Showing multiple talents
Skateboard shops, modern art and Peking duck are all in Chinatown’s fusion of classic and contemporary.
VANCOUVER, Canada — Vancouver’s Chinatown is Canada’s biggest, although it began a serious population decline in the 1980s. In those days, newly arriving immigrants preferred settling in suburban Richmond, which has since become the city’s contemporary Chinatown.
Only recently has gentrification begun to appear among the fragrant traditional herbal remedy shops and the window displays of dangling Peking ducks.
Bao Bei, a trendy Chinese brasserie with Asian- themed tapas, mixes the past and present. It even has an ornate neon sign, the type that Chinatown — and Vancouver in general — were known for until a 1974 anti- neon bylaw “cleaned up” the city. Just down the road, the dark, swanky Keefer Bar serves up Asian- themed cocktails.
A wacky mix of creative places is popping up. Newly minted Juniper is a locally sourced West Coastthemed restaurant with a gin- centric bar. Tiny Bestie is a German sausage- and- beer joint serving a much- revered currywurst. Mamie Taylor’s — in the space where Keefer Bakery once sold Chinese coconut buns and other goodies — is an American comfort food eatery with a dazzling array of cocktails and taxidermy.
Low rents ( when compared with downtown) encourage creative young entrepreneurs to try their hand at retail in Chinatown. Flatspot Longboards has an eclectic selection of skateboards, and Duchesse is a vintage consignment store.
A growing trend seems to be multi- business stores such as the Shop, a quirky hybrid that dishes out coffee, clothing and all things vintage motorcycle. Space Lab is an antique store/ café/ retro barbershop.
Many of the colorful, early 20th century Asian shophouses are taking on new roles while retaining their historic faces. None has seen more internal change than the 1889 Victorian Italianate Wing Sang building, Chinatown’s oldest structure.
Its interior now houses the real estate business and art gallery of local philanthropist Bob Rennie. The Rennie Collection, one of the biggest contemporary art collections in Canada, focuses on works related to identity, social injustice and appropriation through painting and photography. Exhibits are free, but by appointment only; the tours are guided.
“We prefer to give a meaningful experience with contemporary art to a few hundred people a year,” said director Wendy Chang, “rather than having thousands walk through and not know what they are looking at.”
Because the interiors of Chinatown buildings often are a mystery to those who gaze at the ornate shopfronts, I finished my visit with an unusual tour in the company of Judy Lam Maxwell.
She takes visitors inside century- old businesses to meet the founders’ descendants and opens doors to the private clan buildings of the Lams and the Lees — community center- like enclaves with lavish private shrines and gathering spaces where Chinese opera is practiced and dragon costumes readied for upcoming New Year’s celebrations.
The hip is fusing nicely with the heritage of Gastown, Railtown and Chinatown. Though change is coming to Vancouver’s old quarters, it’s also breathing new life into neighborhoods that have been out of the limelight for too long.