THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF THE VANCOUVER CHINESE COMMUNITY:
ASSOCIATIONS AND LEADERSHIP IN THE EARLY 1960's
by
' KARIN VIVIAN STRAATON
B.A., University of Chicago, 1971
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
in the Department
of
Anthropology and Sociology
We accept this thesis as conforming to the
required standard
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
May, 1974 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study.
I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.
Department of Anthropology and Sociology
The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada
Date May 13, 1974 i
ABSTRACT
This thesis is concerned with an investigation of the nature of voluntary associations and leadership in the Chinese community of
Vancouver during the 1960's. The perspective adopted is one of viewing the Vancouver Chinese community within the general context of overseas
Chinese social organization, that is, of examining the significance of voluntary associations and the system of leadership arising from these associations in terms of how they structured community relations inter• nally and created tties with the wider society of which the community was part. An account of the effects of Canadian immigration policy on
the nature of Chinese migration to British Columbia is given in order
to provide a historical background to this investigation.
The methodology employed is inter-disciplinary in nature and
combines anthropological, historical, and sociological techniques. It
consists of analyses of (1) previously collected interviews with pro•
minent leaders and other members of the community; (2) historical mat•
erials pertaining to the British Columbia Chinese, including transla•
tions of Chinese newspapers and association periodicals; and (3) pub•
lished materials pertaining to the Chinese in Southeast Asia and in
other centers in North America.
It was found that the Vancouver Chinese community, both in
recent years and in earlier stages of its development, exhibited a pro•
liferation of voluntary associations that created a network by virtue of
interlocking directorships and memberships. This network of associa•
tions formed an indigenous political system that allowed the Chinese a ii
significant degree of intra-community control. The important role that voluntary associations assumed in the Vancouver Chinese community is shown to be common to many overseas Chinese communities in which volun• tary associations were also significant in the definition of leadership and in the part they played as de facto governments when other imping• ing external control was absent. iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Preface 1
Chapter I: The Study of Overseas Chinese 2
Chapter II: The Effects of Canadian Immigration Policy
on the Chinese "in British Columbia 22
Immigration Policy and the Vancouver Chinese 22
Background to the Chinese Community in Vancouver: The Gold Rush and the Railway, 1858-1885 26 The Beginnings of the Vancouver Chinese
Community: 1886-1903 29
Reaction Against the Chinese, 1904-1922 31
The Period of Exclusion, 1923-1946 37
Growth and Development - The Sponsorship
System, 1947-1967 41
Impact of the Point System, 1967 to Present 47
Chapter III: Voluntary Associations and Their Emergence in Vancouver's Chinese Community 53 Chinese Voluntary Associations in Vancouver
in the 1960's 57
The Fraternal Associations 65
The Chinese Freemasons 65
History of the Chinese Freemasons in B.C. 67
The The Kuomintang Association 71
The Chinese Lions, Elks, and Veterans 74
The Clan Associations 77 iv
Page
The Locality Associations 86
Community Associations: The Chinese Benevolent Association 91
Other Associations: Athletic, Commercial, Charitable, Leisure, and Alumni 95
The Network of Associations in the Early 1960's 98
Chapter IV: Leaders and Leadership in the Chinese Community of Vancouver 106
The Historical Emergence of Chinese Leadership
in Vancouver 106
Nature of the Data on Leaders of the 1960's 109
The Social Characteristics of Forty-Nine
Chinatown Leaders 112
Age and Sex 113
Place of Birth 114
Family Situation 117
Education and Occupation 120
Political Alignment 124
Extent of Assimilation 125
Conclusions 130
Chapter V: The Leadership Elite 134
The Four Most Influential Leaders 136
Other Influential Leaders 145
The Social Characteristics of the Leadership Elite 147 Chapter VI: The Wider Perspective 152 V
Page
Bibliography 162
Appendix I: Constitution and By-Laws of the Chinese Freemasons of Canada, Article II, Objects and By-Law I, Mem• bership 168 vi
LIST OF TABLES
Page
Chapter II:
Table IIA: Head Tax and Chinese Immigration into British Columbia 30
Table IIB: Proportion of Males to Females in Canada by Age, 1925 32
Table IIC: Population of Chinese in Vancouver by
Decade, 1911-1971 48
Chapter III:
Table IIIA: Chinese Associations in Vancouver in the Early 1960's 59 Table IIIB: The Freemasons and Subsidiary Bodies in
the Early Sixties 72
Table IIIC: Clan Associations of the 1960's 79
Table HID: Locality Associations of the 1960's 88
Table HIE: Relative Influence of the Associations 102
Chapter IV:
Table IVA: Age of Forty-Nine Chinatown Leaders 113
Table IVB: Place of Birth of China-born Leaders 116
Table IVC: Place of Origin of Leaders"Families 118
Table IVD: Place of Birth and Ethnicity of Wife 119
Table IVE: Leaders' Educational Achievement 121
Table IVF: Occupations of Leaders 122
Table IVG: Proportion of Business Contacts Chinese 122
Table IVH: Proportion of Business Contacts Chinese vs. Occupation 123 vii
Page
Table IVI: Proportion Friends Chinese 125
Table IVJ: Number of Associations Belonged To 127
Table IVK: Place of Birth and Clan Association Membership 129 Chapter V:
Table VA: The Acquisiton of Influence 149 viii
LIST OF FIGURES
Page
Figure I: The Network of Associations: Early 1960's 100 ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank the members of my thesis committee, G.E.
