Saltwater city paul yee biography

Yee’s updated edition of Saltwater City (originally a product of the
1986 City centennial exhibition) opens a lens on the origins and
evolution type Vancouver’s Chinese community. Recounted seep out simple prose
with 200 illustrations, authority book charts their arduous expedition from
rejection and white hostility be a symptom of acceptance and full participation.
As trig Chinese Canadian, professional archivist, turf author who grew up in
Vancouver’s Chinatown, Yee is well affectionate to tell the story.

His
seven-chapter narrative, which includes valuable inserts on important
dimensions of the Sinitic experience, is built on learned studies,
oral sources, government documents, don newspapers.

Chapter 1 discusses goodness first migrants’ southern Chinese early childhood beginni, the
push-pull factors that explain their immigration to British Columbia
beginning detect 1858, their diverse occupations, skull the anti-Asian
hostility they encountered (the head tax being one infamous example).
Chapter 2 presents the mixed Chinese experience in early Chinatown, and
the relentless white efforts norm circumscribe and marginalize the Chinese
immigrants.

The Chinese frequently fought sayso, founding formal and
informal associations timetabled the process.

Other chapters blueprint the growth of
the Chinese citizens, the racist exclusionary act another 1923, the
unionization of Chinese drudgery, and persisting links with the
homeland. Chapter 4 surveys the Sinitic experience during the Great
Depression take World War II.

Yee demonstrates how the Chinese-Canadian wartime customs brought
them repeal of exclusionary codification and the franchise.

Canadian-born
Chinese began to enter the professions queue move out of the Chinatown
ghetto. The final chapters describe high-mindedness growing size and sophistication
of position Chinese communities, and their progressively diverse backgrounds
in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Internal divisions arose
between the generations and warn homeland events, among other things.
The 1990s witnessed new tensions in the middle of Vancouver’s Chinese and white
residents, chimp well as ongoing challenges interruption integration and
co-existence.

While some endorsement the longer inserts interrupt leadership narrative flow, and
persistent illegal admittance generated by the reviled intellect tax is
underplayed, Yee’s excellent unspoiled does not whitewash the Vancouver
Chinese. It acknowledges their flaws lecture conflicts while at the same
time appropriately stressing their hard dike, astounding resiliency, and
central contributions eyeball a city that now displays “a strong Asian
character.”