Vancouver’s Chinatown seniors find food, friendship in tough times

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Two dozen Chinese elders, mostly women, are gathered around tables draped in crimson cloth under a ceiling decked with white paper pinwheels at Vancouver’s Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden.

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A volunteer circles with a porcelain teapot to refill their paper cups, but he is quickly shooed away. There are more important matters to attend to: Help with the lifeline that keeps them connected to family, and each other. Their cellphones.

One of the women is learning how to sign on to the WiFi, another wants to know how to delete her emails. All are laughing and talking, ribbing each other, and dressed up in their best — sparkly sweaters with matching hats, neatly tied scarves, pearl necklaces.

This Monday morning gathering is a celebration, and not just because it happens to be the birthday of 70-year-old Wang Zhao, who claps with delight as birthday songs are sung in Mandarin and in English.

The women are here for something else: The launch of Xiao 孝, a new outreach program providing Chinatown seniors with culturally appropriate fresh produce, as well as educational and social activities.

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Xiao 孝, or “filial piety,” the offering of love, respect and support to one’s parents or elders, is a key tenet and value in Chinese culture, and it’s something organizers and volunteers hope this program will provide, along with the food and friendship.

For many of these low-income seniors, this is their first visit to the garden, the Chinatown jewel that has long been a cultural hub, education centre and gathering place.

Pandemic closings, loss of legacy Chinese-owned small businesses, economic marginalization, anti-Asian hate crimes and very real threats to safety have created a maze of barriers that effectively bar local seniors from accessing much of their own community.

The irony that exclusion, of a new kind, is something these elders face every day is not lost on anyone in this room.

“Chinatown has a history built on exclusion,” says Terry Yung, vice-chair of the garden’s board of directors.

“At first we had to live here,” says Yung. “There was the head tax, then the Chinese exclusion act, the removal of the right to vote.”

Eventually, families that fared well economically were able to move out. “People worked very hard,” says Yung. “We don’t have to live here anymore.”

Among those who have stayed is a community that includes some 3,000 low-income seniors who Yung says don’t have a voice, and are largely “invisible.”

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A report released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (CHSE) at California State University San Bernardino in May 2021 showed a 717-per-cent increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in Vancouver, more than any other city in North America.

The area was a flashpoint of anti-Asian racism long before the pandemic, but COVID-19 closings made the situation for Chinatown’s low-income seniors more dire. Vital points of connection for seniors were lost, the streets — empty of foot traffic — became more perilous and historic buildings, including Sun Yat-Sen gardens, became frequent targets for vandalism and graffiti.

“This is an area under siege,” says Yung.

Jordan Eng, president of the Vancouver Chinatown Business Improvement Association, recently appealed to Vancouver Police Chief Constable Adam Palmer to do more to help the neighbourhood deal with the crime in the community, and said 50 per cent of the association’s budget is now spent on security.

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“The threat is real,” Eng said at a presentation to the VPD board on Feb. 24.

‘Locked in for two years’

Dressed in a bright red blouse — red for good luck on her birthday — Wang Zhao beams. “I’m very happy to be here,” she says through a Mandarin interpreter.

The widow, who emigrated from Dalian in northeast China in 2008 to join her husband in Vancouver, now lives in a local B.C. housing unit for low-income seniors.

“We have been locked in for two years. It’s been very lonely, and very upsetting,” she says.

Closings of legacy businesses, boarded-up shops, graffiti, spillover of drug-fuelled activity from the Downtown Eastside exacerbated the isolation and has made what Yung calls “post-pandemic reintegration” more difficult.

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Many of the businesses that have disappeared were key social hubs for Wang Zhao and her friends. Bun shops, barbecue shops and green grocers were places to go, connect with others and, in their own language, find out what vegetables were freshest. They fed body and soul.

“I’m scared. For two years I have been afraid to go out,” Wang Zhao says.

When she does leave her small housing unit, Wang Zhao says she meets up with friends. They walk in a group.

“I always bring an umbrella,” she says, cracking a huge smile and lifting her arm to show just how she would whack someone if she had to defend herself.

There is no need for the umbrella today, at least not inside the building. Volunteers distribute a breakfast of pork, chicken and red-bean buns donated by Kam Wai Dim Sum. Some of the women take only tiny nibbles of their buns, tucking the leftovers in their cloth bags to take home, prompting one volunteer to wipe tears from her eyes.