Johnson, E. Wickberg, and W.E. Willmott, for their advice, criticism, and support in writing this thesis and for making available to me the materials of their research projects, without which this work could never have been written.
I owe special thanks to Dr. Willmott for giving me access to
the fieldnotes he had collected on the Vancouver Chinese community during
the sixties, for suggesting the feasibility of this thesis topic in the
first place, and for serving as my thesis adviser until his resignation
from the University of British Columbia in 1973.
In addition, I am also indebted to the other members of the project who offered me their assistance: William Yee for giving me in•
formation on the present status of associations in Chinatown, Jennie
and Bessie Yu for their translations of Chinese materials, and Ma Sen
for his help with Chinese calligraphy.
Fellow graduate students Carole Farber and Ellen Judd kindly
read drafts of the thesis and provided encouragement during the whole
endeavour. 1
PREFACE
The topic of this dissertation is voluntary associations and leadership in the Chinese community of Vancouver. This problem was ori• ginally suggested to me, as a graduate student interested in Chinese anthropology, by members of a team at the University of British Columbia who were engaged in a project dealing with the history of the Chinese 1 in Canada and recent Chinese migration to Canada. They felt that
there was a need for a synthesis of published and unpublished materials
concerning the Vancouver Chinese in order to provide a background for
further research. Of particular relevance to the concerns of this pro•
ject was the nature of the community in the early and mid-1960's, that
is, before the impact of the migration due to liberalized immigration
legislation became apparent. It was felt that the nature of community
organization at that point in time had to be understood before the extent
and nature of change in the seventies could be established. In this
thesis, I have attempted to make use of these materials in order to
provide an ethnographic description of the Vancouver Chinese community
in the sixties from the combined perspectives of history, sociology, and
anthropology. 2
CHAPTER I
THE STUDY OF OVERSEAS CHINESE
Most treatments of North American Chinese communities to date have been concerned with the problems of assimilation, the impact of the host society on the ethnic group, and the reactions of the host society to the presence of the ethnic group (e.g., Lee 1960, Baureiss
1971, Cheng 1931). These are all crucial variables in the formation of any immigrant ethnic community, and I have treated them when possible.
They do not, however, comprise my major focus. I am not so much inter• ested in what the overseas Chinese in North America have to say about
America (as the melting pot or the vertical mosaic or whatever), as in what they have to say about the nature of overseas Chinese communities in general. I think this approach is justified (but certainly not the only justifiable approach) because of the fact that Chinese communities the world over are remarkably similar.
Nor am I primarily interested in what the overseas Chinese can tell us about traditional Chinese culture in their homeland, an area of inquiry that has become more and more popular since opportunities for social scientists to do fieldwork in China itself have become reduced.
Although this type of analysis has produced some interesting results
(e.g., Crissman 1967, Willmott 1970a), I believe that overseas Chinese society has developed a culture of its own, one that is quite different from both traditional rural Chinese culture where many of the immigrants originated and that of the vastly changed China of today. By offering a 3
glimpse into the social organization of the Vancouver Chinese, I hope to provide material that can be used for comparative purposes in defining exactly what this culture of the overseas Chinese is all about and to what extent it varies from community to community. In the last chapter, then, I draw some cursory comparisons with other Chinese communities.
These comparisons are, however, for the most part limited to Southeast
Asian examples because of the lack of data on the social organization of
North American Chinese communities in such centers as Montreal, Toronto,
San Francisco, and New York.
