beijing or in English-language blogs in general. Most of the English-language blogs about China tend to be about politics, or the kind of English teacher adventures in China, so I was kind of beyond both of them… And I also wanted something that would make me, that would enable me to look for things that I liked about Beijing.

CLC: And did you find that? … What did you find?

Um, well, some of the things that I found were mostly – most of them were things that I see every day. Like street food, kinda like funny things that I see on the street. Um, I think a lot about the subway, because I spend most of my time on the subway. So, it’s a big part of my life. And some of the things that I’ve… I also did a lot of posts which are the most popular ones. So, about funny-looking pastries or cute pastries in Beijing, this is the most popular part of my blog. I’m not really sure why, but I guess that there’s more people who like funny-looking pastries than I thought.

CLC: Um, tell me about your work.

Well, I work for Immersion Guides, which is… I do marketing for them. and they’re an English-language guidebook publishing company here. Um, and we do the Insider’s Guide to Beijing, which is this big kinda tome to everything in Beijing. And also, the Taxi Guide, this little Taxi Guide that you tuck in into your pocket, and some more unusual one, like the excursion guide, for day trips around, and also the Mandarin Phrasebook, which has a lot of funny Chinese phrases that you don’t really learn in class. Things like how to say “Dude, that’s a great song”, or how to pick up at an art gallery, like, by impressing them with your knowledge of post-impressionism, but saying all of this in Chinese! (laughs)

CLC: Hey, do you mind if we talk about how original your way of teaching was? B/c I used to read your Livejournal blog, and where you always posted about how you find original ways to teach English to your students…

Yeah, it was mostly because I had to. We were given very little in the way of materials, and the materials that we were given were very repetitive. They were created by a British company, but they still managed to suck. And, um, they were very, extremely repetitive in my opinion. Students got really bored and once I got to know them more, then I just thought of other things that would make them more engaging and that I was more excited about. If the teacher’s not excited about teaching the lesson, then it really comes out.

CLC: Like what? Like what did you do?

Like grammar is a good example of a thing that I was miserable at. I was miserable at grammar, and I was never good at teaching it, I wanna just say it right now. (laughs) And so, if I could get across the grammar point without actually going into the real fine technical details, like (by) making it more fun, so that my students would still get it, and not involve me having to, you know, describe what a gerund did, whatever, then that was much better. Then, actually, breaking it down, explaining it what it meant technically… So, because most native English speakers wouldn’t know what the difference between a gerund or like a past participle, things like that…

CLC: Well, how did you make it fun?

We do a lot of exercises. Once, we did personals, um, they had to write personals described who they were looking for. I actually did a lot of dating-related exercises, just because I liked them. Because I am more romantic, so I want to do that too. Also because, actually, my students too. It was a subject that really engaged them, so we did…

CLC: Well, they were teenagers…

Yeah, they were mentally teenagers. So, we did personals, which was like, you wrote down who, what kind of person you were looking for to date, and this would be given to somebody else in the classroom, and that person had to help you find somebody else in the class, find like the perfect match for this person. Um, and we did speed dating. That was really fun too. Just similar, but you had to interview people. (coughs)

CLC: Did it create any real-life quid pro quo?

Um, yeah actually! There were a lot of couples that ended up in my classes, but I don’t think I had anything to do with it! The thing is that these kids spend their entire days, like, with each other. They lived together, they had classes together, and so it’s kinda natural. There was one student, sort of the big story that came out of my last year there. There were these two students, Bob and Chloe. Bob was like this really sweet, kind of short, chubby kid. Chloe was like this really pretty (girl) – her English was great too. And there was a big joke for most of the, like, entire year and a half that I was there, that Bob really fancied Chloe! But Chloe wouldn’t have anything to do with him… So, it was just this big joke!

And well it became a true story, toward the end of the year, toward the end of my last couple of months there. I was like, “woaw, really?”, texted all my students, and it’s like, “did you hear about this? is this true?” and they all said yes. (laughs) So it’s a big 八卦 (bat-gwa), which is news gossip! (Editor: a term that means a lot of other things too)

CLC: It’s kinda like expat life… They’re always together, the expats, it’s kind of incestuous… In my two weeks experience here in Beijing, this word always comes up (laughs), “incestuous”, tell me about it!

Um, well, judging from both my experience in both Changchun and Beijing, yes, probably expat life is very incestuous. In Changchun, it was literally… there were just like a couple of hundred foreigners out there, maybe a thousand at most. That was segregated between German engineers and their families, and this sort of teaching crowd? So, you could imagine it was a very small circle – you see the same people all the time, hung out with the same people all the time.

CLC: Yet Beijing is a much bigger city.

Yeah, Beijing is a much bigger city, but the same thing happens. I mean, there are sometimes… this is something that is true for almost anybody, all the sort of English-speaking expats. I can’t say for, let’s say the Korean or the Japanese ones, because these are the actually bigger groups here. But the circles don’t really cross. We’re all here for different reasons and about the English-speaking ones, there are people who’ve come to our events, seen on the street, or go to other events that I am also at. I mean, I’ve seen them before a million times. I’ve no idea who they are, or sometimes I know who they are, because of Facebook!

I mean, Facebook, which is huge in China, amongst expats, is this way we can sort of stalk people in the circles in Beijing. Especially, there are people that I’ve seen on Facebook, before I’ve actually met them, still haven’t met. I’m like, oh I know that is, just because I’ve seen them and they’re also on Facebook.

CLC: Hey, how’s it to be Chinese-looking in China, yet being American?

It’s both good and bad. I mean, I really enjoy passing… I mean, until I open my mouth, of course. Then, also, it really kind of frustrates me sometimes, because, you know, there is definitely a difference… Like, sometimes, you can definitely see where an obvious-looking foreigner gets better treatment, than somebody who isn’t. So, that can be really frustrating. On the other hand, then, I can just console myself the knowledge that just being treated like a Chinese person, which means is to be treated like shit.

Um, so, you know, I think like the biggest incident that happened once… where like, I was really angry and I know that this never would’ve happened if I’ve been White, was when my friend and I, we were on a train, moving some things over on the luggage rack. And this Chinese guy starts screaming at me, actually pulled my sweater from my waist – so he was actually physically confrontational. Unluckily for him, I just start screaming back at him and I know that if I’ve been White, this never would’ve happened. It’s like a really ridiculous thing to say, but it really makes me angry when things like that happen.

I mean, the only two times… You know I’ve lived in all these different cities. I lived in New York, in what was considered a dangerous part of New York, you know, there were shootings just outside of my apartment, but I’ve never been physically threatened. And in China, it happened twice where I’ve almost gotten into a fight.

CLC: Hey, are you exhausted about the Olympics?

Yes, I can’t wait for them to be over! And then we can all get back to our real lives, you know. (laughs – Editor’s note: they’re looking forward to them, actually, like anyone else!)

CLC: Ok, thank you Fiona.

Sure.

Je vous présente cette fois un Regarde les Chinois un peu spécial. L’entrevue devait à l’origine servir pour un article sur la scène musicale locale dans la capitale chinoise, mais n’ayant pas pu écrire ledit article, je vous la présente comme entrevue sur ce blogue. Lee Clow est un Washingtonien d’origine (comme l’état) et résident de Beijing depuis les huits dernières années. Nous étions en train de chiller sur la terrasse sur le toit du NLGX, et avons alors parlé de son band ska, de ses bonnes rencontres avec des personnages de la musique pékinoise, et de ce qu’il entrevoit pour le futur de la scène.

This time, I present you with a rather special Regarde les Chinois. The interview was meant to serve as an article on the local musical scene in the Chinese capital, but since it was never written, I am presenting it as an interview on this blog. Lee Clow is a Washingtonian of origin (as in the state) and a resident of Beijing for the past eight years. We were chilling on the NLGX rooftop patio and spoke about his ska band, his interesting encounters with Beijing music characters, and what he sees in the scene’s future.

***

Comme les Chinois: First, please explain who you are, to situate the context.

Lee Clow: Um, well, I am the lead singer of basically what was, kinda is, the only ska band in Beijing (End of the World, aka 世界终止乐队). I mean, there’s been a few bands who’ve tried it over the years, but we’re certainly the only ones who have been playing for a long time.

CLC: For eight years?

Ah, not eight. I’ve been in Beijing eight years. I think the band… Let’s see, we did form in the late summer 2001. So yeah, it is getting on like seven years now, that the band’s been together.

CLC: What are the bands that you recommend?

Well, my biggest recommendation is Brain Failure. They’ve been around the longest, they have the best sound, and best stage presence, performance overall.

CLC: They’re a punk band.

They’re a punk band, yeah.

CLC: They’re Beijingers?

Ah, no actually, only one of them’s from Beijing. Lead singer is from Beijing, but the rest of them are from Zhengzhou, in Henan province. And they’re all second members to take their respective positions. Brain Failure broke up once, and then reformed in about 2000. They reformed with the current… well, most of the current lineup.

Who else to recommend… Joyside. Those guys are good, fun stuff. Lead singer is sort of a Jim Morrison type. Usually too trashed to play their own songs…

CLC: Yeah, I saw him in that (documentary) movie, Beijing Bubbles. He looked like he was stoned.

He always looks like he’s stoned! Never seen him look not stoned! I’ve known him a lot of years… (laughs)

Um, last night I went and saw Misandao. Well, I was playing with Misandao. They’re local skinheads. They’re the biggest of the skinhead bands in Beijing.

CLC: Oh yeah, skinheads. Like, the aesthetics, but none of the ideology?

Well, more of the sort-of traditional ideology, which is like “free” sort of thing. But like unifed… Like, “we’re a bunch of kinda thugish guys, but stick to our own and we believe that we have the right to believe what we want to believe…” They’re very… I don’t want to say anti-government, because I am going to get them into trouble, but … um (laughs)

SL: Reactionary?

Yeah, they’re rather reactionary. They have songs about cops and stuff like that, you know. Like, half their songs are about they hate cops, about how you shouldn’t be a political tool. The other half of the songs is about how awesome it is to be a skinhead… I like them! They’re good friends of mine. You know, I got their lead singer’s first pair of suspenders, ok! (laughs)

SL: It’s a girl, I hope?

** SL is British.

Not the British meaning of suspenders, but braces. That’s how you call them, right? Suspenders are braces… garters.

CLC: Oh, like jarretières…

Yeah yeah. (Editor’s note: actually, I was totally wrong, they’re just the thing that Larry King wears – but you immediately notice it on their picture on their MySpace). No, he doesn’t wear garters! (laughs) Suspenders is the American meaning. Braces!

CLC: Where is the scene going?

The scene is getting kinda commercial. A lot of the newer bands are sorta looking out for some money, rather than just trying to make art. IThe scene’s been kinda fractuous and volatile since the big new school / old school fight broke out about four years ago.

CLC: What’s that?

Um, basically, there were a lot of pop-punk bands that sort of sounded like Blink 182-ish, and skate punk, that kind of thing. And then there were these old school bands that, you know, all had their mohicans, leather jackets, and stuff. And then, they all started breaking bottles over each other’s faces… A few people ended up in jail, and since then, the punk scene just hasn’t been as united, good as it was in the early days.

It used to be like, everybody not only was going to every other band’s shows, but had members in each other’s bands. These were the old days!

CLC: I guess that as China gets richer, more open, that sort of scene is less underground, becoming more of a mainstream thing.

Yeah, a lot of people are accusing Brain Failure of being sellouts and stuff, but… I mean, they’ve signed with a record label, they toured in the US, but I’ve known them a long time, you know, and they’re… I don’t want to say “rock stars”, because that’s got horrible connotations to it, but, you know, they’ve just wanted to share their music with everybody, and it was a dream of theirs, forever, to tour the US, and they got to do it. So, I don’t hold that against them, and I think it’s prickish to do that. I think that most of the other bands are just jealous, to be honest!

CLC: Hey, well thanks.

No problem.

Regarde les Chinois présente maintenant sa quatrième entrevue à Beijing. Native de Qingdao, Patricia Li vit maintenant à Beijing depuis la dernière année. Elle a vécu à Montréal, alors qu’elle était étudiante en administration à l’Université McGill, et écrit maintenant une chronique d’humeur hebdomadaire décrivant des scènes de vie à Beijing. Malheureusement, ses articles ne sont disponibles que sur la version papier du Luby, mais voici un échantillon (Google Translate) récent de ses écrits, parlant de fumer dans les restaurants en Chine.

Regarde les Chinois is now presenting its fourth interview in Beijing. A native of Qingdao, Patricia Li is now living in Beijing since the last year. She lived in Montreal, as a management student at McGill University, and now writes a weekly column depicting daily life scenes in Beijing for the Luby, a Montreal-based newspaper published in Chinese. Unfortunately, her articles are only available in Luby’s paper version, but here is a recent sample (Google Translate) of her work, telling her story of smoking in restaurants in China.

***

Comme les Chinois: You live in Beijing right now?

Patricia Li: Yep.

CLC: And you lived in Montreal for…

For two years and a half.

CLC: You studied there?

Yeah, I studied at McGill, in management.

CLC: And you worked in Montreal?

Just a part-time job, at the Chinese newspaper, and also Chinese travel agency.

CLC: What were you doing?

As a tour guide, for Wonder Travel, and gathering some news, or doing some marketing jobs for Luby.

CLC: So, now you’re writing for the Luby from Beijing?

Yah. They say, actually, they ask me to do that, is like, our reporter was asked to stay in Beijing for the Olympics. So, the title is really special, and I said “Ok!”, because I’m here, I can write something. I think it’s good for me too, because I want to be a reporter in the future, maybe for a TV station, so I think it’s good for me as well. Since I am doing that, I find it kind of pushed me to be really really… you kind of have to focus on the news all the time, and try to read as many newspapers as you can, in order to get insights from news.

Actually, for the first few weeks that I wrote the column, I find that all my news were from TV and newspapers. I kind of follow their stuff. After a few weeks, I find that the friends near me, the colleagues near me, what’s on their sites is more interesting, much better than what I see on big sites. So, I kind of start to do that(, cover stuff like they do).

Since I am doing a job that is (with) a performance firm, so I start to… I have to go out all the time, go to the five-star hotels, talk to the people working for, like, That’s Beijing English magazines. So, I can find a lot of topics to write from (these experiences).

CLC: Do you find it weird now to be on the other side of the microphone?

Yeah, it’s weird! I have to answer the questions that I discussed before (off mic)! You just ask back the questions, and the answer you actually know it, right!

CLC: Yeah, that was a really cool story, that you told, (happening) in the hotel…

Yeah, yeah… Actually, I think, when I saw it, I didn’t really want to write it as an article. I thought maybe it wasn’t really good… But after, I think maybe it’s a really good topic, because people… some people see (this kind of thing happening) but never write about it. I don’t think it can be published in Chinese newspapers either. So, only someone like me, who is doing articles, but published in Chinese newspapers outside of China (can write this). It’s one way to other people, other Chinese people know what is happening in China, what happens to Chinese people in China, but also what foreigners do in China. It’s not all good parts about foreigners, it’s also other parts of foreigners as well.

*** I am going to try to tell Patricia’s story again, since I cannot find the article on the Luby News website! One day, she, with a male Chinese friend is visiting some five-star hotel in Beijing. In the main lobby, they see a man, Western man, stretching his feet over the table, shoes off, as if he were in his living room. Something ticks off her friend about this behaviour, so he goes to the hotel staff to try to get them to tell the man to stop. They wouldn’t help Patricia’s friend, saying that it isn’t their job to take care of such behaviour. Of course, he thinks it’s because he’s a foreigner that they let him behave like this. So, instead he goes himself to the man, starts staring at him (since he cannot speak English so well). The man looks back at him, defiantly. They stare for a bit, until the man packs, grumbling, and leaves the scene. So, to prove a point, that hotel staff behave differently whether you are a foreigner or not, our friend starts taking position just like the Westerner previously did. Promptly, the hotel staff comes to him, and says that he can’t do that: it’s a five-star hotel lobby. “So, why did you let the Westerner do that, then?”