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“It’s something my mother would do,” she explains. “Ration the food and save some for later.”

For every single person involved, the crisis hits close to home, says Lorraine Lowe, Sun Yat-Sen executive director. “It’s emotional.”

‘It’s tranquil, it’s safe’

While finding ways to curb the exodus of legacy businesses and pump new economic life into the area may be key to long-term revitalization, economically marginalized seniors with meagre pensions that leave little for food each month need immediate help.

“We saw the need,” says Lowe. “We’ve got this beautiful safe place. It’s tranquil, it’s safe.”

She reached out to Fresh Point, the wholesale distributor of fresh fruits and vegetables (Fresh Point acquired long-time Chinatown business Pacific Produce some years ago), to partner in a program that would provide culturally appropriate traditional foods to seniors.

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Creating a program that provided traditional foods was important, says Lowe, because “food is culture.”

Fresh Point stepped up to provide bags stuffed with Chinese produce to the seniors at the once-a-month Monday morning gathering. Kam Wai Dim Sum, a heritage business, will provide the meal, and Sun Yat-Sen will open the garden on the day it is usually closed to host.

The garden has transformed over the years, adapting from its role as a bridge between cultures and a tourist destination, says Lowe, to an arts and cultural hub focusing on diverse events, LGBTQ+ programming and Indigenous engagement, and now to cultural activism and “hands-on action.”

Lowe says organizations like the Yarrow Intergenerational Society and the Hua Foundation have been doing everything they can to feed and support Chinatown’s elders, but the community needs secure funding from all three levels of government to improve safety and food security for Chinatown’s elders.

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“Chinatown isn’t just buildings, it’s people and intangible culture,” she says — just as food is culture, the transfer of knowledge from generation to generation is culture.

“If I wanted to make a joong, a bamboo sticky rice wrapped in a leaf, I would need one of these paw paws (paw paw is an affectionate Cantonese term for grandma) to show me,” says Lowe.

As volunteers unload the brightly coloured, reusable grocery bags stuffed with fresh produce, volunteer Adele Chan says many outreach programs don’t reach Chinatown seniors because of language barriers, and Xiao 孝 is hoping to attract volunteers who speak Cantonese, Mandarin, Taishan and other dialects.

Safety also matters — the sign-up sheet for participation is at the DTES Women’s Centre, but many Chinatown seniors are simply afraid to make their way there.

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“A lot of seniors are afraid to go out,” says Chan.

‘We are proud people’

Although 25 made it here on this day, she worries about those who are still isolated and in need.

“For Chinese seniors to come to an outreach program, they’re desperate. I’m Chinese. We are proud people. We are resilient. We keep our heads down. To go to a program and say I need help — I can only imagine what they are feeling.”

Very often the grandparents have come to Canada later in life, to help their children raise children, says Chan. When the grandchildren grow up, many are left without a sense of purpose or belonging. “They are really alone,” she says.

Despite the challenges in the area, Chinese seniors are both attracted to and want to live in Chinatown.

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“There is a historical connection, a lot of the elders in the Chinese community, like our great grandfathers who helped build the railroad, they come back. Coming back to Chinatown feels a little bit like home,” says Lowe.

Now, on the first Monday of every month, Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden will be part of that home.

After some dim sum and help with technical devices, volunteers take the women on a tour of the garden, where they burst into smiles, wreath arms together to pose for photos and marvel at the presence of a heron perched by the pond who stretches its graceful neck up and down.

Lowe says they hope to expand the program to serve more than the 25 who came on this day, and to include services the seniors need: Help with technology, filling out forms, street safety supports and possibly even Tai Chi.

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After touring the garden, the women return to the room. As volunteers distribute the bags — each weighing about five kilos — the room erupts in a flurry of chatter. They poke around in each other’s sacks, examine the baby bok choy, garlic, ginger, lo bok (Chinese turnip), and trade and share the produce.

What does Wang Zhao plan to do with her bounty?

“Save money!” she quips in Mandarin, prompting laughter.

The morning has been about far more than a bag of groceries. On their way out, the women are already asking when they can come back.

dryan@postmedia.com

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