My primary interest, then, is anthropological, that is, in
the social organization of the Vancouver Chinese. Given this interest, one may well ask, why the emphasis on associations and leadership? There are two reasons why I have chosen to view the community from this pers• pective, one pragmatic and the other theoretical. The pragmatic aspect is that the definition of my "problematic" was limited by the kind.and
extent of data available. Since I did not do my own fieldwork for this study, I often found myself in the position of having to choose between
adopting the perspectives of the people who had collected the data and
trying to use the data in ways that it was not originally intended to be
used. My solution to this problem is to a great extent a compromise between these alternatives. Where possible, I have attempted to fit the
data into my own theoretical perspective, and where not possible I have merely borrowed the frameworks and approaches of others in the interest
of presenting as much of the data on the subject as possible. The em•
phasis on associations and leadership, then, arises in part from the 4
fact that I was given access to unpublished materials on the Vancouver
Chinese that had been collected by people with specific interests in these areas.
These data are quite diverse in nature and were collected by several different individuals. They include: i) interviews designed and administered to Chinese leaders in Vancouver by Erickson for her thesis entitled "Prestige Power and the Chinese", M.A. thesis, U.B.C,
1966; ii) files on associations and leaders in Vancouver Chinatown in which relevant information from the Chinatown News was recorded for the purpose of carrying out an analysis similar to, although not as extensive as, Skinner's (1958) work on the Bangkok Chinese; iii) translations and summaries of the Chinese Times from 1914..on, done by Chinese research assistants; and finally, iv) Willmott's fieldnotes on the Chinese in
British Columbia, which were collected throughout the sixties and which include extensive interviews with knowledgeable members of the Vancouver
community and with representatives of several major associations. In addition, I have made use of published and unpublished materials on the
Chinese in British Columbia (e.g., Sedgwick 1973, Lyman et al. 1964,
Willmott 1964 and 1970b, Wai 1970, C.Y. Lai 1972, and Wynne 1964).
Pragmatic considerations aside, there are certain reasons why
I think an inquiry into the social organization of the Vancouver Chinese
can justifiably be approached from the perspective of associations and
leadership. It can be argued that the network of associations that the
Vancouver Chinese community exhibits together with the system of leader• ship that arises from this network form an indigenous political struc- 5
ture. It is important not only to describe this structure, but to under• stand to what extent the social organization of this particular group of overseas Chinese is articulated in terms of political considerations and how this compares with Chinese communities elsewhere. This is certainly not an original approach. Ethnographic studies of overseas Chinese in
Southeast Asis have pointed to the significance of associations in the political and social organizations of these communities (e.g., Skinner
1958, Freedraan 1967, T'ien 1953, and Willmott 1970a), and the few the• oretical works done on this subject have substantiated and clarified in more general terms the specific findings of the ethnographers (e.g.,
Crissman 1967, Fallers 1967, and Johnson, Forthcoming).
The studies done on overseas Chinese in North America, how• ever, have for the most part not been concerned with a social-organizational approach, or indeed, with investigating the common characteristics of the diaspora of overseas Chinese communities. There are several, quite valid, reasons why this has been the case. First, a concern with social organ• ization has traditinally been an anthropological concern, and anthropo• logists have been slow to apply their methodology to complex, urban sec• tors of the West. But this is changing. Schneider's (1968) work on
American kinship is one example of a successful application of anthropo• logical concepts and tools to a complex aspect of modern Western society.
In terms of overseas Chinese, Weiss' work (1971) on the Sacramento com• munity is a step in this direction, as are those by Lyman (1968) and
Willmott (1970a). 6
Second, the extent to which social scientists have been un• interested in using anthropological concepts to approach Western society is in large part a measure of the limitations that are still endemic to the discipline: a tendency to formulate general theoretical perspec• tives solely on the basis of data collected from tribal, peasant, or village peoples, an over-reliance on one methodology, that of participant- observation, and a reluctance to utilize the methodological tools and approaches of other disciplines. Freedman, in his "Chinese Phase in
Social Anthropology", has remarked that developments in anthropological studies of China created a step forward from traditional social anthropo• logy (1963: 12). In a sense, because overseas Chinese are found in urban contexts all over the world, they pose the same kind of challenge to social anthropology as did village China several decades ago. As
Schneider stated, anthropologists can no longer be considered merely
"the sociologist of 'backward' or 'underdeveloped' societies" (1968: iv).
The case of the overseas Chinese offers yet another opportunity to demon• strate the validity of this statement.
