Imagining Chinatown aaamid anti-Asian bias a after pandemic passes
ChinaTOwn in 2050 project explores untold stories of city’s intersections through collaborative exhibits
When COVID-19 hit, life changed overnight. But for many Asian Canadians, those changes go far deeper than just cc losing jobs, continuing to social distance and wearing masks. The coronavirus goes right to the heart of how they feel they are viewed by the rest of Canada and are often treated as though they are not part of this country, despite having roots here for multiple generations in some cases. In Vancouver, a young white man punched an Asian woman in the face at a bus stop, unprovoked. The Chinese Cultural Centre there was vandalized with hateful graffiti that includ- wwe d racist remarks such as “Drive them out of Canada.” In Ottawa, two Asian pedestrians in the city’s west end had aar acial slurs and obscenities hurled at them by passing mo- hh torists. In Toronto, an Asian TTC bus driver was harassed by a Caucasian woman for “not looking Canadian,” while a white man insulted another Asian female passenger for wearing a mask on public tran- sit. This week, Canadian music icon Bryan Adams posted social media comments that some viewed as xenophobic. In them, he blamed the pandemic on “bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making greedy bastards.” The singer later issued an apology for his rant. “There is a shared tone of fear, pessimism, and at times exhaustion with the collective Asian diaspora in the time of COVID. I think we have all experienced various degrees of elevated violence during these times from microaggression to physical violence,” said Linda Zhang, an assistant professor at Ryerson University’s School of Interior Design. “As we move toward a ‘new normal’ after COVID-19, we wanted to highlight that one of ww the worst things that could hap- t pen is for things to return to ‘normal.’ Because what was normal, what has been normal, what is normal, is far from ac- ceptable of what normal should be.”
Zhang is the organizer of the Imagine China Town in 2050 project, one of 12 programs of the My seum of Toronto this spring to explore untold stories aabout intersections of the city t through collaborative exhibits, symposiums and events.
Not only did the pandemic abruptly move Zhang’s project into a series of speculative storytelling workshops held virtually via Zoom app, it has also shifted the event focus and narrative from Toronto Chinatown in 2050 to the future of Asian Canadians post-COVID-19.
One of the many questions raised by participants during the first Zoom workshop at the end of April was if these kinds of anti-Asian sentiments will be- come a new normal the community needs to learn to cope w with.
“COVID-19 has put a magnifying glass on existing inequity and disparity of our systems of power, which extends far beyond beyond the Asian community,” said Zhang. “Around the world it has allowed for not-so-dormant hatred and prejudice to resurface.”
In one of the recent Zoom meetings, the three-dozen predominantly Pan-Asian young participants discussed objects found in Chinatown, such as tokenistic architectural elements like pagoda rooflines, physical artifacts like lucky cat figurines, a and items of great debate during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the face mask.
Reese Young, a Ryerson student, envisioned Chinatown in 2050 as being “socially distanced” from the rest of the city, with literal walls erected out- side the Chinatown gates. Her story follows a Chinatown resident who has survived the pandemic and tries to revitalize the local economy by selling handcrafted Chinese lucky cat figurines to outsiders.
“The story emerged from the idea of social distancing and how the pandemic is bringing us further and further apart, leading to more ignorance and confusion,” said the 20-yearold, whose family moved to Toronto from the Philippines in 2004 when she was five. Eveline Lam, who came to Canada as a toddler with her family from Hong Kong, set her story in the Alexandra Park housing complex, where an aging Chinese millennial population lives in the midst of the stigma from the first COVID-19 outbreak. The pandemic has deterred the rest of the city from entering the neighbourhood.
Her story features a young outsider who stumbles upon an expansive field of chives, mint, g garlic bulbs and other herbs in a maze of buildings and deadends. Eventually, he discovers a thriving community of culture, f food and heritage.
“What is different now with COVID is there’s more of an awareness of the perception of Asians as the other. It does not bring up new issues. It only brings to light existing ones,” said Lam, 28.
Lam said the workshops are cathartic and provide an outlet for participants to share their emotions and response to COVID-19 while in isolation.
“It allows us to express these fears and negative emotions that we don’t have the opportunity to express in our day-today life,” she said. “We are exploring them rather than suppressing them. It’s not harmful but helpful for us to do that.” Amelia Gan Wen Jiun, who joined the workshops from Washington, D.C., where she lives, said her idea of Chinatown in 2050 will be a “cloud community” that exists in the virtual space where the Asian diaspora could share their common experience and identify with each other.
“The racism will always be there,” said the 25-year-old, who was born and raised in Ma- laysia. “COVID raises more questions than answers. It is an unknown future.”
NICHOLAS KEUNG IMMIGRATION REPORTER