CLC: Do you like living in China, versus living in Canada?

I think here is… Because, here, I speak Chinese, I don’t feel kind of like an outsider. Like, in Montreal, I don’t speak French that well, so for a lot of stuff, I am kind of blocked from main(stream) society. And here, I mean we have more opportunities, not only for Chinese, but for foreigners as well. As long as you can speak English, you can find a job in Beijing.

You make friends… All people can be your friends, really. I think this is the good side, and also, another good side is that you are living in Beijing right now, and the Olympics are coming. So, you are the center of the world! And people, your friends in other cities in China, they have you back here to, like, “Hey Patricia, can I live at your place during the Olympics?!” (laughs) “Ok, that’s fine!”

CLC: You should rent it to them!

(laughs) No, it’s ok, only a few days, it doesn’t really matter. So, because you are in Beijing, the capital of China, actually a lot of people never come here. My mom, only came here one or two times, but never doing the tours. Also, my other friends, they always want me to present them (the city) when they come here. I can lead them to 天壇 (Tiantan), Heaven Temple. In Beijing, you have different places to go to… But here, winter’s cold, and summer’s hot, and it’s not as clean as Montreal, that’s for sure. Also, in the winter, although Montreal is colder, but as long as you come inside, you don’t feel cold at all, right. Here, outside is cold, and inside, the heater is not good enough, so you still have to wear a lot of stuff!

CLC: Yeah, it’s like that in Hong Kong too. When it’s like 15ºC, you freeze to death, it’s cold.

Yeah!

CLC: But in Montreal, when it’s 15ºC, you see people in shorts outside!

Yeah yeah! I like that. I do miss a lot of stuff in Montreal. I lived in Vancouver, Edmonton and Montreal, three cities, during my school time. So, I liked Montreal the best.

CLC: What do you write about in the Luby?

Um, it’s a column, and we call it 草根 (Cao gen – literally, it means “Grassroots”). Cao gen is not a celebrity. It’s just real people (leading) real lives. So, I just talk as myself, as cao gen, and anywhere I go… maybe, some people think that cao gen is just people who go to cheap restaurants, and find a cheap place to buy clothes. If you stay in Beijing for a long time, you know which restaurant is good and also is cheap, and also where to buy clothes – you can save a lot of money like that. But this is kind of the spirit of people who are living here. You want to save money in order to buy more stuff.

I think… I think that is real life. I don’t think it counts as fact… I think that readers, when they read my articles, they will feel that this is me, as well. And if I am in Beijing, I would feel the same stuff. So, I think it’s really close to the readers.

*** At this point, we exchange on writing styles, as this blog that you are holding in your hands also prefers low-key daily life stuff.

CLC: Do you have a place to recommend to eat?

In Beijing?

CLC: Yeah. This restaurant (where we are sitting at), is it good?

It’s a Shanxi restaurant, it’s pretty good! (Talking to the microphone) Just give me a call when you are here! As long as you come from Montreal, I will be your guide here! (laughs)

CLC: (laughs) omg, are you sure of that?

Yes, I like to meet friends (from) Montreal. It’s a cool place.

CLC: Well, thank you Patricia.

Tout à fait dans l’esprit Regarde les Chinois-eque, ce fut par hasard que j’ai rencontré les prochains invités à cette chronique (qui se traîne encore les pattes à Beijing, alors que je suis rentré à Montréal depuis plus d’un mois). Je rentre dans ce magasin quelconque de la Nanluoguxiang, la nouvelle allée « in » parmi les hutongs, au centre historique de Beijing, après avoir aperçu à la fenêtre des t-shirts design-és à mon goût. Voilà tu pas que le gars dans le magasin m’accueille avec « Ni Hao » bien accentué (en anglais). En plus d’être un Chinois d’outre-mer, le type est né et a vécu les premières dix années de sa vie à Montréal! Avec des copains (aussi Chinois d’outre-mer) rencontrés à Beijing, Raymond Walintukan a fondé NLGX, un genre de café se basant sur un groupe de protection des hutongs et qui vend des patentes design. Raymond et Edmond Hung, son comparse californien, se sont échangés la parole, pendant qu’on déménageait le sofa sur lequel j’étais assis…

Going perfectly along the Regarde les Chinois-esque spirit, it was by pure chance that I met the next guests to this column (which is still lagging behind in Beijing, while I am back in Montreal since more than a month). I enter this random store on Nanluoguxiang, the new “in” tourist street at the historical centre of Beijing, after seeing nice designed tees that I liked. And there you have the guy in the store greets me with a thickly accented “Ni Hao”. On top of being an Overseas Chinese, he was born and lived in Montreal for the first ten years of his life! With friends that he met there (also Overseas Chinese), Raymond Walintukan founded NLGX, some sort of cafe based over a hutong protection group that sells designed stuff. Raymond and Edmond Hung, his Californian pal, both spoke to me while they were moving out the couch that I was sitting on…

(Raymond passe à l’émission Ailleurs c’est ici à la Première Chaîne de Radio-Canada, mercredi le 2 juillet 2008.)

***

Comme les Chinois: So you came here, and you met your friends?

Raymond Walintukan: Yeah, on an unfortunate event, on the Great Wall (laughs). Seriously, that’s how I met them, on the Great Wall… We were camping on the Great Wall, and just decided to do something, and we did it, and it was a lot of fun!

CLC: This thing (NLGX) was an association for preserving the hutongs…

RW: Right, and we’re working actually with a culture heritage project… it’s actually on our website. And what they are doing is culture heritage protection and things like that, in Beijing. So, that’s what we’re all about: we want to preserve the hutongs, and the bu chai (不拆). You know the story with the bu chai, right?

CLC: What’s a huchai (sic)?

RW: You see our grey t-shirt over there, maybe you can take a picture later.

CLC: Yeah, I think I’ll buy one of these. (And I did.)

RW: The government puts it on somebody’s house, and two weeks later, they’ll go and demolish the house. So, some guy was really brave, and then he wrote a “bu” (editor’s note: is the character for the negative of something), to kind of show, like, against the destruction. And these are really really old hutongs, but they are demolishing it for whatever reason, for making money or whatever. And so, that’s what we’re all about…

CLC: And this is something you run… You have been here for two and a half years, been doing this for all this time?

RW: Ah, we’ve only been doing this for, since last… Um, the shop’s been only open for a month, since March (2008), but NLGX was open since, maybe, October. And it was only a concept, an idea. We wanted to make a lifestyle brand, you know, wanted to make it all about travel, all about the apparels, stuff like that. We never thought that it would happen, but we had so much success in the last month. This is a great thing, y’know. We’re lucky to be on this street – this is a really nice street, with a seven hundred years old history, and you see old people up and down, walking around, it’s really cool…

CLC: But it’s been very commercialized…

RW: A little. It’s very very different from a year ago, or two years ago.

CLC: That’s what I was discussing yesterday with someone I met. He came to Beijing – he’s Canadian Chinese – three years ago, and lived (around) here. And he said that when he came here, there was like two cafes. And the whole street has been developed.

RW: Yeah, that’s because the government put a law on this street, and protected it. So, we cannot build any buildings. You can change the interior, and a little bit of the exterior, but it’s considered to be a national treasure now, or something like that, so the government put a law saying that you cannot do any major construction. So, nothing is going to change here – maybe the shops will change, but everything else stays the same, which is going to be cool.

CLC: It’s a good thing for you to start the shop, now… So, you’re going to stay in town when the Olympics happen?

RW: Yeah, it’s going to be crazy. I have no idea what is going to happen. It’s totally up in the air, what sort of people are going to show up! (laughs) Yeah, I mean, it’s going to be exciting. It’s only two weeks and we’re for the long run. It seems like there is a lot of people that are building things for this two-week Olympics thing, which I don’t know what the deal is with that.

CLC: What kind of expectation do you have, what sort of dream do you have (with NLGX)?

RW: With this? Well, we just want to promote the hutongs. That’s the most important thing… We love this place. I mean, these guys (patrons) live here, some of these guys live here. I can’t afford to live here (laughs) but I come here all the time! It’s basically like if I live here.

CLC: You live on the fifth ring, right? That’s pretty far…

RW: Yeah, fifth ring. I ride my bicycle here though sometimes. Two times a week, I’ll try for, and it’s an hour and six minutes, and it’s a long ride. But it’s good, because you get to see more of Beijing, and this area, this hutong area, is what Beijing looked like 50-100 years ago. You can imagine what it’s like. It’s the same, you know, whereas cities like Shanghai are so developed that it’s what cities are going to look like in 20 years!

CLC: So, why did you come to Beijing?

*** And, at this point, Raymond knocks down my double shot espresso, at which point we switch focus on Edmond.

CLC: So, you are one of the partner, right?

Edmond Hung: Yeah yeah.

CLC: You were in the States before?

EH: I was in San Francisco, grew up there, went to school at University of St. Louis, went to Hong Kong, worked there for a couple of years.

CLC: Are you Cantonese Chinese?

EH: Yeah. Can you speak?

CLC: 小小 (siu siu / a little)

EH: Yeah, me too, 小小. It improved a lot when I went to (Asia). I graduated from university, and then moved to Hong Kong.

CLC: You lived there…

EH: I lived, worked there for two years.

CLC: What’s your field?

EH: I studied business, went to b-school. The plan was to try and live in Asia, come here working and living. It’s great experience.

CLC: I’ve met quite a few Overseas Chinese… Chinese Canadians who lived all their lives, were born in Canada, and they go back to Asia to find their roots.

EH: It’s cool, yeah. In certain ways, it’s like a… culture shock, you know. But it’s weird being here, and of Asian descent. Most Westerners think you are local.

RW: And most Chinese…

EH: Think you are Korean! (laughs)

CLC: Or Japanese! (laughs)

RW: You get that a lot?

CLC: Ah… It happened yesterday!

RW: “Are you Japanese?” “No-no, I am French! Woaw, no, wait a minute!” (laughs – Editor’s Note: There was, in April, a backclash against the French in China, because of their stance with respect to Tibet, Sarkozy hypothetical boycott of the opening ceremony). You know, I am going to you another cup – you are not going to sleep tonight!

*** At this point, Raymond leaves to get me a new cup of espresso…

EH: Yeah, so it’s kinda weird. I told Chinese people that I was born in the US, and they’re like, but you don’t look American! …

*** We skip a little random talk on California, and Raymond comes back with the coffee…

CLC: Actually, one of my friends in Beijing grew up in California, in Arcadia.

EH: Oh, Arcadia! I am from Irvine!

RW: Oh, I am from the OC (Orange County)!

CLC: So, is Arcadia part of Orange County?

RW: No, Arcadia is part of LA County… It’s pretty close. But we always drive to Arcadia, because it’s the Asian area. To get the 珍珠奶茶 (Zhen zhu nai cha – Bubble tea), the 雲吞 (wonton).

CLC: Well, I am sure you can find your stuff in your city too… I come from Montreal, and you can’t find _anything_ (of course, I vastly exaggerate).

RW: But a lot of Vietnamese, huh?

CLC: Yeah…

RW: Hey, (friends) are having a party tomorrow, just nearby.

EH: A housewarming.

RW: Yeah, so there is a party tomorrow, in the hutong, if you want to crash. In a hutong, real hutong.

CLC: Really? When, what time?

EH: Just around here…

CLC: It’s because I have some Chinese friends who invited me to go to Mao Live (a well-known live house in Beijing, close to Nanluoguxiang, on Guloudajie).

EH: Cool place, Mao Live.

CLC: Went to D-22 last week.

RW: Oh yeah?

EH: Our store manager is actually a Taiwanese girl. Her boyfriend is actually being an instructor for a samba group.It’s actually quite an interesting group, mostly Chinese locals actually. It’s called Sambasia. The chapter in Beijing is one of the newest. They also have a chapter in San Francisco, and New York too, as well. They just had a performance at Mao a few days ago, like a second anniversary.

CLC: I saw some old people dancing outside the subway (the other night).

EH: Yeah, they do that every night. In Houhai, there’s a lot of it.

*** The guys give me their cards, but I tell them that I don’t have one, since I am not someone important. “Everyone has a card in China!”, says Edmond. For a while after this, Raymond, Edmond and the dude at the bar discuss how to organize their party the day after. They have a sanlunche. They use it to transport the big red couch I sat on during the first part of this “interview”.

RW: I can’t believe it – can you imagine, he’s got a big couch on a sanlunche! (wipes tear)

CLC: One last question…

RW: Yeah, go for it.

CLC: Why did you come to Beijing?

RW: Ahh, I’d like to say, I like Beijing food. But it’s more… One part is discovering your roots, you know. I look Chinese, I don’t speak any Chinese, it’s kinda like it’s the birthplace of my culture, in the sense that you have to go back and feel it up. (laughs)

CLC: Found any roots?

RW: Sort of! You change a little bit, you know. I learned a little bit more about how the Chinese think. You know, we think as from a Western perspective. We know how Chinese think, because we look Chinese, and our parents are Chinese, but it’s very different here, very very different here. And, that’s one of the main reasons why I came back.

The other reason is that I wanted to get out of OC. I rather didn’t go to another OC, like Shanghai, and decided to come here, and this is where… I mean Shanghai is very very different from Beijing… Shanghai is very shark oriented, go-get, entrepreneurial-oriented mindset. Whereas Beijing is more of a culture centre, because everything is preserved here. Things have been here for a really long time. People who are here, they know that the pie is large enough, there is enough for everybody. Not everyone is here to do business and be a shark. Everyone is here to learn about the culture, and that’s why you meet so many more interesting people, I think, in Beijing, than in Shanghai.

Well, you meet a lot of business people. Business is your focus, and it’s a great place. But here, you meet a lot of brave, culturally-interested people, and you see a vast majority of foreigners who come here are so interesting to talk with. And this is what I love about it.

But the original reason why I came here? More opportunity than California, I think. In California, you would be stuck in an office every day.

CLC: Were you bored in California?

RW: Born in California? No, I was born in Canada.

CLC: Bored, bored of California…

RW: Oh, was bored of California? Yeah, I think so. Because I am tired of the beautiful sun, driving down the beach in my car with the top down… Girls in bikini all the time. You know, I prefer a city with…

CLC: …with grey skies!

RW: …grey skies! And a lot of culture. But it’s the people that make it interesting. People who come here got to be brave. Gotta be mentally-ill or brave. (laughs)

CLC: Ok, thanks!

RW: Sure, anytime you need it!

Regarde les Chinois poursuit sa route à Beijing. Le mois dernier, j’ai rencontré Terry Chan, un Torontois qui vit à Beijing depuis l’automne dernier pour étudier le Mandarin. Je l’ai rencontré dans le coin touristique de Houhai, un lac au centre de Beijing, avec des restaurants, bars et boîtes de nuit dans ses environs, desservant surtout des expatriés et des jeunes locaux.

Regarde les Chinois continues on its trek in Beijing. A month ago, I met Terry Chan, a Torontonian who lived in Beijing since last Fall, learning Mandarin. I met him at the tourist area of Houhai (后海), a lake in Central Beijing, with restaurants, bars and nightclubs built in its surroundings, serving mostly an expatriates and young locals.

***

Comme les Chinois: So, where are you from?

Terry Chan: I’m from Toronto and just got to Beijing in September 2007 to learn Mandarin.

CLC: So, we’re in this tourist area called Houhai…

And just been disappointed by a restaurant catering to expats…

CLC: And we’re getting run over by these… whatever they’re called (actually, they’re modern-day rickshaws-for-tourists). So, what do you think about China?

Hoho, what do I think about China! How do I answer that… Difficult question to answer. In what respect?

