Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Yet was there a touch of hypocrisy here, for hadn't Vancouver, British
Columbia, and Canada been courting Asia Pacific investment for the past
decade? In a later column, Collins (1989b) reminded his Hong Kong read-
ers that the BC Finance Minister had led three trade tours to Asia in the
past two and a half years. But,
Vancouver was caught off guard by the magnitude of interest by Asians in the
town's residential real estate; enough interest - some would call it a feeding
frenzy - to create a property boom divorced from the generally unimpressive
BC economy… A recent survey by the [Vancouver] Sun placed the amount of
Asian buying of total property sales at 30 percent in October [1988]; 25 per-
cent of total property sales [were] by Hong Kong residents (Collins 1989b).
How to talk about these developments, indeed whether to talk about
them at all, became a significant challenge in cross-cultural communica-
tion. The Regatta issue exposed the different political cultures surrounding
wealth and property development on each side of the Pacific. In Hong
Kong, what counted as 'commercial prowess', economic optimization in
buying and selling, was an offence in the more plural society of Vancouver if
it undercut other values. A transnational realtor like Andrea Eng (1989)
could speak glowingly of Hong Kong as 'a city motivated by profit', but
when the Vancouver Sun's reporter made similar suggestions the same year, 17
and when the media highlighted the impacts of off-shore capital on the
Vancouver housing market, their comments were received through a local
cultural filter that saw not prowess but predation.
Canadian-born and long-settled ethnic Chinese understood this variable
geography of meaning, and realized its implications. Unfavourable gener-
alizations - whether true or not - about the actions of any overseas group
might kindle nativist if not racist conclusions. The editorial page of the
Chinatown News (1989a) warned against 'demagoguery and hysteria that
would pin the blame on foreigners', and, with more urgency (1989b), 'we
fear there is an element of xenophobia in these complaints that is tinged
with racism when it comes to foreign investment'. Bill Yee, former City
Councillor and president of the Chinese Benevolent Society, alluded to past
indignities: 'Once again, we are being reminded we don't belong here. We
have been fighting this bloody thing for years' (Witt 1989). The fuss became
noisy enough to reach the grounds of Government House where Lieutenant
Governor David Lam added his own authority to the debate by taking the
side of long-established Canadians, despite his own Hong Kong roots:
'When a Canadian is concerned about his own way of living this concern is
not racism' (Lam 1989a). 18 But in some quarters, particularly it seems
among some elderly white residents, the race card prevailed. 'There is
racism in Vancouver,' declared Councillor Libby Davies, 'When there are
pressures on people, they look for scapegoats' (Mitchell 1989).
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