One particular aspect of social anthropological theory that I have found of some use in dealing with the problems of overseas Chinese social organization is political anthropology. Although generally con• cerned with the universal problems of the maintenance and establishment of social order, political anthropology itself has had difficulty in escaping from the functionalist paradigm and from a bias toward small- scale societies (e.g., Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940, Middleton and
Tait 1958). The author of one of the most recent treatments of political 7
anthropology} in fact^concludes that politics, contrary to kinship or myth, has defied systematic treatment and remains imprecise in nature.
As the author states, "The political can be reduced neither to a code
(such as language or myth) nor to a network (such as kinship or exchange).
It remains a total system that has not yet been given a satisfactory formal treatment" (Balandier 1970: 49).
Political science, on the other hand, exhibits quite different failures than those of political anthropology. Political science has failed to integrate the examples of undifferentiated societies into its theoretical approach just as political anthropology has failed to inte• grate the example of its own society into its framework. While political anthropology leans heavily on the exotic, political science is marked by
its ethnocentricity and its emphasis on formal government and administra•
tion. Clearly some synthesis is needed, especially when it comes to the
overseas Chinese. Specifically, the concepts of informal power relations,
systems of adjudication, customary law, and the kin, ritual and symbolic bases of power need to be integrated with the concepts of formal hier•
archies, governments, and elections. More important, an approach is
needed that can deal with the relationships and interaction between
these different levels of the political.
Swartz, Tuden, and Turner (1966) have pointed out that hetero•
geneous societies should not be modeled on organic or mechanical analogues
but rather on "social fields" that have many dimensions and parts indepen•
dent of each other (1966: 8). The political, to them, is one such social
"field". Due to the difficulties of defining the boundaries of the 8
Vancouver Chinese community, let alone that of its political system, the advantages of this approach over that of the functionalist framework are apparent. The Vancouver Chinese do not represent an isolated society with well integrated parts; they are a changing ethnic group in a com• plex society whose political system must serve, not only to create social order internally, but also to link the group with the wider society around it.
Swartz et al. (1966) have also stressed the necessity for pro• gressing from static and synchronic analyses to dynamic and diachronic 2 ones. In the same vein, Leach has also remarked that real social sys• tems are never in equilibrium, it is only the models of them that are
(1954: 4). In spite of the fact that the main purpose of this thesis is a description of the Chinese community in the sixties, then, it is felt that a synchronic approach would indeed produce a static analysis. The role of associations in Vancouver's Chinese community cannot be under• stood without reference to their historical origins and the part they played in the community throughout its history. Therefore, a great pro• portion of the data I present is historical in nature. This is in accord with my conception of anthropology as a field that combines the use of historical, sociological, and anthropological materials in its overall approach (as Freedman 1963 has urged), and, further, one that does not posit prior assumptions of equilibrium.
In my approach to the Vancouver Chinese, then, the manner in which I use the concept "political system" is in many ways similar to that found in political anthropology. It is a system that is articulated and legitimated by the people themselves, one that is distinct from the 9
colonial or state apparatus that may be superimposed on it, and one that
is understandable only in terms of the total social organization of the
group under consideration. Further, it is an analytic, not a concrete
distinction, in Parson's terms (1968: 34). In the sense I use it, however, the concept of "political system" is applied to an ethnic group
and not to a well-defined, territorially based tribe - an extension which from the perspective of political anthropology makes its defini•
tion and use all the more difficult. Perhaps a closer look at a few general points about the nature of the overseas Chinese ethnic community will reduce some of these difficulties.
In spite of the fact that overseas Chinese communities are
found in urban contexts all over the world, it is possible, as Crissman states, "to discern a similar segmentary organization underlying the superficially different characteristics of various communities" (1967:
185). This segmentary organization is created by divisions within the community based on differences in surname, native place, and dialect.
These criteria are used to create segments that are not discrete but interlock and overlap due to cross-cutting membership, thus creating speech, locality, and surname "sub-communities" related within the 3 framework of the larger community. Exactly which criteria a community will use as organizational principles varies. As Crissman states,
The actual points of segmentation...used vary greatly from one city to another, and even in the same place over time, and depend on the immigration history, the relative numbers from various localities with different names, and the existence of special interests held by potential communities (1967: 191). 10
Thus, in Vancouver, segmentation on the basis of dialect is not opera• tive, while segmentation on the basis of surname and native place is.
The characteristic of segmentation on the basis of a finite number of principles, then, is what creates the similarity among overseas Chinese communities, while it is the selection and manipulation of these prin• ciples that creates the diversity.