CLC: Oh, I don’t know… daily life! What were you expecting before you came to China?

Well, I was told, actually, by some friends who have been to China before to not expect anything, to sort of come here with a blank slate, and go from there… [silence] Sorry, I must be giving you the most boring interview ever! (Editor’s note: to be fair to Terry, this is probably the interview with the least preparation ever!)

CLC: Why did you come to China?

Well, actually, as a Chinese-Canadian person that never really learnt the language, I thought that part of me would always feel incomplete, if I didn’t learn Chinese. My family is from Hong Kong. It’s my eventual goal to learn Cantonese, but I figured that in the short term, learning Mandarin would be useful, because you can’t really use Cantonese outside of Hong Kong or the diaspora in Toronto, Vancouver. Also, as I’ve taken courses on China – Chinese politics – when I was at university, I figured it’s a topic that interests me…

CLC: China? Or Chinese politics? …

Chinese politics. I figured that if I can’t speak the language, then what did I really know about China…

CLC: Is it hard to make friends with locals?

Um, you know it’s weird… On campus, it’s sort of weird. We only meet up with locals only if we have a stated goal, which is that we teach them English, and they teach us Chinese. Well, actually, I’ve made a few friends randomly, on the subway. It’s sort of weird, normally, pretty much every time I go out on the street, as a huayi (华裔), a lot of people mistake me for a local. It’s pretty often that Chinese people will ask me for directions. When they see the confused look on my face, they get interested! That’s how friendships start! For example on the subway!

*** Incidentally, after the interview, we meet three Torontonians of Egyptian origin on the subway!

CLC: Yeah, it happened to me! But it didn’t get further than that.

What was the expression on the face?

CLC: Oh, the person just turned around, and left…

Oh ok. I got that yesterday! They look at you very weirdly, like, “what’s wrong with you”. That’s a minority of people. Other people, they have this inquisitive look on their face.

CLC: Maybe they’re just afraid of having to speak English. Imagine if we had to speak Mandarin to some stranger, in Montreal…

Yeah, that’s true. Well, it’s going to sound like a very simple, obvious thing, but the biggest hindrance for learning Mandarin in Toronto was that there were too many barriers to test it out!

*** Wind is picking up madly…

CLC: Oh gosh, the wind is getting high (!)

Yeah, on days like this, it’s relatively better. Actually, I think that a lot of people in Beijing like the rain, even though the weather sucks, because it means that the next day, the wind will carry the pollution away.

CLC: And it’s actually the case! I can see a blue sky in Beijing!

I will be amazed if there can be blue skies for the Olympics.

CLC: Do you get special treatment for being a huaqiao (华侨 – Overseas Chinese)? Being in the middle of two cultures… you’re not one, you’re not the other?

I mean, it is nice to blend in. For example… Maybe we should stop.

*** We skip the recorder for a while, because they are repairing the alleyways in Houhai. We can’t even hear ourselves speak, let alone record what we’re saying…

CLC: So, we’re talking about special treatment.

Well, there’s a handful of people who look at me and can tell that I am not from around here.

CLC: What gives it away?

I guess it’s maybe the way I dress, or my hair or something like that. To be honest, most of the time, it sort of feels like flying under the radar. People mistake me for a local, and it’s kind of nice, and I can blow my cover as I please, so!

You know, you often see for other laowai (老外 – slang for foreigners), if they are white, they get bugged all the time on the street. Someone would come up to them and say “Hello! Hello!”, and they want to practice their English, or something like that. Maybe in that respect, it’s not too good… Oh, or maybe it would be a good thing for my Chinese if people would approach me like this all the time!

CLC: You want to stay in Beijing?

I could stay here, but never to live. I think Toronto will always be home. There’s some stuff that you can put up with, for example the pollution, if you’re only going to be here for a year. But if you had to live here, stay with this for the rest of your life, personally, I couldn’t do it.

CLC: So, we’re going to find this kao rou (烤肉 – barbecued meat) place?

Yeah. Right now, we’re standing in front of Guloudajie, and the old Bell Tower. We’re going to a place, a street, that sells a lot of street food.

CLC: Well Terry, thank you for your time!

Ceci est la première de cinq entrevues réalisées lorsque j’étais à Beijing en avril dernier, pour la section Regarde les Chinois de CLC. J’ai rencontré Joe Kan, un Canadien Chinois né à Edmonton et qui a étudié et vécu à Montréal pour sept ans, et qui travaille maintenant comme architecte basé à Beijing pour une firme américaine. Après avoir visité un nouveau complexe résidentiel à être construit près du centre de Dongzhimen, nous sommes allé nous asseoir à la succursale toute proche de Din Tai Fung, une chaîne taiwanaise de restaurant connue pour leurs xiao long bao. On a parlé d’Edmonton, de la banlieue et de la redéfinition des espaces urbains et publics en Chine.

This is the first of five interviews that I conducted when I was in Beijing in mid-April, for CLC’s Regarde les Chinois section. I met Joe Kan, an Edmonton-born Canadian Chinese who studied and lived in Montreal for seven years, and who has been for the past year a Beijing-based architect working for an American firm. After visiting a new residential complex in construction near the Dongzhimen hub, we sat at the nearby branch of Din Tai Fung, a Taiwanese restaurant chain famous for its xiao long bao. We talked about Edmonton, suburbs, and the redefinition of urban and public spaces in China.

***

Comme les Chinois: Where are you from?

Joe Kan: I was born in Edmonton, moved to Montreal for university, and lived in Montreal for about seven years, and then came to Beijing last year.

CLC: Why did you come to Beijing?

I came to Beijing on a scholarship with McGill, to do research on urbanism in Beijing. My travels kind of transformed into working as an architect in China, which is something I’ve always wanted to do anyways.

CLC: How was it growing up in Edmonton?

Well, when I came to Beijing, I realized how small Edmonton is. Actually, when I was living in Montreal, and had to go back to Edmonton, to visit my family, you get a sense that Edmonton is kind of surrounded with farmlands. It’s like a farm city! Edmonton is 95% suburbia. There is no downtown, or if there is, nobody uses it.

CLC: Tell me about public space in China.

The general perspective is that public space is disappearing in China, that the kinds of space that you would see in old cities is disappearing, like the alleyways, the public courtyards and things like that.

I don’t think it’s necessarily the case. I think that public space in China is transforming, in two different directions. One direction is a typical suburban transformation. All the public space gets located inside a mall, so there is a separation between where you live and work, and where you play. The other direction is sort of these new innovative urban spaces, like the one being designed by Steven Holl, where you are incorporating public space within where you live, within where you work. By doing that, you create these new connections between people, these spontaneous happenings within the city that are disappearing because of suburbia.

There is a number of projects in China, especially in Beijing, that are trying to rethink what contemporary public space is. And that’s exciting – and it’s happening at an unprecedented scale in China.

CLC: I think that with the density of population, it will never go back to courtyards, or alleyways. Do you think that’s true?

When you go to the streets right now, even some of the new streets, you still get the sense of the street life that existed for decades. You see these food hawkers, on the side of the road, in this brand new complex. Or these spontaneous grocery stores with all the vegetable and fruits spilling onto the street. These things still happen, even in the new context. I don’t think it’s entirely disappearing. But it’s just like… Everything in China is reappropriated.

*** As we are talking, the waiter is bringing us our order: a steamer of xiao long bao, and some fried tung choy…

CLC: Do you like Din Tai Fung?

…Din Tai Fung is a weird thing. It’s Taiwanese. It’s not even what you would characterize as a modern Chinese restaurant…

CLC: Well, it comes from Taiwan, but that’s (pointing to the xiao long bao) from Shanghai.

It’s a caricature of Chinese cuisine. That’s (pointing to the choy I think) typically Hong Kong, that’s typically Shanghai, and you get some food that is typically Taiwanese… I find that Chinese food is… You can’t really define it, it’s really complex. So, Din Tai Fung kind of offers different flavours, from different parts of the Chinese world. But it’s by no means a Chinese restaurant.

CLC: What do you like the most about China? Or what don’t you like about China?

I like how real people are in China, you know. Real in the sense like… At least in Canada, you’re defined by what kind of clothes you wear, what kind of music you listen to, what you believe in, and things like that. In China, you know, I don’t think that vanity is such an issue. The clothing people wear, people’s habits, they don’t change based on vanity.

People are very proud of where they came from, you know. The kind of question that you ask locals is: “Ni shi nali ren?”, or “Where are you from”. Your rootedness, your sense of where you are from: that gives you identity. And that’s what I like about the Chinese people. They know where they come from.

CLC: And you grew up in Edmonton, and there were not a lot of Chinese people…

Not too much… I mean, there weren’t lots of Chinese people like you would find in Vancouver or Toronto, like whole communities, whole neighbourhoods. People who move to Edmonton, especially Chinese who move to Edmonton, they don’t move because of the climate, they don’t move because it’s the most exhilarating place to live, or most exotic place to live.

Chinese people move to Edmonton primarily because of work. It happened in the 80s, when there was the oil boom. People moved to Edmonton for a lifestyle that they dream for.

CLC: Was it why your parents moved to Edmonton?

I think that might’ve been one of the reasons. Back at that time, there was so much wealth in Alberta because of the oil…

CLC: Well, I mean, it’s happening all over again.

It’s happening all over again, yeah. But this time around, it’s different, because it’s not affordable to live in Edmonton, unless you have a good job, and unless you can afford the housing. But yes, it’s true, a lot of people are moving again, because there are jobs again. That’s a natural…

CLC: Sometimes, people move for the quality of life.

But they quickly realize that the quality of life in Edmonton is not dictated by climate, is not dictated by the quality of the city. By most standards, Edmonton is a suburban city, a city that requires you to own a car…

CLC: What’s your relationship with suburbs?

After living in Montreal for several years, downtown, and in the Plateau, and after living in Beijing for one year, I find that … the quality of life, when you are living in close quarters is dramatically better than when you live in your piece of land in suburbia.

CLC: Changes the personality of people too, I think. Whereas suburbs encourage individuality a lot, people living in huge apartment blocks are more closely-knit. Is that possible? That there is something different about people living in apartment complexes.

Yeah, most truth. But sometimes you find aspect of this kind of (suburban) lifestyle in the middle of the city. The city is supposed to be a rich place, where people from all walks of life come to… There’s a reason why people live together. It’s like when you share a space with roommates, and it’s not only because you want to save money. Because there is these interesting things that can happen when people live together.

So it’s kind of ironic that when people live in the city, they don’t want to reap the benefits of the city. Like, walking on the street, right outside your house… like grocery store within walking distance of your doorstep.

The idea that the city is a place where you are interacting with people that may not be of the same background as you, or the same beliefs, same mentality. You learn from them, people want to learn from those interactions. It’s lost in suburbs.

CLC: Thank you Joe.

Il y a deux semaines, j’étais à Kenting dans le sud de Taiwan pour Spring Scream. J’en ai profité pour m’asseoir avec Duggar, le propriétaire de mon auberge, pour ce prochain Regarde les Chinois. C’était le jeudi soir juste avant la fin de semaine du Spring Scream, et je venais de débarquer en ville, et nous nous sommes rencontrés dans sa minivan transformée en magasin de brocantes à saveur d’Hawaii au bord de la rue, à la limite est du village touristique de Kenting. Nous avons parlé de la petite histoire derrière son arrivée à Taiwan via ce petit centre de villégiature peu connu à l’extérieur, la vie d’étranger à apparence occidentale à Taiwan, ses origines hawaiiennes, de politique locale, et bien sûr de bouffe.

Two weeks ago, when I was in Kenting in the south of Taiwan for Spring Scream, I sat down with Duggar, the owner of my hostel for our next Regarde les Chinois. It was the Thursday before the Spring Scream weekend, and I had just landed in town, and we met in his minivan revamped into a road-side store, which he parked at the east-end of the Kenting town to sell his Hawaii-themed things. We chatted about how he first arrived in a small resort town little known outside of Taiwan, life as a Western-looking foreigner in Taiwan, his Hawaiian origins, local politics and food, of course.

***

Comme les Chinois: What brought you to Taiwan?

Duggar Parrish: I came here in 1993, because I was working in a hotel in a nice beach resort hotel on Kauai Island. When they were filming the movie Jurassic Park, in 1992, a big hurricane, force 4-5, hit the island, and the island closed down. The same owners of the hotel I was working with, on Kauai, are the same owners of the hotel ere in Kenting – the Caesar Park Hotel in Kenting.

So, when I was cleaning the pool in Kauai, there was a fax that came in showing that they were looking for an activity manager. I was single and available, so I took off and came to Taiwan to work at the Caesar Park Hotel, here in Kenting. I ended up just signing contracts for eight years – I ended up working there for eight years at Caesar Park Hotel in Kenting…

CLC: Did you ever thought that you would stay for that long?

No, because my first contract was a four-month working permit. Then, I went back to Hawaii, and they asked me to come back for one year. When I (actually) came back, the contract said two years. After the contract, I decided one year, one year, one year… Time went by fast… They terminated my contract in 2001, but I got my permanent resident visa, because I worked in Taiwan for seven years legal. When you get your permanent resident visa, you can start your own business and you can work.

CLC: That’s why you stayed… Did you find what you wanted… or were you looking for something when you came to Taiwan?

No, I came here just because of work…

CLC: Are you happy right now?

Well, I would say… Of course, of course! 99.9% people in the world would love to live in Hawaii! Hawaii is one of the most beautiful places in the world, with the trade winds, the culture of surfing and paddling canoe, and the food and everything. So, I think if we had the finances, we would live in Hawaii. Maybe we can live six months Taiwan and six months Hawaii, because my wife is Taiwanese, and my son is half-Taiwanese, half-American. To answer your question, my wife wants to move back to Hawaii. I have a lot of friends in Taiwan, and would move back (too) if I could.

CLC: Family in Hawaii also…

Yeah, my mother and my brother.

CLC: What do you do in Kenting now?

Now? I do my business. We import things from Hawaii, so we do a retail business, sell Hawaii things, and we just recently, within the year, got involved with hostel, hotel business. Now, we have three hostel/hotel places, locations, and two shops, and you are in a Hawaiian-style Taiwanese vendor!

CLC: Haha, yes I am! Tell me what it is to be an expat living in Kenting, an all-Chinese place.

When I first came to Taiwan, I was a little nervous. The only thing that I knew about Taiwan was the sticker “Made in Taiwan”. That’s all I knew!

CLC: That’s the early nighties!

Actually it was the 70s and 80s. I think there was always a sticker “Made in Taiwan”, “Made in Korea”, “Made in Japan”. Of course I was nervous, because I’ve been to a lot of countries that, economically, I didn’t think were as friendly. But when I came here, people are very friendly.

*** Duggar stretches his head out of the window of the van-store in which we are sitting to talk with a Taiwanese-American from Maryland. He sells them a pair of shorts, I believe. The dude tries to bargain, but Duggar doesn’t bargain! A few days after the interview, I would sit again in his shop, and answer Taiwanese clients myself!

Taiwanese-American dude: Are you going back?

Maybe, if business is good this summer. But the airplane ticket to Hawaii is expensive, you know. And I have a son, so that means three adult fares!

TAD: You can teach English!

No, what we’re doing is ok. English, I think it’s boring. But you know one thing? My English is not good. I speak ***inaudible Hawaiian*** English.

CLC: (laughs) I thought that you were Taiwanese when I read your e-mails!

I think I am turning Taiwanese!

*** We turn off the mic for a little while, as Duggar is selling stuff to other clients.

CLC: We’re at, what is it to be an expat in Taiwan.

Well, when I came to Taiwan, I was a little nervous. Foreign country, you know. Kenting is the same latitude as Kauai, same ocean as Hawaii. Beautiful beaches. The location: I loved. It’s beautiful, it’s like Hawaii. I found out that the people are very friendly. Actually they are even more friendly to foreigners. They treat foreigners differently, they are a little bit nicer. Well, I mean, unless you step on their toes.

