Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
stories on the victim's widow. An emergent Chinese-Canadian civil society,
including the broadcast and print media, the Director of the Coalition of
Chinese Canadian Associations, and Lilian To, leader of SUCCESS, the
large Chinese-Canadian settlement agency, formed a protective circle
around the family demanding a full apology from the
Sun
newspaper. They
presented their own account of the family's circumstances. The victim had
sold a taxi licence in Hong Kong to finance the family's move to Canada. As
a business immigrant he ran a part-time ginseng business, but also delivered
newspapers to make friends. Because of his poor English he could not find
a good job for 'it is not unusual for a rich immigrant to hold a minimal job
and maintain a high standard of living' (
Ming
Pao
1997a). Integration prob-
lems often include downward mobility and the need to take on menial jobs.
Apparently extravagant consumer wealth can veil miserable Canadian
income, for an immigrant whose entry to Canada depends on his wealth
may be asset rich but earnings poor.
In the limited intersection of the two language solitudes few non-Chinese
speakers heard this riposte. For news collection, selection and reception
were all conducted in a fully social context where facts and fictions coa-
lesced and were sheltered behind familiar story lines. This is unfortunate,
for, as we shall see, there is much to learn from
Ming
Pao
's account.
Millionaire Migrants: The Journey Ahead
The confusion of Anglo-Canadian reporters was understandable in light of
the events they were investigating. For a decade they had been socialized to
the fabulous wealth leaving East Asia and landing in Canada. The very high
profile sale of the Expo site was common knowledge and had raised the vis-
ibility of the billionaire Li family to a North American audience. The rapid
inflation in the regional housing market coincided with the Expo deal and
the substantial growth of immigration from Hong Kong and Taiwan, carry-
ing Vancouver house prices to a position above Toronto's as the most expen-
sive in Canada. In the midst of all this, suggestion that there was no
immigrant 'money trail', indeed not even much money, was too big a mind-
bender to contemplate.
Of course the profile of the millionaire migrant is an unfamiliar one. The
typical immigrant story is one of initial relative poverty, hard work and slow
but steady upward mobility culminating in the purchase of a home in the
suburbs - an assimilation narrative that still exercises considerable sway in
the United States and elsewhere (Clark 1998). The only capital that such
immigrants can initially assemble is the social capital of the extended family
or ethnic community. The contrast of immigrants with substantial financial
capital overturns conventional categories. It has certainly caused some
