Vancouver’s present-day Chinatown drowns in the gloominess of the East Side, where drug-users drive away tourists and robberies impinges on businesses’ survival. The few remaining restaurants hinges on closure, while remaining residents are abandoning the district for more prosperous pastures. Shanghai Alley is all that is left of the “original” Chinatown first settled in 1884. Although the area spans no more than a block, it intrudes into the landscape. It is an eerie anachronism that doesn’t belong in the twenty-first century. It appears as if it should have been torn down with the rest of Chinatown history and stored in the vaults of the Vancouver archives. Yet it is still here. And over the years, its contours have expanded east of Carroll Street, spilling into Main, Pender, Keefer and Georgia streets.

How did Chinatown’s exact contours form? According to UBC emeritus history professor Edgar Wickberg, a scholar in the field of Chinese history, business and residential development were the main factors. “As the population grew, the different associations and shops needed more space, particularly in the 1920s,” he says. Incidentally, the shift went east of Carroll Street and towards Main Street and into what is today’s Chinatown.

It has also seen its shares of ups and downs. Prior to the passing of the Exclusion Act in 1923, Chinatown was a bustling district, where its Chinese residents shuffled in and out of restaurants and teahouses, while others chatted melodiously inside the mahjong parlors. Amid this backdrop, it served as a residential and commercial enclave carved out of an intolerant Anglo colony. From 1923 until the end of the Second World War, population growth in Chinatown suffocated due to the restrictive measures which prohibited the entrance of Chinese. Consequently, many male sojourners stranded in to depths of loneliness, waiting until 1946 when the federal government slowly peeled away its layers of restrictions.

What many don’t realize is that the institutional racism that existed in Chinatown was very similar to that around the world in the same time period. UBC professor Jean Barman, author of The West beyond the West: A History of British Columbia, points out that the intensity of prejudice faced by the Chinese in Chinatown “reflected the nature of colonialism throughout the world.” In fact the British colonialists in Hong Kong in many ways were just as discriminatory as those in Vancouver. “The difference was that the colonizers controlled a Hong Kong mainly populated with Chinese” Barman asserts, “so there was less chance for exclusionary measures.” What is interesting is that many of the British colonial servicemen who worked in Hong Kong retired to settle in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island. Therefore, it was inevitable that some of the same attitudes also followed the expatriates into Vancouver.

However, comparing the level of racism between Vancouver’s Chinatown and other Chinatowns is Canada is simply unfair because most Chinese resided in British Columbia, particularly during the Exclusion Era. In fact, Chinese people in B.C. represented about 11% of the population of Canada in 1911. When observers from Eastern Canada and the Maritimes write Canadian history, they tend to chastise Vancouver for its vicious and harsh measures towards the Chinese. But as Barman points out, “If we look at Ontario’s past, many don’t realize that it installed segregationist policies towards its black population at the same time. Black children were separated from the white-only schools in Ontario, but that never happened in Vancouver with the Chinese.”

Interestingly, Chinatown’s highpoint occurred one hundred years earlier, during the period 1900 to 1910. Because of the boom of the Canadian economy, the Chinatown merchants also profited. At the same time, exclusion was still a decade away. “Another reason was the decline of the opium business in Victoria,” explains Wickberg, “in which the government officially banned opium. With the decline of the opium business, many moved to Vancouver’s Chinatown.”

Yet factionalism has always been emblematic of Chinatown. Although largely forgotten, the “father of the republic” Dr. Sun Yat-sen visited Vancouver in 1897 and established the Revolutionary Alliance, also known as the Tong meng hui, which was organization that eventually toppled the Qing Dynasty. Up to 1911, Chinatown politics were divided between the Revolutionary Alliance followers and the Emperor Protection Association Bu huang hui supporters, who sought to uphold the dynasty. Subsequently, from the 1920s and onwards, it was the Kuomintang supporters and the local organization, the Freemasons, which vied for political patronage. The Freemasons were initially allies of Dr. Sun, but after the republic was formed, the Freemasons felt cheated because they were not included in the new government. “It was particularly violent from 1911 to 1927” asserts Wickberg, especially since there was also competition for jobs, resources for gambling, and fighting arms.” Even recruited young men exclusively for fighting. Because of its isolation from the rest of Vancouver, “Chinatown was in its own world because its had limited opportunities outside its districts. As a result, a great deal of the Chinatown society was a reflection of the homeland,” he contends, and that was why much of the politics, entertainment, and culture were heavily centred on China, and not Canada. But Chinatown remains an enigma. “There’s lots we don’t know of Chinatown from 1914-1980s.” A plethora of secrets is left hidden in the UBC Main Library Special Collections says Wickberg, but few have yet to research the index.

However, such friction never really dissipated, it only transformed into a different face for each period. In contemporary times, the younger and older generations represent this struggle, as both groups encompass different views on Chinatown’s future. UBC professor Diana Lary recently organized a conference at UBC’s C.K. Choi Building which invited the top leaders of these different factions in an “attempt at getting them together to communicate constructively” asserts Barman. Incidentally, the Silk Road was a project that resulted from these talks. Built in the summer of 2000, it stretches through Pender Street from Downtown’s Vancouver Public Library to around Chinatown. “And the purpose of that path is for tourists to walk safely from Downtown to Chinatown” says Barman.

Although efforts such as the summer time night markets have also been attempted to rejuvenate the faltering economy, the fact remains that few choose to mingle amid drug addicts and panhandlers whom peruses Chinatown’s streets, especially at night. “Twenty years ago, Chinatown was the place to be for Chinese food. It was still exotic. In the 1980s, even Pierre and Margeret Trudeau ate in Chinatown when they visited Vancouver” says Barman. Now, because the Lower Mainland is dotted with so many Chinese restaurants, Chinatown’s restaurant economy has lost its monopoly.

Yet the reason behind its dilapidation is much more than just drugs and the area’s high rent, it’s also related to its loss of political influence. Up until the 1970s, clan networks, or tongs, were established to help newly-arrived immigrants set up life in Canada. Barman theorizes that with the creation of new support networks, such as S.U.C.C.E.S.S, Chinatown has lost its function as a refuge for support as it was once. “Because it has centres in Richmond and other areas, it is pulling people away” says Barman. Moreover, recent immigration from Taiwan has also diversified the Chinese community. “Before 1947, things were pretty much unchanged,” argues Wickberg, “but after 1947, there were more associations to choose from.”

What will be the future of Chinatown? Will it perish with the likes of Japantown? Or will it survive and flourish again? The atmosphere in recent Chinatown conferences has been pessimistic. Many see a bleak road ahead, especially with its restaurant economy slowly disintegrating, as most either closing down or relocating out of the area. But Barman says perhaps there is a chance. “People still care because they bother to put up a fight, even if it is against each other ”argues Barman.

Despite ideological and generational gaps, most immigrant or Canadian-born Chinese are still proud of their heritage. Unlike Seattle’s Chinatown, which has changed its name to “The International District” to suit a politically correct agenda, Vancouver’s Chinatown maintains its distinctiveness as Chinese. Moreover, Chinatown seems to be at its best when it faces the greatest adversity. “Whenever there is a lowpoint, there always seems to be a rebound,” says Barman. In the 1960s, the municipal government planned to construct a highway that would’ve sliced through Chinatown. But activists led by Shirley Chan lobbied against the manoeuvre, and stopped it. As a result, the present-day Georgia Street Viaduct that bluntly bulges out of nowhere (the highway that never was) like Shanghai Alley is just another sharp reminder of the resiliency of Chinatown.