As an expat, I feel good, but of course, you have to remember, I came here for work. They paid my air fare, I worked for a general manager, so I had to work. I would say that it was a good experience, and the people are friendly, but my purpose here was working. I didn’t come here to study, I came here to work.

CLC: Yeah, and it’s not English teacher either.

No, I wasn’t in teaching English, and was here to do adult and children activity programs for the hotel, at the resort. So, it was a big challenge to do that. I had to deal, you know, with Taiwanese customers, local people. But of course, I am friendly. Being raised in Hawaii, we have the Aloha spirit, and I can adapt to chopsticks. Of course, in Hawaii, there’s a lot of people from Asia: Hong Kong, Japanese, Filipino, you know, locco. Food, no problem: rice, noodles, goose, duck, tofu… So I could eat. The people are friendly.

After working, of course I could’ve left, but I decided I put in eight years into Taiwan, and the people are friendly, the location is nice, why not get my permanent resident visa and think about doing something. So, I decided to start my own business.

In general, I think I like the location of where I at. I don’t think I like the city. If I was in a city, I would go back to Hawaii. But in Kenting, it’s ok.

CLC: The small town, the slower life…

Beach. Beach. The oceans, clean oceans. Like, Hong Kong have different level.

CLC: I’ve been to beaches in Hong Kong and it’s quite ok.

Some beaches, you can’t go in the water, you know. But I mean, in the future I hope they will. But here, the beaches are nice. It’s in the Kenting National Park, and they try to maintain it…

So, you know, as expat, I think that I am OK. But I was lucky to come in Kenting eight years ago to work. A lot of foreigners have to go to work in Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung, and maybe they don’t like it.

CLC: It’s quite an unusual channel to enter a country – through like a small town like this one.

Yeah, it was unusual, and only because of two qualifications: I had a college diploma, and five years working experience with the hotels. Without these qualificications, maybe I could not qualify for the working permit, because Taiwanese, I don’t think, want an outside person to take a job away from a Taiwanese person. It’s in every country, yeah.

… And the girls! Wooh!

CLC: And you married one!

Girls in Taiwan are, to me, very shy, very nice, very sweet, beautiful, a lot of them are single. And I married a Taiwanese girl that I met at the hotel. But she could speak English – I mean, Camie’s English is good, eh.

CLC: Yeah, it is, very.

So, I’ve known her for many years.

CLC: What do you think about Taiwan politics?

Unfortunately, I can’t vote, so I can’t get involved that much in the politics. And I don’t think that Camie votes.

Basically, my impression is that there are two parties: the DPP, which wants to declare independence, which I think is not a good idea, because China doesn’t want that, and there’s the KMT, which I think has a relationship with China, came from China a long time ago.

So, there’s two parties, basically. The DPP, for eight years, had their chance, but it seems that they didn’t do very well, and I think they got busted for some corruption. Basically, they couldn’t declare independence, because if they did, China maybe would attack.

I like the new one because – I am not really interested in the party, I am interested in the person. And I think Ma (Ying-jeou), I saw him on an interview on CNN.

CLC: Pretty charismatic, eh?

Well yeah, he spoke English, and he told his point of view on CNN, and I liked his point of view. He likes fitness, like, he said he wants Taiwan’s economy to get good, he said China and Taiwan is a problem, but that can wait – we can try to solve it later. But, the politics, I think in Taiwan, in general, my feeling is that most Taiwanese do not want to get close to China, and they want to be separate.

As an American, my point of view is, why not try to work together, make money together, but still be separate, but still be together. It’s very complicated.

CLC: Would you live in a cold country?

No! My ass is warm and I want to keep it that way… No way. Too much work to put the clothes on, and when it’s really cold, you can’t really go out.

CLC: You enjoy the summer much more…

Yeah, I love summer. Here in the winter, it’s lo san fung, it’s a strong winter wind. High-pressure from China, and it blows, cold wind air, in the winter.

CLC: Is it humid?

Winter is not humid. Summer is humid. Summer, it’s low-pressure, sweaty, hot and humid. Night time very comfortable. Summer: typhoon season, and it rains a lot in the summer.

CLC: So, I am going to eat later tonight (it’s mid-evening already), what do you recommend?

I recommend to go to Hengchun to eat. It’s cheaper and better. Actually, there is a vendor that I like – I don’t know if he is still there. He came back, because it was high season. He makes like this chicken wrap. He gives you these two round things. Go over there and ask.

And there is vendor food. So now, it’s good for vendor food. Because, now there are two choices: you can walk around and get kind of the expensive vendor food, like lamb, kao rou (“grilled meat”), barbecue, or there’s margarita, that’s mexican cuisine, or spaghetti. There’s Amy’s Pizza which is pizza, pasta. But there is a goose place that we like. We always eat the smoked goose, by the farm entrance. We had dinner, not too bad, in that corner, as you go into the Da Wan road – the Thai restaurant in the corner – they weren’t that bad.

For you, it’s only one person, so it’s not easy to order, you know. I think that you can use your imagination…

CLC: Well, I was just thinking to…

McDonald’s, KFC, 7-Eleven?

CLC: …eat on the road, actually!

*** And actually, I did just that for four days in Kenting – try out every (most) vendor food on the street, and feed myself this way for my entire stay.

Oh, vendor food?

CLC: Yeah, vendor food.

Yeah, my favourite vendor food is across the street – it’s the wrap one. I go for the wrap ones. I don’t like the hot dogs. The kao rou is ok.

I had your sister-in-law’s wraps, spring rolls. They were pretty good.

CLC: Oh yeah? That’s my mother-in-law’s. Ah-mah, ah-gong. Had one of those? Those are very traditionnal.

They make it for Ching Ming (I think).

*** A friend of Duggar’s from Kaohsiung drives by the van…

He was my best man at my wedding! His wife is the owner of Amy’s Pizza.

CLC: Is he an ex-pat? I didn’t his face…

Yeah, he’s from England. He takes care of boats. If you want to buy a big yacht…

CLC: Here?

No, in Kaohsiung.

CLC: And they have a big villa here?

No… they actually have a big hotel. Like, a Bali-style. See, Bali-style is really popular out here.

CLC: Yeah, I heard. Camie was telling me how they just mixed Bali with anything else (like Thai and all that).

Oh, Bali is cheaper, you see. Taiwanese can go to Bali cheap, bring stuff back, sell it, or make style whatever. We’re not easy, us. We’re Hawaii style…

But yeah, you can (get) meat sticks… The prices are kind of little high, overpriced.

CLC: Overpriced for what it is.

Oh yeah, of course, you can buy a 80 NT (CAD2.50) dish in Hengchun. So, you gotta…

CLC: Hengchun is kind of far though.

You can always catch the bus. Just go for, 7-eleven… Go for vendor food. And then, just divide your Canadian money, and see what’s expensive or not. Like, 100 NT in US is like 3 US Dollars.

CLC: Yeah, it’s the same thing (in Canadian).

3 USD for a meat stick? That’s a lot…

CLC: You knew that Canadian dollar is equal to the US dollar? It used to be like, you know, 60 cents US is worth a dollar Canadian. Now, it’s like 1 to 1…

Now is a good time for us to buy land in Hawaii with our Taiwan money.

CLC: Are these currencies tied up?

I don’t know. But it used to be 34 Taiwan dollars for 1 US dollar. It’s now something like 32.

CLC: What do you think of Spring Scream and the festivals going on?

Well, for me, it’s not… Well, I was going to tell you something important. When I first came to Taiwan, Spring break was mostly families. Once the Spring Screams started, families backed away, because of the media: drugs,… it’s young people drinking. So, families don’t come to Spring Scream (anymore) during spring break.

For us, we’re ok, I’m happy, because it’s more our market. Young people like to buy Hawaii things. So, we’re ok. And the Spring Scream makes more people come to Kenting. If it was a regular spring break, we’d just get this amount of people (we’re the Thursday night before the long weekend).

But if you have all these shows going on, it means more people coming. More people coming, it means that business is better. So, I’m ok with this spring break.

I just hope that they try to control it. Make it safe.

CLC: But, there are many copy-cats?

Yeah, copy-cats. But they are not really copy-cats. You know, they do their own style of shows. You know, there’ three or four at the same time, trying to grab from each other…

The Eluanbi one, they have their own group, I think. They know.

CLC: Ok, well, thank you!

Le Regarde les Chinois de cette semaine est un peu particulier parce qu’il a été réalisé juste avant un interview que j’allais donner à mon invitée! Mercredi dernier, j’ai rencontré Yvonne Lo avant l’émission en cantonais qu’elle co-anime deux fois par semaine sur les ondes de Radio Centre-Ville, la station multilingue de Montréal. On a parlé de son implication à la radio, de bénévolat, son emploi en travail social, ce qu’elle veut pour la communauté chinoise et encore de son implication à la radio! On a pas parlé de ça, mais elle enseigne aussi le chinois chaque fin de semaine à l’école catholique chinois de Montréal, et siège maintenant sur le conseil du Service à la Famille Chinoise, où elle fut d’abord bénévole, puis coordinatrice du département de bénévolat in 2004.

This week’s Regarde les Chinois was quite interesting, because it done right before I was going to do an interview with my interviewee! Last Wednesday, I met Yvonne Lo before the twice-a-week Cantonese-language show that she co-hosts on Radio Centre-Ville, Montreal’s multilingual radio station. We talked about her involvement with the radio, volunteering, her job in social work, what she wants for the Chinese community, and again about her involvement with the radio! We didn’t talk about that, but she also teaches Chinese every weekend at the Montreal Catholic Chinese School and now sits on the board of the Chinese Family Service, where she started as a volunteer and then the volunteer department coordinator in 2004.

Language of the interview / Langue de l’interview : English (with sprinkles of Cantonese, a touch of French) / Anglais (et on saupoudre de cantonais, et met une touche de français)

***

Comme les Chinois: I thought that we were supposed to meet next week… Don’t know what I was thinking, and next thing I know, I get your message on my cellphone (yesterday night)! And I try not to seem surprised.

Yvonne Lo: Well, we can do it next week if you want!

CLC: No, it’s fine…

I can like talk for hours without you asking me anything! (laughs)

CLC: That’s good, that’s what I need!

Chui sui hoow king (blow water really intense). Have you heard about that expression chui sui? It just means to chill, talk about stuff.

CLC: (laughs) So, that’s why you do radio…

Chui sui actually means something that is for fun, no specific reason! On the radio, we talk about things that are meaningful! (grins) Well, we try to give information that is useful, practical. Of course we sometimes chui sui, to make it sound more fun, entertaining. We hate to just read news, and we don’t want to sound so serious, even though we talk about serious stuff…

CLC: How did you start doing radio?

It was in 2002, and I was doing volunteer work at CFS (Chinese Family Service of Greater Montreal). At that time, one of the volunteers, Charles, and he wanted us to come to the station (Radio Centre-Ville) and have them announce some of our activities on the Chinese program. Then, we realized when we got there that there was no more Chinese program! So, the coordinator asked him if he knows anyone who would be interested to come here to volunteer. Then (he came back) and asked me and a few others, and that is how I started, without training, experience of how to prepare a show…

I listened to Chinese program when I was in high school – it was on and off. So, when I was in high school, I remember that people would call in, make song requests. For a while, I did not listen to it anymore, because they would not be serious, talk about anything, about their own lives.

I was quite surprised to find out that in 2002, there was no more Chinese program…

CLC: There was a free spot for you to take!

When I joined, it was, you know, whatever. When we started, we didn’t know what to present. We had to find stuff to talk about. And we played Chinese songs… So, it was pretty crappy, I admit!

CLC: But after six years, you evolved a lot. What changed?

Because I have been doing so much volunteer work, especially with Chinese Family Service, I really treasure whatever opportunities to do something for the community. After I started, I was getting more knowledge about the station, got to meet other coordinators, team members from other language teams. Then, I realized that the Chinese program has been here for, what, since 1981-82? And I still see those old records… Tsui Siu Fung, Chan Bak-keung… I still see those (vinyl) records. I think that when they did the program in the early 80s, they must have been using them.

So, I said that if we don’t pick up the program, maybe they will say that the Chinese community doesn’t need the air time anymore, and might as well give it to other communities. And I thought, hey, that would be quite a loss. If we lose the hours, we might not get it back anymore!

Then, we started to invest more time, energy to think about how to improve the program, how to get the name out.

CLC: Your team’s pretty young, I guess?

Right now, they’re students, we have new immigrants, two mothers… I knew one of them, because she was part of the women’s club.

CLC: Annie (Wong)?

Hai lo (yeah). At that time, I invited her and two of her friends to animate a show just for women. So, they talk about family issues, children’s education, you know, that kind of things. After that, I asked Christina (Tam) to join the program as well, because she was born and raised in Montreal, while being a very traditional girl too. In fact, she was able to interact with Annie and the other lady, and it was a good dynamic too… Sometimes they talk about issues, you would have the mother say that this is not good or whatever, and then Christina would say, oh, if you think about it, we’re in 2007 now, bla-bla.

Before Christmas, we realized that the Mandarin-speaking population has grown so much, and wanted to give one more hour to the Mandarin group. So now, we still have five hours of Chinese programming. It used to be three hours in Cantonese and two hours in Mandarin, for so many years. Since December, it’s the other way around.

CLC: It’s the same team, right?

Yeah. We’re lucky that since 2006, we recruited some new volunteers, and at that time, they were all new immigrants. They are so dedicated, responsible, and now they’ve been doing the program for two years, and they still want to continue and improve. It’s great, because sometimes for new immigrants, when they first arrive, they don’t have a job, and have more free time to volunteer. And after getting a job, they would have to go. But in their case, some of them are still going to school, and one of them has a family and he’s working, but still wants to continue.

CLC: They must be dedicated, because I heard that not only it’s volunteer work, but you have to pay for your air time!

Well, we have to pay 15 dollars of administration fees, each year. It’s like not even two dollars per month to me. But to some people, when we mention that to that, they’re like, I’m coming to volunteer, why are you asking me to pay?

It is tough sometimes to explain some of that stuff that we do. People don’t understand, and they are like, you don’t even know if people are listening to you! I heard those comments a lot. Because there is no way to find out unless they call in…

CLC: Do you get people who call in?

… We don’t have a call-in show. But sometimes we get people who call and are like, oh, you have a show tonight? I can’t capture your signal… And sometimes we talk about activities, and they would call to have us repeat a phone number.

CLC: But actually, the only few times I listened to your show, I found it on the web. I think that the web is a very good media…

Yeah, for the younger generation! But I must say that the signal is still pretty weak, and for Annie and some of their friends, they live in areas where they don’t get the signal. And they can’t go on the web…

CLC: So, you emigrated when you were what age?

When I was 13, in 1992. So you make the calculation! (laughs) It was tough. I still remember… I had a lot of friends at that time, and I was becoming a teenager back then. It was a tricky transition… It wasn’t like if I came here when I was six, and then it would be much easier.

CLC： Why did your parents choose to immigrate here?

They really like it here. Because my uncles are here, and my parents came here before to visit, and really liked the place. They really like places like here where people are nice, and it’s quiet and there’s no pollution…

CLC: People are not nice in Hong Kong?

Well, in Hong Kong, it’s all about work, money, work, money, and they didn’t want us to grow up in that environment, wanted us to see more, to be less materialistic, let me put it that way. They think that if we come here, we’d get to learn English and French. In fact, they really like Montreal, even though they don’t speak French… and now they are in Toronto! (laughs)

CLC: Toi, tu parles quand même bien français, maintenant ?