The political system of these communities is also segmentary in nature. In each community, each segment, or 11 sub-community", is represented by an association; for instance, the group of people from the 4
Tai-Shan [Toy-Shan] xian in Kwangtung province are united by the Toy-
Shan locality association, while all the people united by the same sur• name Lee are represented by the Lee Clan Association. Taken together, the proliferation of voluntary associations that most overseas Chinese communities exhibit serves to govern the community in a situation where self-government is largely practiced but where outright political autonomy is denied or rejected.
These associations generally assume three functions: i) the internal management of the community, ii) the representation and integra• tion of the community into the host society, and iii) the linkage of the community to other overseas Chinese communities and to the homeland to promote pan-Chinese interests. The voluntary associations are actually
"the administrative organs of the communities [e.g., segments] from which their membership.is drawn" (Crissman 1967: 194), and in this sense they are a skeleton of the social structure at large. 11
The associations are able to function as effective political mechanisms by virtue of the fact that they are joined together into a network. . In addition to the natural hierarchies that are formed by the greater or lesser inclusivity of the segments which the 'associations rep• resent, the formation-of this network is accomplished by means of inter• locking directorships and by factional alignment based on wider political issues. From the point of view of individual power, interlocking direc• torships in associations and executive boards are significant in that the more times a leader shares executive positions with other leaders, the wider his communication network and the more effective his means of con• trol. From the point of view of the total associational network, inter• locking directorships are important in that they create power blocs within the system itself. Skinner (1958) has carried out a detailed analysis of interlocking directorships among the Chinese in Bangkok, and his work remains a model in the study of overseas Chinese society.
The political nature of the associations among overseas Chi• nese is, however, usually covert due to the fact that the Chinese have often had to govern themselves without visible political institutions because these were considered subversive or threatening to the govern• ment of the host society (see for instance D. Willmott 1960, Freedman
1967, and W. Willmott 1969). Thus, it is usually the case that the poli• tical system of the overseas Chinese consists of an ordered network of seemingly apolitical associations and of the system of leadership that arises from this network. The existence of associational networks in
Chinese communities that have acted as de facto governments at one time 12
or another has been documented for Bangkok by Skinner (1958) , Singapore by Freedman (1967), Phnom-Penh by W. Willmott (1970a), Semarang by
D. Willmott (1960) in Southeast Asia, and for Sacramento, California by
Weiss (1971), Victoria by Sedgwick (1972) , and Vancouver by Lyman (1962) and W. Willmott (1970b) in North America. Future research on overseas
Chinese communities by historians, anthropologists, and sociologists will undoubtedly provide more examples of this phenomenon.
Further, it is largely this network of associations that has allowed the Chinese to remain in relative isolation from the culturally alien milieu that surrounds them, as attested to both by the continued existence of "Chinatowns" throughout North America and by the presence of distinct
Chinese settlements throughout most of Southeast Asia. The autonomy that is afforded to these Chinese communities by the nature of the political structure is, however, as much a result of a resistance to assimilation on the part of the immigrants as it is of a real lack of opportunity to assimilate created by the host society. As Baureiss has noted, the grant• ing of permission to enter coupled with an unwillingness to give the immigrant access to crucial values and institutions of the host community
"seals the alien off in a segregated unitoof his own" (1973: 17).
Given the political nature of the associations, their functions vary with the varying relationship of the minority community to the dom• inant society. Specifically, the extent of control over the community by the host society, the presence or absence of alternative means of poli• tical expression, and the nature of the integration into the wider society all/affect both the type of activities that the associations perform and 13
the size and complexity of the.associational network. With regard to complexity of the associational network, for instance, Willmott has sug• gested that the paucity of associations in the Chinese community of
Phnom-Penh throughout the colonial period was due to the impinging nature of French rule (1969: 282-3), and with regard to the specific nature of the network, Freedman has attributed the dominance of the secret society and the exclusion of other types of associations in Singapore's early history to the measure of control being exerted by the British (1967: 46).
As he states, "...we may conclude that select societies were likely to appear only when the Chinese were faced with a challenge to. control their own affairs" (1967: 46).
The components of the associational network range from secret societies to music groups and usually include organizations based on the place of origin in China, clan affiliation, sports interests, dialect,
Chinese and local politics, charity, and community-wide representation.
These last groups, such as the Chinese Benevolent Association in Vancouver or the Federation of Philippine Chinese Chambers of Commerce, usually form the apex of a hierarchical structuring of associations and include representatives from lower-level associations. Furthermore, church groups, Chinese language schools, and Chinese newspaper and hospital boards, although not formal associations, are often integrated into the associational network. In the early 1960's, there were over eighty for• mal Chinese associations in Vancouver.
