Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter Five
Embodied Real Estate: The Cultural
Mobility of Property
In 2002 Ming Pao's
Saturday Magazine
ran a human interest story about an
astronaut businessman who had died suddenly while working in Hong
Kong, leaving his family in Vancouver to confront the difficult task of arrang-
ing a funeral. Should burial be undertaken in Hong Kong or in Vancouver?
Despite the Chinese idiom that dying leaves fall close to the tree, some tran-
snational households have been arranging for burial of Hong Kong family
members in Canada, site of the present family home, where burial plots are
twenty times cheaper than in Hong Kong. A representative of a Vancouver
area cemetery interviewed for the story noted that whereas Caucasians pre-
ferred cremation, Chinese prefer ground burial; indeed 80 percent of new
burial plot purchases at her firm's cemetery were by Chinese-Canadian
families. In concluding the story, Ming Pao's journalist drew a broader cul-
tural lesson: 'Chinese always believe in owning a piece of land. They own a
house for their home and a piece of land for their body. Earth is important
to the Chinese' (Lam 2002). A distinctive cultural disposition concerning
the privileged place of property was being reported.
In this chapter I document the deep entanglement with property among
members of the Chinese diaspora, notably among present and former resi-
dents of Hong Kong. That association has primed property investment
overseas both by Hong Kong-based tycoons and smaller investors, and also
by immigrants in the Canadian land market. The lesson learned in Hong
Kong that real estate is the primary means for capital accumulation has
been an integral part of a cultural repertoire carried overseas. Inevitably
there have been substantial impacts on the Vancouver property market. The
chapter will end, however, with a denial of those impacts by local business
elites who feared that to acknowledge the consequences of a global real
estate market would lead to countervailing checks and barriers impeding
profitable trans-Pacific property investment.