Pas très bien, je comprends plus que je parle…

CLC: Je pense que c’est comme mon cantonais! Je comprends ce que ma famille me dit, mais j’arrive pas à le dire. Je pense que c’est difficile. T’as immigré quand t’avais 13 ans, t’avais tous tes amis là-bas, pis tu viens ici et tu dois te faire des nouveaux amis…

Je ne parlais pas du tout français. Quand je suis arrivée, je me rappelle que dans la classe d’accueil, mon prof devait parler en anglais avec moi. Mais son anglais, c’était pas bon! (rires) Alors on communiquait beaucoup par body language!

CLC: T’as fait longtemps la classe d’accueil ?

Juste un an, et puis la deuxième année je suis rentrée dans la classe d’intégration. La troisième année, je suis rentrée dans une classe régulière.

CLC: Veux-tu qu’on continue en anglais? It’s the first time that I do a bilingual interview!

It’s up to you. We could do a trilingual one! (laughs) But I remember that when I was in the classe d’accueil, I had to carry a dictionary with me every day. We had six classes every day, and five of them were in French. We had two French teachers, learning different stuff, and every day I had to bring my dictionary, because there was no way I would understand what they are talking about!

CLC: I heard that you got married!

*** Indeed she did, but that was a private conversation inserted in a public one! She credits volunteering for meeting each other.

CLC: You’re really independent, both of you?

Yeah, I think because we have known each other for so long, and are so busy with different things, that the only time that we had to get together was because we had projects to run for the radio, and when we’d have projects together.

CLC: There are different kinds of experiences in relationships. When you are younger, you tend to more always together, always do things together…

“Why didn’t you call me today!” (laughs)

CLC: And perhaps when you get older, you think long-term, have different expectations, goals together?… So, what did this (Hong Kong Dragons) leadership conference (that you went to a few years ago) give you?

I got to meet a lot of amazing people from the wah kiu (diaspora), from around the world. And some of them are chuk sing (slang for white-washed Overseas Chinese), and don’t even speak Chinese, but it is interesting to see that they are so curious to know more about China. We’re in Beijing, and we just talk about our experiences growing up in Canada, Australia, and they want to know more about their roots. I think this is the part that I find the most amazing. I was born in Hong Kong, but stuff that happens in China: I am not very knowledgeable (about it), unfortunately. I don’t even think that I would want to find out…

I don’t know if that is something that you would have thought about, know more about your roots, etc, but for me, being born in Hong Kong, I have my roots in China, but I don’t have this big curiousity to find out about my roots, because I think I do know about my roots!

CLC: Well, maybe sometimes it’s human nature to be lazy, and you watch whatever’s on TV, whatever’s in the media, and don’t look for things. But in your job, you interview people, try to introduce people to the audience… Is that what you are trying to do to?

Well, right now, I think that my personal goal in continuing to do the radio show is to interview more people so that our audience knows what is happening in Montreal. No matter what dialect the person speaks, as long as it’s Chinese and it happens in Montreal, I want to show that. I think that there are so many different people doing so many amazing things, and they do it, and don’t expect any return… I mean, they do it for their own interest, or whatever, but I think that the Chinese people in Montreal is not only about Chinatown. It’s a lot more than that!

CLC: It’s the people, first of all!

That’s why we just added a new interview series on the show, to interview Chinese people doing not the typical job… So we don’t necessarily want to interview people who are lawyers, accountants, computer engineers… For sure, there are for sure amazing people doing these jobs too, but we want to show our audience that, hey, Chinese people don’t have to study accounting!

CLC: Sort of break stereotypes?

Yeah! It was fun to find out that there were people starting a dating service. I never thought that there were Chinese in Montreal doing that! I think it was an interesting experience to share. If the audience thinks it is fun, wants to contact those services, it’s up to the audience, but just to share this experience, to do this kind of job here and in China are maybe very different experiences! And that guy who works in a funeral home, I think it’s fun to talk about death and ghosts… It’s interesting to hear from him that it’s his job and he likes it, and doesn’t think about ghosts… It’s fun to break that… hum, how do we describe that – because Chinese people don’t talk about death.

CLC: Break those taboos?

Yeah, kind of. It’s fun to hear those experiences. I think I like learning things from people, so I enjoy talking to different people. That’s why, I enjoy so much going to those conferences. Even though I fall asleep in the workshops, and seminars (laughs), I enjoy talking with other participants, meeting new people.

CLC: And discover something new…

And the more you discover, the more you realize that you’re doing so little! There is so much more that you can do!

CLC: But you are already doing a lot. You have a full-time job as a social worker…

I am not a registered social worker… I am going to! Once I’ll have joined the order, I’ll be able to call myself a social worker. Even though I am doing the same type of job.

But then, the more you find out about other people’s projects, the more you realize that there is so much more that you can do! Yay!

CLC: You are more than your (university) degrees, basically… You did two degrees – what happened?

I wanted to study in social work, even before, but I did a degree in commerce first. Because my dad was like, you should study something that provides more security first, and then social work. Because parents worry about how you can get a job afterwards or not. When I was in CEGEP, I did commerce as well, so I had all the classes needed. And I did not know how I graduated in commerce! (laughs) Because I didn’t do any major, and at McGill, you could do two concentrations… so I did one in Information Systems, and another in Human Ressources. I have no idea how I passed my assignments!

CLC: Did you like that?

Yeah, it was fun, writing programs and bla-bla-bla. But I remember that, accounting, I failed once, and everyone was laughing at me! Because it was an introduction course, and you are not supposed to fail! But I found it so difficult. And in finance, we had two introductions to finance, and it wasn’t for my friend who was really good, I wouldn’t be able to pass for sure. I had no idea why I passed!

CLC: That is why you didn’t take finance or accounting…

I hate numbers… When we talk about investment… Even now, all the RSP, mutual funds, it’s Tommy who takes care of it. He’s like, sign here, and I sign. For me, it just doesn’t click. Took me a long time to understand what mutual funds are, how does RSP work.

CLC: Not everyone’s cup of tea, I guess! What do you now?

What do you mean? There are so many things… (laughs)

CLC: Well, what do you do in your daily life… do you have money coming into your account? (laughs)

I work at Pavillon Foster, full-time. I’m responsible for a program called social reinsertion. It’s about your day-to-day needs, and if people have questions about how to get a job, how to go back to school, because a lot of our clients don’t have high school degrees and want to go back to school, so I help them during the process. Some of them have financial problems, so I will help them get the resources that they need, see a bankrupcy trustee kind-of-thing. So, it’s to look for resources with them. I don’t do things for them, but I will do it with them, find resources around them, such that when they leave the organization, they will still be able to get the help that they need.

CLC: Did you learn a lot from your job?

Oh for sure. The people that I meet, you know, have addiction problems, but at the same time, you could see how much strength that they can pull out when they had to overcome those obstacles. They were addicted to drugs, alcohol, but yet, they overcome that and want to get better. Takes a lot of strength to do that. For sure, I learn so much…

CLC: Are you inspired by those people who … tried so hard?

I think that I treasure more what I have. Because when you see the troubles that they go through, I can’t imagine myself being in that position. Sometimes, when you have a subsistence-based problem, it’s just not about that drug or that drink that you can’t control yourself, it’s everything that is happening around you that is not working out, happening the way you want. By looking at those situations, I will say that I am a super lucky girl.

*** We stop for a while, because it is soon the time to walk over to the studio for the interview with yours truly! And we start by asking the _big_ question…

CLC: What do you want for the Chinese community?

To be more together? … Instead of saying, I’m Chinese from Taiwan, Chinese from Toisan, Chinese from Pak-king (Beijing)… I just think that we are too scattered.

CLC: But the Chinese community is very diverse…

Very diverse, but instead of putting those walls, we should acknowledge all the differences, but then, we also have to accept that we are all Chinese, and not Toisan Chinese, Taiwan Chinese… You know, Hong Kong Chinese. I think that now, it’s a problem that all the Chinese communities around the world face, because we are so diverse, and sometimes we do want to kind of protect ourselves, and we have to draw all those differences and say that you are not from the same place!

CLC: But sometimes it makes sense, because people don’t actually speak the same language. Westerners don’t (always) really understand that, how China is as diverse as, say, Europe! And people don’t speak the same language – they just happen to have the same writing, and were governed by the same government for like thousands of years…

It’s true, it’s true… But then at the same time, you see that we have 60,000 Chinese in Montreal, around, and look at all the associations and organizations that we have… If we could put all those manpower together, we could be really strong.

CLC: There are always (personality) conflicts. Have you ever encountered those?

Oh yeah, for sure!

CLC: Were you involved in those?

Well, not directly, but people do see you differently. For example, at our station, we try to get involved more in the community, try to report more of what’s happening in the community. When we go to certain events, and then, some of the people from the older generation, they don’t know you and you look young, and you are just a volunteer… right away, they put you in a box, and don’t really care if you can actually do something good. Sometimes it’s hard to work with other Chinese.

CLC: If it’s not radio and it’s not volunteer work in the community, what else would you do to promote what you think?

I dunno. When I do things, I don’t really have a lot of plans! (laughs) Because sometimes, especially when it’s volunteer work, people come and go, and it’s hard to make a long-term plan. So, every time when we come to the studio, we just remember that we want to tell useful information to the audience. We don’t really (in terms of) “in ten years we have our own radio station!”.

CLC: Hey, you do dragon boat huh? You still do dragon boat?

Yes!

CLC: That is how I met you, actually! Because I was with the Typhoon team and you were…

It’s Typhon! (Editor’s note: with one “o”, indeed) Everybody thought that we were Typhoon…

CLC: What’s Typhon?

I dunno! It’s one of these monsters…

CLC: Who chose that name?

The… leng chai (youngsters). Because they’re all 19, 20 years old. And, like, me and Tommy, we’re almost 30.

CLC: (laughs) You hang out with 19 year olds…

Unbelievable… But I think now, because now we have more experience in dragon boat than they do, sometimes they ask us (things). They look at us like dai gor gor (big bro), or dai jei jei (big sis)…

CLC: The elderly!

Yeah, the elderly, that’s what they call us! But sometimes it’s fun, when we hang out with them, we chui sui (speak randomly), say pak chi ye (say stupid things). When sometimes there is a problem, they actually want your advice, and Tommy and I like doing that, paan sai lo si (pretend to be old sages)…

We just want to share experience, so that they could either take out advice or they don’t, it’s up to them. We want to show them that’s what we’ve done in the past, and that’s what happened after. And then, as we go along, we make decisions, sometimes, when we discuss, we may actually talk about things that we may not have thought about. That’s what we want to do too.

At the station, there are a lot of volunteers that are new immigrants, and have not organized any events like these in the past, or done broadcasting work. We’re all learning at the same time, but I’ve been involved in a lot of different community events, with CFS. So, some of the experience, I think I more than they do, and my goal is to share this experience with them so that more people can share the tasks.

I don’t want people to think that FM 102.3′s Chinese program is Yvonne’s program. I hate hearing that!

CLC: You are the oldest one here, with the most experience, right?

Yes, but then, because I go out a lot to talk with people about the station, some people think about Yvonne, they think about radio station, Yvonne’s station, Yvonne’s program… I don’t want to take all this credit, because we have a big team, and everybody is working hard for the program. When someone mentions that, I try to tell them, well, it’s not my station, my team. But at the same time, I realize, because I’m doing all this networking work, I want to share this experience with the rest of the team, so that they can pick up the tasks as well. Whoever is going to run the team, they don’t have to start from scratch.

I may have a baby next year, you know, and may have to quit! (laughs) I think that there is a problem in the community too, when there is a leader, they don’t train the next leader, so nobody is picking up the tasks.

CLC: I know some radio hosts who become politicians… Do you want to get involved in politics?

Oh no… I hate politics, I don’t like politics and I am not good at politics.

CLC: You are sort of a community leader, I find. Do you want to get involved in other ways?

I don’t know, I never really think that way, that I am a community leader… I just do the job. Yeah. I think I’m not a person with vision. I can’t really think too far and just do the job. And I just remember what my goal is. Some people, they’ve been asking me so many times, why are you doing this, you’re not getting paid, and you’re still paying your gas, your time… and I said that I am not doing this for myself. So if we succeed, I am not happy for myself, (but) I am happy for my team, the community. And if we fail, I don’t get upset at myself. If I was just doing it for myself, I don’t think that I could do it for that long. Because it’s pretty tiring sometimes! (laughs)

CLC: Do you just do this for the community, or do you want to reach out to the outside?

I just hope that one day, the station can stay in people’s mind, and when they think that, oh, I have to know about what is going on in Montreal, they tune in. I just want them to know that our station exists and that our goal is to provide information to them so that they have another venue other that newspapers to know what’s going on in Montreal.

CLC: Hey, that’s my goal too! We’re competitors, I think!

Mat ye (what), competitors! We should work together! That’s my goal… instead of making more competitors, we may as well collaborate more! Like I said, I am not a person with long vision, so maybe I don’t forsee problems.

CLC: Do you think you will stay in Montreal? Do you have plans to move back to Hong Kong or elsewhere in the world?

Right now, no. I really love this place. Even (for) Toronto, my parents are there, and I wouldn’t move to Toronto. I think I enjoy the diversity here, and the fact that we’re not too big. Even if you don’t drive, you can get around in bus and metro. But Toronto is too big, quite overwhelming, I think!

CLC: I’ll do the closing question… Who are you? How do you describe yourself?

(takes a bite of the piece of cake that she bought 45 minutes ago) I am Yvonne, I just love doing volunteering work, and like I said, my dream was to marry a rich man so that I can continue to do volunteer work!

I think that my dream has come true… slowly!

CLC: Well, thank you!

Thank you, and now it’s my turn!

*** We close the interview, but of course, Yvonne leaves her best radio anecdotes for the talk between interviews… Here’s one, caught on video, about her HK-star encounter in Montreal with Anthony Wong Chau-Sang. With other big names of the Hong Kong star system who came to their show, such as at17 and Moses Chan, the Chinese program team made this montage (in Cantonese).

Pour Regarde les Chinois cette semaine, nous rencontrons Yung Chang, 30 ans, réalisateur basé à Montréal du documentaire Sur le Yangzi qui fit partie de la compétition officielle à Sundance. Né dans la région de Toronto de parents originaires de Beijing et Shanghai, Yung a grandi à Whitby, et on a parlé d’approche artistique, d’attention médiatique, (beaucoup beaucoup) de bouffe, de moustaches, et de la Chine. Up the Yangtze ouvre en anglais aujourd’hui au Forum AMC, et en français le 29 février 2008 au Quartier Latin.

For Regarde les Chinois, this week, we are meeting Yung Chang, 30, Montreal filmmaker of the documentary Up the Yangtze, which was featured in this year’s lineup at Sundance. Born in the Toronto region to parents from Beijing and Shanghai, Yung grew up in Whitby, and we spoke about artistic approach, media attention, (lots and lots about) food, mustaches and of China. Up the Yangtze opens today in English at the AMC Forum, and on February 29th, 2008 in French.

Language of the interview / Langue de l’interview : English (and a little Mandarin) / Anglais (et un peu de Mandarin)

***

Comme les Chinois: You were much sought after by the press lately. How does all this attention feel like?

Yung Chang: Oh, pretty overwhelming all this attention. I think it’s been a good experience though. I mean, it just means that it is nice way to share the film and the concept of the film with people.

CLC: Is it the first time you’re getting so… bombarded by the press?

Yes, this is the first time. But you just take it in stride. I think it’s an important step to share the film with people. You’ve got to do it – you’ve just got to do it. And I appreciate it in fact that people want to talk to me. I like talking about the film. In fact, today, I just did some speaking engagements at Vanier. When I was in Toronto, I spoke at U of T, to cinema students. So I like sharing the process of making the film. I think it helps to illuminate a little about how one can put together a movie. Maybe it can help young filmmakers.

CLC: As a student, you drew a lot from other people talking.

Certainly, yeah. As a cinephile, as someone who loves to read, to watch movies, I certainly have been inspired by a lot of films, filmmaking. You know, I think when you make a film, maybe you have some inspirations, maybe you’re interested by such and such film, such and such book, but it’s just kind of fodder. It’s stuff that works in the back. Eventually, it helps to make it come out of you in a movie.

CLC: Hey, so you were in Toronto, and went on CBC’s The Hour… How was George?

George was ok, he’s a nice guy, very knowledgeable. It’s kind of surreal to in on a set like that, surrounded by an audience, bright lights. You certainly go through a certain amount of out-of-body experiences I think, when you are interviewing. So, you have to be very focused. You have to look at the guy in the eyes.

CLC: How’d you get the interview on the Hour?

Well, I think it’s certainly working with publicists, and having a film that is a current affairs issues. I think it is topical that China now is on the cusp of the Beijing Olympics. There is a lot of conversation right now on the Three Gorges Dam and the future of China, and I think about modernization in China. The film has certainly fallen in a timely into the lapse of an audience.

CLC: Were you born here (in Canada)?

I was born outside of Toronto, in Oshawa. I grew up in Whitby, to be exact, and moved to Toronto and moved here. I lived and travelled in China since 1997.

I travelled throughout, mostly Southern China. My relatives are from Beijing and Shanghai.

CLC: What were you doing in Southern China?

My brother lives in Beijing, so he met me in the south of China, and we traveled extensively throughout. In fact, we were in Guangzhou when SARS broke. We were passing the hospitals, the lineups outside hospitals, wondering what the hell everyone was doing. In fact, it was because of the outbreak! I spent a lot of time in Guangzhou. I had a very good experience traveling solo, as well.

I’ve never been to Xinjiang, nor have I been to Mongolia. I’ve been out to a lot of places in between… Guizhou, Xi’an, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Hainan, Beihai.

CLC: Was there a particular experience over there that marked you?

When I was traveling with my brother through the southern cities, we spent Chinese New Year in Beihai, my brother and I, in a seedy hotel, while firecrackers were blasting 24 hours. In the smaller towns, it is legal to have fireworks, as opposed to cities like Beijing, where just recently they changed the rules, but where you could not light fireworks.

In Beihai, they were lighting it everywhere. Kids, for like two days straight, non-stop, would just point them at you, shoot them at you. It was crazy, it was chaos, it was like a war! I’ll never forget that experience.

I’ll never forget going to eat outside, very late night, street food, and lots of people lined up in the streets. And there was a little girl and a little boy. I guess they were trained in acrobatics and they were performing in the streets, probably trained by their parents and do this, so that they can make money to give to their parents.

And to witness these kids, dirty and grimy, and performing tricks next to a table, and then when the people left the table, to see the kids run up and eat the food off the table, was a very marked moment.

I think for me to see the disparities between what is happening now in China… and I think it has always been like that, that there are very very rich people and very very poor people, and middle class is considered really really rich in my opinion, and there is nothing in between. Being able to witness that was kind of stayed with me.

CLC: Because you grew up here?

Certainly because I grew up here, and you are exposed to a different sort of upbringing. When you witness things that are so extreme – there is homelessness, poverty here, of course but in China, it’s so much clearer, you really see it.

CLC: What age were you when you came back?

It was 1997, so I was 20, after my undergrad.

CLC: What did you do after your undergrad? You were trained in film at Concordia?

I trained in film in Concordia, studied film production, and I made a movie with the National Film Board, Earth to Mouth. After that, I went to study theatre at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. That was two years, and I worked in New York as well, as an editor. Then I came back here (in Montreal), and that was at the same time developing Up the Yangtze, and then consciously started working on the film for a good three years, and went to shoot it in 2006. And now I released it…

CLC: So, you presented the movie at Sundance?

Yes, we presented the movie at Sundance. I think it was an important step. We have an American theatrical release that came out of Sundance. It was good to share with an American audience, because every audience reacts differently, you know. We showed it in Amsterdam… I think that a Canadian audience is much different than an American audience.

CLC: How did they react?

I think that Americans have a certain sense of … when they see the film, and see themselves depicted in this movie, for a lot of people, it puts them in an awkward situation. And I like that, I like confronting people with how they interact with a different culture. I think that struck a lot of audiences in the US. In fact, it resonated very deeply with people.

And certainly, Sundance is a very liberal sort of audience, and you are going to get people that are moved and want to do something.

CLC: So, you met a bunch of famous people. Is that where you met Werner Herzog?

(laughs) No, Herzog, I met him in Amsterdam, at the International Documentary Film Festival, and met him over there.

CLC: Was he one of your heroes?

Oh yeah, certainly. I had like his book, Herzog on Herzog, strapped on my thigh as I made Up the Yangtze. I think he is a very inspiring person. For me, there are two extremes, there is the Herzogian approach to filmmaking, which is looking for these ecstatic truthes, and then on the other hand, there is the Cinéma-vérité technique. I think that I certainly touch on both of these in Up the Yangtze.

I am looking for moments of truth, for example, the images of the dancing girl shot on my cellphone. In fact that was a very important moment for me. On the other hand, filming intimate scenes with the family as it was fly-on-the-wall. These two opposing methods of filmmaking certainly were very important in making Up the Yangtze.

CLC: Were there other people who inspired you, who you look up to?

Certainly Herzog was one of them. There is plenty of Cinéma-vérité filmmakers that I was very inspired by. I’m inspired by lot of fiction filmmaking, italian neo-realism. The list is extensive… And especially by Chinese filmmakers, like Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Jia Zhangke, and Li Yang, who made Blind Shaft.

When I was living in Los Angeles, briefly, I managed to catch quite a few Chinese documentary films. I saw a movie by Jiang Yue, and it was called This So-called Happy Life. That was a very amazing film, because it almost played like a fiction movie, but it was very clearly a documentary. These were real people. It was about a couple of railroad workers in the West Railway Station in Beijing, and they were unbelievable characters, very human characters, flawed people. And that is what is interesting. You know, exploring human emotions through characters, through subjects that are not perfect, that have flaws, that make mistakes. And that is something that I think is very important.

And I think that the films of John Cassavetes as well are very inspiring.

CLC: I was watching you movie, and it plays like a drama, but you know it’s real-life, it’s a documentary. But you look at the storyline, and it’s almost like a fiction movie.

I think that as a director, you are very conscious about how you want to frame things. You think about the structure of the film. Because it is documentary, you can’t predict, you don’t really know the outcome of where you want it to go, or how it is going to unfold.

CLC: So you didn’t know the ending…

Certainly you don’t know the ending! But I had very specific things that I wanted. For instance, the opening scene of the film, the closing of the film. The opening of the gates of hell. These were very important images for me.

Within that, you build your blocks. Things would happen with the family, like that very pointed scene with the mother telling Yu Shui that she doesn’t want to exploit her daughter to work on the boat. First of all, as a filmmaker, I am not a passive filmmaker. You don’t sit, and I don’t wait for things to happen. I think it is very important, as a director, and in order not to waste tape to ask the right questions at the right time. And that scene came about though a very important question that I didn’t ask the family, up to the point where Yu Shui had to leave to work on the boat. And I asked Yu Shui, does she know that she had to leave to work on the boat, and that her home will be flooded forever, and then her parents, and her siblings will never be able to move back to this home.

Yu Shui asked her mother this question, and as a result, that was the scene that came out of it. So, I think it is about being very open, sensitive and perceptive of the subtext going on underneath a given moment. And through asking questions that don’t relate to specifically to what you want, so to speak. I think, ultimately, you are going to get something out of it.

CLC: It’s going to flow towards your way… Tell me about your first movie, Earth to Mouth.

Earth to Mouth was to me a romantic, poetic, meditative film. I wanted to capture the beauty of living on a farm, and to me, in a way, this very naive, romantic perspective. And having found the character of the grandmother was fascinating, the fact that she ran this farm and worked with Mexican migrant workers.

There is something also, I think, melancholic about it. The fact that she was a recent immigrant from China, isolated on this farm. When I showed the film at Hot Docs, there’s been people who’ve seen the film who are immigrants of other countries, and when they see the movie it resonates very deeply with them because they can relate to this kind of displacement, uprootedness, loneliness that one feels when adjusting to a new culture. I think perhaps there was something that just seeped through the film when I was shooting the movie.

I think it was important to capture it in a seasonal sense, and follow…

CLC: Because you shot it over a whole year… I dunno, but I am a foodie, and was very interested…

Oh yeah! And I love the food! That restaurant in the film, Magic Wok, is my favourite restaurant when I go back to Toronto. I grew up in that restaurant when it used to be a very small, kinda family establishment in Scarborough. Every weekend, we would go out there – we lived in Whitby, which is a very isolated town – and it was kind of the growing Hong Kong community. Then, the restaurant moved to a bigger restaurant, and it’s become a real establishment in the Markham area! Very good food there!

Have you done a pilgrimage to Markham to eat all the good food?

CLC: Yeah, I’ve done it…

Isn’t it great? In Chinese it is called Magic Lantern… Forgot how to say it.

CLC: So, you grew up in Whitby? I don’t know the Toronto area, is it really far?

It’s about 45 minutes east of Toronto.

CLC: Sort of like Repentigny here…

Yeah, sorta. At the time when I was growing up there, it was a very small town of 30,000 people, and by the mid-nighties, the population had tripled, 300%. So, you can imagine, it became a bedroom community, and there were subdivisions everywhere, and it was a suburban kind of landscape all of a sudden.

CLC: How was growing up there… Were you one of the only…

Yeah! I was one of the only Chinese growing up there! I’ve kind of noticed this about the films that I am interested in making, that they are certainly all about displacement, displaced people… Maybe there is a connection to myself being uncomfortable or not settled in a certain place. Growing up in Whitby, I was never very comfortable growing up there, neither than going to a very Anglican school in Toronto. And in Montreal, when it’s a French-speaking province…

So, for me, I kind of thrive on this idea of displacement. Being kind of a ghost between two spaces, two worlds. I think about it like that, but I don’t know if it’s actually…

CLC: Is there a place in the world where you would like to settle?

(laughs) I have no idea… That’s the thing. I am pretty planted here in Montreal.

CLC: You’ve been here since your undergrad, went abroad for a few years. Why did you come back? Why Montreal?

The people here are very nice. I like the city, I like the food. I like the peacefulness of this city – in fact, it is quite calming to come back here. It’s smaller, it feels more cozy. Especially that EyesteelFilm is here and people that I know. The Film Board is here.

CLC: You were in Good Will Hunting?

(laughs) It feels like the guy who does the interviews on TV… And he has all these insider information about the actors.

Yeah, that was in the beginning when I studying, and I was doing a little extra work on the side. It was in Toronto, at U of T, and I was taking a class at the time, philosophy course. They just so happened to be shooting the film, so I got in.

CLC: Another one… Let’s see. My friends tell me that you are big on bringing fruit salad for parties!

I like making fruit salads! very special, exotic fruit salads. Lemon juice is the key ingredient and add a nice flavour. I like the idea of bringing the fruit to the party and cutting the fruit fresh and making the salad on the site.

You have to have blood oranges, papaya, mango, some berries. I really like putting pomegranate… pineapple.

CLC: I noticed when e-mailing you that you had an English name. Do you use it?

I think when I was younger, growing up, it was a name that was used a lot. There is a generation of my friends who called me by my English name, Jason. But at some point, when I finished high school, I felt that I wanted to make a conscious decision to use my Chinese name. Even though it is a Wade-Giles spelling of my name, as opposed to a (Hanyu) Pinyin one.

My Chinese name is actually Zhang ChaoYong. But because it is “Yung Chang”, it is a little bit different…

CLC: So your (sur)name is Zhang?

Yes, Zhang Yimou de Zhang, and then Hua Qiao de Qiao, YongGan de Yong. (Editor’s Note: We make that it is 張僑勇)

CLC: Do you have family in Taiwan?

My (maternal) grandfather lives in Taiwan, the one that I talk about in the movie. He left (the Mainland) in 1949 and moved to Taipei with the Kuomintang.

CLC: Have you been to Taiwan?

Yeah. Good food there. Have you heard of this toilet restaurant that just opened? It’s food served to you on the toilet, and all the food resembles feces! It’s a huge hit in Taipei. I am not kidding. They serve it on the porcelain.

CLC: Is your dad side also from Beijing?

My dad’s side is from Shanghai, and then he moved to Hong Kong at a very young age, and then came to Canada when he was 15. My paternal grandfather came to McGill to go his PhD in chemistry, in the 1950s. That was his way out of Hong Kong, of China, and he brought his family consequently.

CLC: Were there a lot of Chinese?

No, not at all. But there was a community of Shanghainese. I think the hub was kind of the restaurant Wong’s, which was Jan Wong’s father who owned it. In fact, I think he is still living out in Westmount or something.

CLC: … I don’t see a lot of Asians with a mustache! So where did it come from?

(laughs) My father has a mustache. I’ve never actually seen him without a mustache. Ever since I was born, he always had his mustache. Because my maternal grandfather reads faces, he told him to grow a mustache, so he did! So, my grandfather also told me that I had to grow a mustache, so I did!

CLC: What kind of food do like?

I like all types of food. I eat everything. Maybe I don’t have a very sharp discerning food, but when I am in China, I like to eat huo guo (hot pot), kao ya (roasted duck), zhajiang mian (fried sauce noodles), and lots of Taiwan, Beijing food, Shanghai food is my favourite…

CLC: Do you eat the weird stuff, like chicken claws, pork tripes…

I _can_ eat that stuff. Tripes, I eat. Stomach, I’m not so interested. When you are in China, you don’t really have the choice; it’s the popular way to eat, especially hot pot. I’ve eaten dog hot pot. The flavour of dog meat is nice. It’s kind of like, little more intense than lamb. It’s actually a delicacy. When I had it, I was Chongqing.

CLC: Chongqing is the largest city in China?

Chongqing is the largest municipality in the world. Largest city, I don’t know…

CLC: I heard a lot of great things about Chongqing… It’s built on hills.

It’s built on hills. It’s the only city where they still have the culture of the porters, the coolies. It’s an industry. There is so much history in that city. The way it’s built is amazing, with all the nooks and crannies to explore, hidden spaces and very good restaurants.

There is also a really good noodles restaurant. I really love zha jiang mian. In Chongqing, they make it very different. It’s not as salty and thick as it is in Beijing, and it is a bit lighter, and they put sesame seeds in it… And there is a restaurant, drop-in, quick eat noodles restaurant, hole-in-the-wall.

CLC: I thought that since they are Sichuanese, they’d be high on spices, peanuts.

Yeah, spice, tomatoes, and peanuts, but a lot of chili peppers. Their Chongqing hot pot is different than Sichuan hot pot, because it is hotter. It’s really really spicy. It’s full of thick chili. And they re-use the broth, so it gets spicier and spicier.

CLC: About growing up in Canada… what do you keep of that? What marked you?

Hmmm… (pause) It’s hard to say now. What marks me as Canadian? … It’s so hard to say, because I always feel that I am seeing things in a very particular sort of way. It’s undefinable to be one or the other. In fact, I feel that, as the diaspora, as Overseas Chinese, are very unique, have our own category. That is what I appreciate. Maybe that is my answer.

CLC: I think you have a very interesting background, in the sense that you didn’t live in like Markham. You actually lived outside of Toronto, and guess that you were one of the few Chinese people in your town. Growing up in Quebec is more or less the same thing, because there are not a lot of Chinese people.

It’s a small community here… How is Brossard?

CLC: Well, I know that there are a lot of Asians, but not as overwhelming…

I want to go to that congee place… Is it good?

CLC: Yeah, gotta try it, it’s on Boulevard Rome.

It would be interesting to just go look around there… But now, the Guy-Concordia area! It’s scary!

*** We argue about some Sichuan restaurant, on De Maisonneuve, which I thought was the one east of St-Mathieu, but Yung says that the one that I thought was opened by Cambodian Chinese closer to St-Marc are people from Chongqing. I certainly been there before, and perhaps disinformed the web on the same token…

The chefs are from Chongqing, and they cook the real deal. It’s between St-Mathieu and St-Marc, on the south side of De Maisonneuve. It’s a very small standalone noodles house. It’s tiny! In fact, they have all the standards of Chongqing food…

CLC: There is another place, where they hired a new chef. Have you heard of Tapioca Cafe? It’s like a bubble tea place, but they changed their menu, hired a new chef… You know, BattleNet 24? Well, right next to it, above what used to be a comics rentals place…

Been there? Is that your favourite place?

CLC: I don’t know what’s my favourite place…

I like the Taiwan place underneath that apartment complex (on St-Marc above De Maisonneuve).

CLC: Oh yeah, been there, the cookies.

It’s interesting when you grow up in Montreal, it’s very special when you find something. When I went to Vancouver last week… it’s overwhelming, all the Asian food you can dream of. You would never come back! The quality of the food is just excellent.

*** We keep diverging about food. Apparently, a real ramen noodles place in Montreal cannot be found. But in New York, in the upper fifties… Isn’t it funny that all the sushi places in Montreal are operated by non-Japanese?! “Would’ve made a great short film”, Yung concurs. But then, hey, what is authenticity after all?

General Tao is authentic, because it is its own creation, came out of being Americanized, Westernized. It’s dying, but in Vancouver you find hundreds of these Chinese Canadian diners, that are starting to close down. They have this specific type of food. You should go search it up!…

CLC: I think I should… Diners where they’d have macaroni and soya sauce! As more and more immigrants from the Mainland are coming, do you hope that we’ll see more and more authentic food from China?

(laughs) Let’s hope that they won’t try to transform their style of cooking! Because at one point, it was only Cantonese food, Sichuanese (Szechuanese) food…

CLC: Fake Sichuanese food!

Fake Sichuanese! And all of a sudden, you start to find Beijing food, Taiwan food…

CLC: You grew up in Whitby and were like one of the only Chinese kids, was it hard, was it a realization when you got to university?

When I was in high school, I started to discover the whole issue of this sort of identity thing. I was 16, and read a book by Frank Chin, called Donald Duck. He is a Chinese American author, and considers himself the Black Panther of Chinese American activists, was very active in the 60s, 70s, and angry! What the movement was called was the Angry Asian movement. And there is a whole collection of writing called the Aiiieeeee collection, An Anthology of Asian American Writers. It’s amazing, it will rock you, it will change you…

So, I through this thing when I was 16, 17, 18. Then, you try to figure out your thing, and how you fit in. Went to China. Then, I think I realized that the cultural identity issue is very much so a kind of manufactured concept, a lot so like authenticity. When you get your head around it, you really are who you are. The idea of being one or the other is kind of a construct of this whole multicultural society, or what it may be.

We kind of all follow these ideas, and I realized that the cultural identity issues were raised by my teachers in high school who were not Chinese. I started thinking a lot about it, multicultural issues… I am who I am. I am what I am. For me, it’s that comfortable position to be, this kind of a floater. And that’s what I think informs the way I make films.

CLC: What is a future film project that you have?

I am working on a project about the Tiananmen issue, incident. It’s a film that will unfold in real-time, told through three perspectives: a journalist’s, a protester’s, and a soldier’s.

CLC: It’s going to be non-fiction?

It will be kind of like, no holds barred, all strings pulled, the Cloverfield of Tiananmen Square films. One that will be dramatic and personally told. Again, about human stories, human emotions, not about the politics, but focusing more on the people, and exploring that, and following those trajectories as it unfolds in real-time.

Whatever it takes, no holds barred: documentary, animation, fiction, I don’t know yet. It is going to be something like this.

CLC: Have you seen Gate of the Heavenly Peace?

Yes, I’ll never forget when it came out, in 93 or something. And I’ll never forget my involvement as a protester in Toronto against the Tiananmen massacre, walking with my mother, grandmother and brother to the Chinese embassy (Editor’s Note: consulate, if Toronto). That was a really important moment in my childhood. I couldn’t grasp what it meant, what was happening. Anyone who sees the images that were filmed by the news media cannot help but be moved by what was going on.

CLC: What do you think is in store for China?

That is an impossible question to answer. I’d like to say to refer to my movie, the last shot of (Up the Yangtze). What is in store is certainly an unknown, certainly unclear, foreboding perhaps. I’d like to think that it is like the image of a boat crossing through a gate lock, and at the other side awaits something.

CLC: Tell me who you are?

I’m Yung Chang. I am the director of a film called Up the Yangtze, and I am a filmmaker.

Cette semaine, à Regarde les Chinois, nous nous entretenons avec Bethany Or, 28 ans, reporter, musicienne et autres, née à Hong Kong mais grandie à Ottawa. Nous parlons de son travail, ses voyages, de vélo et de… techniques d’entrevue !

This week, at Regarde les Chinois, we are meeting with Bethany Or, 28, reporter, musician and other, born in Hong Kong, raised in Ottawa. We talk about work, travels, cycling, and… interviewing techniques!

Language of the interview / langue de l’interview: French / français

***

Comme les Chinois: Qu’est-ce que tu fais comme travail ?

Bethany Or: Je me suis toujours beaucoup intéressé aux questions d’immigration. Je travaille à une station de radio internationale nationale (sic) basée à Montréal. Je spécialise vraiment dans les questions migratoires. Ça va être tout ce qui va être relié à l’immigration, que ce soit l’identité, les frontières, les réfugiés, les communautés… J’ai aussi beaucoup de liberté dans mes sujets. Parce que tout peut être vu à travers les lentilles de l’immigration. Si on vient d’une famille immigrante, on va déjà avoir cette perspective-là. Moi, j’ai grandi dans une famille immigrante, et je suis moi-même techniquement immigrante. Je suis toujours portée à voir ces choses-là.

CLC : Tu t’es toujours intéressée à ça ?

Oui, même si je ne pouvais pas les nommer quand j’étais petite. J’avais des notions de ce que c’était d’être canadienne, d’être chinoise. Et puis, j’allais entre les deux. Il y aurait des périodes de trois, quatre ans et demie où est-ce que je me sentais vraiment canadienne – je n’avais que des amis canadiens. Pis d’autres années que où est-ce que je ne mangeais qu’avec des baguettes, à l’école (rires), et m’identifiait vraiment vraiment avec l’identité chinoise.

Je pense que maintenant, je me suis rebalancée vers le milieu, puis je suis confortable avec les deux milieux.

CLC : Où est-ce que tu as grandi ?

Moi j’ai grandi à Ottawa. Quand j’étais petite, il n’y avait pas beaucoup de minorités. Maintenant, ça a changé beaucoup – le portrait d’Ottawa s’est grandement diversifié. Je me souviens, quand j’étais petite, j’étais toujours la seule Chinoise dans notre classe. On disait toujours des prières protestantes… Ouais, c’était une enfance paisible, une ville paisible!

CLC : Est-ce que la religion joue un grand rôle dans ta vie ?

Maintenant non, mais mes parents font partie de cette micro-culture de Chinois chrétiens. Donc, quand j’étais petite, on allait à une église, et c’était une église chinoise. Vu que quand mes amis sont arrivés au Canada, à Montréal, ils ont tout de suite fait des amis chrétiens. Alors, la plupart de leurs contacts sont restés dans cette communauté-là. Ils faisaient le service en cantonnais et en anglais. Puis, on chantait en cantonnais et en anglais.

CLC : Tu es immigrée quand tu avais deux ans. Es-tu retournée à Hong Kong ?

Je suis allée une fois. C’était un peu le rêve de ma mère. Quand j’ai fini mon secondaire, j’ai décidé de ne pas tout de suite aller à l’université. Je n’étais même pas sûre d’aller à l’université.

Ma mère en a profité pour m’inviter à aller voir notre « heung ha » (village ancestral). Je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais on avait jamais pris la décision d’aller visiter avant mes 19 ans. Peut-être à cause de l’argent… c’est très cher. Donc, on a décidé de retourner, et on est arrivé à Hong Kong. J’ai rencontré ma grand-mère pour la première fois, mes tantes, mes cousines, puis on est allé au village de ma mère.

En parlant de religion, elle a quitté ce village quand elle avait cinq ans. Puis en revenant, les gens demandaient « vous êtes allée où? tu étais où? ». Ils s’en rappelaient d’elle! Et elle était déjà dans la cinquantaine. Et on est allé à l’église qui était là. Et les gens étaient « eh! ça fait tellement longtemps! »… Donc, les gens s’en rappelaient. Ça me frappait juste parce qu’il y a des communautés qui sont tellement ancrées. Puis je ne pouvais pas m’imaginer cela. Si je retournais dans le quartier où j’étais à cinq ans que les gens feraient ça.

CLC : C’était en Chine ou à Hong Kong ça ?

C’était en Chine, dans le village de ma mère, mon « heung ha », donc. Ma mère est Toisan et mon père est Chiu Chow. (Mais) Il vient de Shanghai.

CLC : T’as envie de retourner ?

Les dernières années, j’ai beaucoup pris l’initiative d’aller visiter. Un moment donné, je pensais vivre à Beijing. Je me suis même trouvé un emploi là-bas. Finalement… je ne sais pas. Je suis revenu avec le sentiment que je me sentais plus confortable dans la communauté chinoise ici, que en Chine.

CLC : Je pense que c’est naturel… On est déraciné, t’sais, on vit toute notre vie outre-mer, alors on s’identifie à quelque chose de différent.

Et toi tu vas en Chine, tu dois te sentir Chinois!

CLC : Oui, je pense que c’est cette dualité d’origine, trialité dans certains cas.

Ben, pour nous, d’apprendre le français, l’anglais, le chinois, puis moi, l’espagnol. On a plusieurs façons d’être. C’est ça qui est fascinant.

CLC : Ouais, l’autre jour tu me parlais d’Alden Habacon et de son Schema Mag. Les schemas, c’est des profils…

Complexes! Des profils complexes, c’est-à-dire, il veut re-conceptualiser l’idée de la diversité, parce qu’on pense souvent au Canada, que ça veut que dire l’ethnicité, la langue, la religion. En fait, c’est beaucoup plus que ça. Son argument à lui, c’est que des gens qui ont des schemas complexes, nuancés. Son exemple serait quelque chose comme un Africain, qui a grandi au Québec, qui vit sur l’Île du Baffin, travaille comme ingénieur, qui a été formé en arts visuels. Quelqu’un qui est bien balancé entre plusieurs mondes, cultures – ces gens-là, avec des schemas intéressants, vont profiter davantage de la vie, vont avoir du succès, parce qu’ils se sentent à l’aise dans tellement de différents environnements.

CLC : Je sais que tu es musicienne,… quelle genre de musique fais-tu, et comment est-ce que ça a commencé ?

Depuis dix ans, je me concentre sur l’accordéon… mais je joue la plupart des instruments. J’essaie de jouer beaucoup. Récemment, mes trois projets étaient un trio de jazz chinois – musique des années 20 de Shanghai (Shanghai Triad), une référence au film de Zhang Yimou; un autre projet était un collectif d’opéra – on présentait des morceaux d’opéra dans des bars; puis troisièmement c’était un groupe de rock.

Ça a commencé parce que, quand j’étais petite, comme beaucoup de petites asiatiques, j’avais pris des leçons de piano. Depuis l’âge de six ans, je jouais de la musique.

CLC : As-tu toujours aimé la musique ?

J’ai pas toujours aimé. Certainement pas toujours aimé mes cours. Il y avait une période de quatre ans où est-ce que je ne jouais pas du tout, parce que j’en avais assez d’avoir à suivre tous les cours, avoir reçu mes diplômes… J’étais juste peut-être un peu tannée.

CLC : C’est devenu une corvée pour toi ?

C’était un devoir, une distraction… d’une vie normale (rires). Mais bon, c’est un outil que j’utilise souvent maintenant. Ça fait tellement partie de mon tissu, que je ne peux pas me plaindre.

Il y a plein de musiciens que je sois dans la scène qui ont suivi des cours classique pendant leur enfance. Mettons, Bell Orchestre, Final Fantasy, Joanna Newsom, des gens qui se sont perfectionnés dans le monde classique, et se sont transplantés vers la musique pop. Donc, c’est pas juste moi.

CLC : S’il y avait un endroit où tu voudrais vivre, lequel serait-il ?

J’en sais pas trop, mais je pense beaucoup a Bombay….

CLC : Tu as été en voyage en Inde ?

Oui, en Inde et aux Émirats Arabes Unis… C’est quoi la question?

CLC : (rires) Plutôt, qu’est-ce que tu as trouvé là-bas ?

Naturellement, j’ai fait beaucoup de comparaison entre la Chine et l’Inde, parce que ce sont deux pays en pouvoir en Asie, parfois en compétition, souvent dans le passé, en agression contre l’un et l’autre. Mais c’est un pays créatif, beaucoup plus que la Chine. Plein de couleurs, plein de vie. Puis une certaine harmonie entre toutes les religions, les ethnicités, les langues. D’une certaine manière, oui il y a beaucoup de conflits, mais d’une certaine manière, surtout à Bombay, il y a comme une espèce de balance qu’on trouve… le respect… Je généralise beaucoup, mais lors de mon expérience là-bas, j’ai rencontré des juifs, des musulmans, des zoroastrians…. Il y avait comme une nonchalance. Ils disent « oh, tu es Chinoise! Oh ok… »

Puis si je puis me le permettre, encore plus relaxe qu’au Québec. Ici, il faut que j’assume un peu plus mon identité. Là-bas c’était vraiment comme, « ah ouais, Chinois… »

CLC : Tu t’intéresses beaucoup aux thèmes de citoyenneté, de cultures, de multiculturel…

Ouais, puis peut-être à cause du fait que je soye née en Chine, à Hong Kong, ça m’aide à être confortable avec le fait d’être Chinoise, parce que j’ai une réponse facile. Quand les gens me demandent d’où je viens, je réponds « Je suis née à Hong Kong ». Je n’ai pas besoin d’expliquer que je suis Chinoise, j’ai grandi au Canada… « Je suis née à Hong Kong » : c’est complet, c’est vrai, c’est objectif, c’est simple, et je dis ça comme ça.

Mais je suis née avec une citoyenneté canadienne, et j’ai jamais été Chinoise de citoyenneté. Donc, il y a ça aussi, et dépendant de la personne, je vais ajouter cette phrase ou non.

CLC : Intéressant… J’ai pas préparé de questions, on pourrait aller comme un peu partout!

Hmm, de quoi on pourrait parler… Ben, je pourrais te raconter des histoires! Ah oui, ce que tu voulais me demander pour la Saint-Valentin. Hier, c’était la Saint-Valentin, vers six heures, il était convenu que ma famille allait souper ensemble au restaurant. C’était à un ancien ami à mon oncle, qu’il a connu à Charlottetown, quand ils étaient serveurs ensemble. Puis, l’ami de mon oncle a eu beaucoup de succès comme chef. Et il avait ouvert un resto sur la Rive-Sud qui avait beaucoup de succès. Maintenant, il a décidé d’aller sur l’Île de Montréal, et est avec un espèce de restaurant fusion asiatique. Puis on est arrivé, et j’avais des doutes. (rires) Hmm, fusion, ça veut dire quoi, exactement?!

En fait, il nous a cuisiné des mets qui n’étaient pas disponible sur le menu! Quelque chose de spécial, parce qu’on était des amis.

CLC : Pour le nouvel an…

Ouais, c’était plutôt pour le nouvel an. Je te disais la Saint-Valentin, mais tu as raison, c’était donc pour le nouvel an.

Il y avait ma grand-mère, mes deux oncles, mes cousines, ma tante, on a mangé du Canard de Pékin, vraiment des bons mets. Puis c’était drôle, parce que dans le restaurant, on était quasiment les seuls Chinois. Le resto était rempli d’amoureux pour la Saint-Valentin, puis on était bruyants, on faisait des blagues, on utilisait trop de mouchoirs, on avait plein plein de bouffe, style chinois qu’on partageait… et on fittait tellement pas! (rires) Les gens étaient avec leur vin, deux personnes, deux assiettes séparées!

CLC : Tu pédales beaucoup toi ?

Ah oui! Et ça me rappelle un bon ami de mes parents. J’ai reçu une nouvelle hier qu’un bon ami de mes parents est décédé du cancer. C’est quelqu’un que je ne connais pas très bien, mais j’ai vécu avec cette famille-là quand je travaillais à Toronto, et c’était très gentil de me laisser vivre chez eux. Lui, Eugene, il venait de Hong Kong, sa femme aussi. C’était vraiment pas un gars de Hong Kong typique, parce qu’il s’intéressait beaucoup au vélo!

CLC : C’est vrai que c’était pas facile de faire du vélo à Hong Kong !

Oui. C’était vraiment un personnage, parce que même mes amis non-Chinois le connaissaient. Il avait une boutique de réparation de vélo assez connue à Toronto. C’était quelqu’un de chaleureux, très généreux. Les gens le connaissaient. Il était aussi un personnage parce qu’il avait son grand vélo de Chine, puis il allait dans les rues dans le centre-ville de Toronto, faisait beaucoup d’ateliers sur le vélo.

C’était vraiment un personnage non typique, avec une vision. D’un côté, il adorait les vélos, et je pense qu’il avait une vision sociale. Il se disait, au centre-ville, ça n’a pas de bon sens qu’on ait tellement de voitures. Il faut qu’on facilite l’utilisation de la bicyclette.

CLC : Toi à travers ta job, as-tu rencontré beaucoup de gens intéressants, que tu as interviewés ?

Oui, sauf que j’aime en général les gens qui n’ont pas des profils énormes. Ils sont juste des gens monsieur-madame tout-le-monde, sont plus intéressants.

CLC : Pourquoi ?

Parce que… Ils sont peut-être intéressants pour moi, parce qu’ils ne sont pas portés à ne pas se faire interviewer, alors on peut sortir un peu de l’ordinaire. On peut avoir cette découverte. C’est sur ça que je trippe en faisant de la radio. Dans la vie, c’est la chose qui me passionne, à parler à quelqu’un, un étranger, un voisin, puis avoir cette découverte. Je crois beaucoup au hasard. On commence une conversation, et on ne sais jamais où ce que ça peut aller. Je trouve que c’est une habileté de rester à la possibilité que ça puisse aller comme ça quoiqu’on ait prévu d’aller comme ci!

Avec les gens qui ne sont pas connus, on peut faire ça. Avec des politiciens, des gens d’un certain statut, ils ont déjà un message, généralement, à dire, très difficile à se sortir pour avoir cette humanité que je recherche. J’essaie de cultiver ça et mon emploi me permet de le faire!

CLC : En dehors de ton emploi, est-ce que tu fais ça ?

J’essaie, pendant mon voyage, dans le métro, dans l’autobus. Ce n’est pas à chaque moment que je vais me sentir à l’aise de le faire. Comme aujourd’hui, j’ai un mal de gorge, alors je ne vais pas tellement parler aux étrangers! (rires)

Ça dépend des situations. Évidemment, des fois les gens veulent que tu les laisses tranquille, comme sur la rue! (rires) Mais je trippe vraiment sur ça. En fait, beaucoup de mes amis, je les ai rencontrés comme ça, par hasard. Ça donne de l’espoir, ça mène à l’optimisme quand on peut faire ça!

Quand j’étais petite, j’étais vraiment gênée. Je sentais toujours que je voulais parler aux gens, mais que je ne pouvais pas. C’est en commençant à travailler à la radio que j’ai découvert que je pouvais le faire. Ça a complètement changé ma personalité. J’ai appris comment à ne pas être gênée. Je suis beaucoup plus contente de ne pas être gênée.

CLC : T’en apprends tellement plus sur toi même en parlant à des gens.

Puis il y a des choses qui se passent partout, des gens intéressants partout, et si on ne parle pas, on a pas accès à ça. À mon avis c’est important de parler aux étrangers. On ne sait jamais qu’est-ce qu’il pourrait arriver.

CLC : C’est ça que tu prends pour le rhume ? (pointant vers le bonbon Ricola)

Généralement, je prends un shot du whiskey, mais j’en avais pas chez moi… Je mange beaucoup d’aïl.

CLC : Cuisines-tu beaucoup ?

En ce moment non. Ça va en fonction de la cuisine que j’ai chez moi. Puis, présentement je reste dans un appart avec une cuisine minuscule. Mais j’aime cuisiner pour les autres. Mon plat typique serait du riz, des légumes, et un oeuf brouillé, parce que c’est facile! Je viens d’investir dans un rice cooker Tiger. Je l’ai eu à New York quand le taux de change était excellent! Et puis c’était un investissement excellent.

CLC : Tu es allée à New York, t’as aimé ça ?

Oui, bien j’ai de la parenté par là-bas, donc j’y suis allée souvent. D’une certaine façon ça ressemble à Bombay. Tout le monde y arrive avec leurs idées, beaucoup de rêves, il y a toujours quelque chose qui se passe.

CLC : T’as beaucoup de différentes cultures qui se mélangent…

En fait, quand j’avais 19 ans, une de mes idées, c’était d’aller dormir sur le plancher de chez ma cousine, et d’aller à une école d’art.

CLC : C’est donc une ville où tu vivrais ?

En fait non. Je pensais que oui, mais en connaissant le style de vie que mes cousines, leurs enfants ont… Les gens gagnent beaucoup, et dépensent beaucoup. J’avais l’impression que l’emploi typique c’était de travailler à Manhattan et de gagner dans les six chiffres. Mais j’avais aussi l’impression que ce qu’ils font comme activités, leur style de vie, les sorties, c’était pas très différent de ce qu’ont fait à Montréal. Sauf que ça coûte dix, vingt fois plus cher! Donc, je me suis dit, c’est quoi le but? Les grosses villes comme New York, Bombay, Paris, c’est compliqué à s’organiser, parce que pour voyager d’un bout à l’autre de la ville, ça peut prendre genre une heure et demie. Moi, je suis plus fan des villes de taille moyenne, comme Montréal! À un moment donné, peut-être que oui, mais là, non…

CLC : Je vais aller encore comme ça, dans une direction totalement opposée dans mes questions, mais… Est-ce que tu fais beaucoup de sports ?

Eum, alors je marche pour aller au travail, chaque jour, et je prends un cours de danse moderne en ce moment. Au secondaire, je faisais beaucoup de kung fu… c’est un peu gênant quand je voyage dans les autres pays, (et que le monde demande) « eille, t’es Chinoise, est-ce que tu fais du kung fu » oui… (rires). Je le faisais avec mon père, c’était quelque chose que je faisais avec ma famille.

Par le passé, j’ai fait un peu de boxe amateur. Je trippais sur les voyages de vélo. Ah oui, et je courrais beaucoup, des longues distances. Il y a une patinoire, devant chez moi, au Parc Lafontaine, alors je nage beaucoup. Je nage… je ne fais pas beaucoup de sports organisés. À un moment donné, je faisais beaucoup de soccer.

CLC : Tu écoutes beaucoup de musique? À part ta musique, qu’est-ce que tu préfères le plus?

(rires) Je préfère les vinyls. J’aime la musique des années 60, 70. Je viens de donner en cadeau hier, le Blood on the Tracks de Bob Dylan. C’est un classique que j’avais quand j’avais 18 ans. En revenant (d’Inde) en avion, c’était dans le menu, je me suis mis à pleurer à écouter les paroles.

J’aime beaucoup cette musique des années 20 de la Chine. J’aime beaucoup le jazz. J’écoute comme du Françoise Hardy…

CLC : Ah oui, ma mère écoute beaucoup ça…

Je pense que toutes les mères francophones écoutait ça! Je viens de découvrir ça. Et j’étais à Ottawa avec mon frère pendant le temps des Fêtes, et il m’a donné plein d’albums, incluant, k-os, Joyful Rebellion – c’est super bon, c’est hilarant la façon qu’ils font de la production, les sons dedans qui font éclater de rire. Il m’a aussi donné aussi Elliott Smith, New Moon, que j’écoute beaucoup.

J’aime aussi beaucoup juste la musique par hasard aussi. Les gens qui jouent sur la rue. Quand j’allais en Chine, j’amenais toujours l’enregistreuse de son, pour enregistrer des musiciens de erwu, de flûte.

CLC : Encore un autre virage, et c’est peut-être un peu méta, mais est-ce que ça t’arrives d’improviser des entrevues ?

Oui. Généralement, je vais préparer trois à cinq questions. La première doit être super bonne pour donner une impression. Ce qui arrive, en parlant, quand l’invité dit quelque chose qui pique mon intérêt, je l’écris, et je vais improviser une autre question. Normalement, j’ai comme plein de questions, mais en parlant. Parfois ça va aller complètement de l’autre bord.

Mais je pense que les gens ordinaires n’aiment pas ça se faire diriger dans une entrevue. Pour ce qu’on fait, toi et moi, on peut aller de n’importe quel sens. Je pense que ça aide encore plus pour la confiance, l’ouverture aussi, si on a pas un plan précis. Ça veut dire que, un invité aussi peut diriger. Comme le fais en ce moment!

CLC : Tu veux continuer à diriger ? De quoi veux-tu parler ?!

Tu vas aller en Chine bientôt ?

CLC : Oui, je vais aller en Chine. J’ai des plans pour ça. Je vais écrire, rencontrer des gens…

Tu vas faire de la radio ?

CLC : Ah, je ne sais pas. Je n’ai jamais fait de la radio. J’ai été interviewé récemment à la radio (CKUT), il y a deux mois, et je n’avais jamais fait plus que de la radio étudiante (au secondaire). Ça fait drôle d’écouter sa voix.

C’est dûr hein. J’aime pas ça! (rires)

CLC : Ouais, ben tu me disais qu’à un moment donné, tu n’avais pas été en ondes depuis quelques mois…

Ouais, mais ça revient facilement. C’est comme les langues. Quand je suis dans un contexte cantonnais…

CLC : Tu ne parles pas vraiment cantonnais, tous les jours, hein ? À tes parents, tu parles quelle langue ?

Non, pas tous les jours. Eux entre eux, ils se parlent un mélange de 60% anglais, 40% chinois, même dans la même phrase. (rires) Entre nous, c’est 90% anglais, 10% chinois, dépendant des sujets. Plus qu’ils vieillissent, plus on parle le chinois. Les sonorités anglophones viennent plus difficilement. Ils deviennent de plus en plus sourds! (rires) Il faut vraiment que je perfectionne le cantonnais. Mais avec ma grand-mère, c’est que le cantonnais.

CLC : Ta grand-mère vit au Quartier Chinois ?

Oui, j’ai même avec elle quand je suis arrivé à Montréal, pour quatre mois. Ça faisait drôle, parce que j’étais vraiment la plus jeune dans tout l’édifice. Et puis, c’était juste un micro-monde à part. Ma grand-mère et la plupart des gens dans l’édifice ne pourraient pas vivre ailleurs à Montréal. Si tu veux être vraiment être autonome, faire n’importe quoi, acheter leur nourriture, leurs journaux, prendre un thé, je ne peux pas imaginer qu’ils puissent vivre sur le Plateau.

CLC : À Toronto, t’as des quartiers au complet comme ça, comme à Markham. On parle de Brossard ici, mais c’est pas vraiment comme ça.

Non, on est pas rendu là. Comme à Richmond (banlieue de Vancouver). Je suis allée là-bas l’été dernier pour la première fois. De voir ces centres d’achats remplis de gens qui parlaient le cantonnais… woaw!

Il y avait, mettons, une boutique qui ne vendait que le dou jeung (lait de soja), mais tellement de variétés!

CLC : Pas quelque chose que tu trouverais à Montréal. Aimerais-tu avoir ça à Montréal ?

Je ne sais pas. Je me dis que que je ne tiens à ce que je sois toujours dans un environnement chinois. En fait, ça serait plate d’être toujours dans un environnement quelconque. Je pense qu’à Montréal, on a plus d’opportunités à faire des ponts entre les communautés. À Vancouver, j’avais l’impression que les gens restent … dedans (leurs communautés). Ça me mettait un peu mal à l’aise en fait. Dans la rue, je voyais les Taiwanais avec les Taiwanais, les Coréens avec les Coréens, et les Japonais qui se tenaient ensemble. Peut-être que c’était juste le quartier où j’étais, mais ça me mettait un peu mal à l’aise qu’on puisse vivre sans vouloir connaître d’autres, ou d’éliminer la possibilité de rencontrer d’autres…

CLC : Ben, je sais que tu avais fait à la radio où tu t’intéressais aux différentes communautés chinoises à Montréal.

Oui, parce que c’est faux de dire « La Communauté Chinoise ». Parce qu’il y en a des centaines. Au Canada, disons que c’est deux ou trois. Les anciens immigrants qui sont arrivés du Guangdong…

CLC : Mais même là, je ne suis même pas d’accord que c’est vrai. Parmi ceux qui parlent cantonnais, t’en as qui sont arrivés de Chine continentale, d’autres comme mes parents qui viennent d’outre-mer, et d’autres de Hong Kong.

Oui, et même dedans, tu as des Toisan, Chiu Chow, des gens qui parlent une langue différente…

CLC : Mais ces gens-là, et c’est une impression que j’ai, mais que les nouveaux immigrants par exemple se rassemblent ensemble quand ils arrivent au Canada, se reconnaissent comme Chinois…

Bien il y a la langue, le Mandarin. Je pense qu’à l’époque, les gens vennaient surtout de Guangdong, outre-mer ou de Hong Kong, il n’y avait pas encore cet enseignement du Mandarin à l’école.

Toi-même, tu as dû probablement avoir vécu ça, et quand tu rentres dans un magasin, et qu’ils sont: « ah, tu es chinois! ». Il y a quand même une fraternité entre les Chinois…

CLC : En même temps, la fraternité… quand c’est bon pour les ventes! Comme on est allé à un restaurant en fin de semaine, puis on jasait d’où est-ce qu’on venait. Le serveur venait de Tianjin, et son collègue était de Hong Kong, mais ils parlaient Mandarin. Tout ça pour dire… ils font peut-être ça pour les affaires!

Ben, je ne suis pas nécessairement d’accord avec toi. C’est pour déterminer s’ils peuvent parler cantonnais avec toi! (rires)

CLC : Mais encore maintenant, le Quartier Chinois est très cantonnais.

Oui, encore là je ne peux pas te nommer un resto qui n’est pas…

CLC : Oui, bien la nouvelle place de fondue, qui est une chaîne de Chine en fait.

Puis y’a des restos vietnamiens… Et il y avait un resto taiwanais. Ouais, puis ce qui est sorti dans ce reportage-là, c’est qu’ils ne se sentent pas nécessairement les bienvenus dans les restaurants cantonnais. C’est pas nécessairement leur culture, et il y avait des frictions.

Y’a aussi que dans la Chine, le Sud de la Chine est vu comme un peu plus rough, le Sud c’est moins cultivé, genre! Puis c’est une question de classe. Les gens qui ont immigré ça fait longtemps, ils n’ont pas été des professionnels. Comme dans ma famille, on a des serveurs dans les restaurants chinois, des gens qui travaillent dans des cafétérias, dans des fabriques. Si quelqu’un arrive de Chine maintenat, sûrement qu’ils vont avoir une profession d’ingénieur, médecin… Pas juste la culture, mais aussi l’éducation