In the context of overseas Chinese society, these voluntary associations assume many of the functions exercised by the lineage system 14
in traditional China. Both the lineage system and associations,for in•
stance, fulfill such needs as protection of economic and supernatural
interests, arbitration, and solidarity (Johnson, Forthcoming). Because
voluntary associations have been so crucial in narrowing the gap between
pre-industrial and industrial society, one author has termed them "bridg•
ing mechanisms" (Johnson, Forthcoming), and another has noted that they
have been instrumental in the management of external relations in a
situation where satisfying moral ties with the host community are lacking
(Fallers 1967: 12).
Voluntary associations themselves were by no means lacking in
traditional China, although they were predominantly confined to urban
settings. For instance, Kato (1936) documents the existence of a fore•
runner to the merchant's association in urban centers of China as early
as the T'ang and Sung periods. Similarly, Niida (1950) lists kinship,
common geographical origin, graduation from the same school, common trade,
common religion, and common occupation as bases for associational activity
in Peking in the early 1940's. Even within the framework of the highly
developed lineage system of rural Southeastern China, there was room for
the development of certain types of voluntary associations. As Freedman states,
Obviously, conditions in the localized lineage of south• eastern China were not such that associations were likely to assume there so important a structural position, but we must be wary of thinking that, because the lineage community appeared stable and bound by rules of kinship and status be• haviour, associations could not emerge on any considerable scale (1958: 92). 15
Freedman goes on to note that such voluntary associations as secret soci•
eties, mutual-aid clubs, burial associations, and music clubs were opera•
tive in village settings in Southeastern China. The utilization of vol•
untary associations overseas, then, was not an innovation in itself.
What constituted an innovation was the increasing number of needs that
these institutions were called on to fulfill - especially in situations where the associations effectively formed de facto governments.
Transplanted into the context of immigrant communities, the
associations are usually highly multi-functional in nature. As Lyman
states, one association is often simultaneously regarded as "an employment office, court of arbitration, revenue agency, public lobby, recrational hostel, mutual aid society, and burial association" (1962: part III,
1). The role of associations as courts of arbitration is particularly
important. Because membership in the associations is cross cutting and
thus provides channels for arbitration, disputes can be settled inter• nally. Thus, conflict on one level promotes social cohesion on another and again serves to reinforce the isolation of the community from the host 5 society. The factional alignment of associations, and the leaders who mediate between these factions, are therefore of great significance to the structure of the community.
Another generalization that can be made about voluntary asso• ciations among the overseas Chinese is that some seem to be oriented to• ward more traditional Chinese values than others. In describing the Chi• nese associations of Phnom-Penh, Willmott (1970) chose the term "tradi- tionist" to apply to some of the associations, while he labelled others 16
"modernist". He preferred the term "traditlonist" to "traditional" be• cause it was their orientation, rather than their existence, that was traditional (1970a: 15). Modernist associations were differentiated from traditionist ones in that their activities were "oriented toward more universalistic values" (1970a: 116). The traditionist associations, on the other hand, were based on the more particularistic criteria of surname, native place, and language group.
The associations among the Vancouver Chinese of the 1960's were also polarized with respect to the traditionist/modernist dichotomy.
Many associations in Vancouver during this period could be termed tradi• tionist, that is, they were in one way or another concerned with the con• tinuation and preservation of the Chinese heritage. Ultimately, these associations served to channel interest back to the homeland rather than to the host society, and their members were often more committed to poli• tics in China than to the local political situation. When this was the case, they exhibited commitment to the political party of China that attempted to rely on Chinese heritage as an answer to contemporary pro• blems; namely, the Kuomintang. These associations were only peripherally, if at all, concerned with promoting assimilation into the host society.
During this period, however, both due to changes in the atti• tudes of the host society toward them and to changes in their attitudes toward China, some Vancouver Chinese began to express more pro- assimilationist or pro-integrationist sentiments. These changes in atti• tude were accompanied by the development of modernist associations that were concerned with establishing a Canadian identity as well as with the 17
selective preservation of some aspects of the Chinese culture. These associations oriented themselves toward more universalistic values and concerned themselves more with the place of the Chinese in the host society than with the relation of overseas Chinese to China. These associations were, however, more interested in integration than in total assimila• tion, and they played an important role in preserving the identity of the Chinese community. The competition for power between these two types of associations in the Vancouver Chinese community will be taken up in Chapter III.
The differirig-g modes of political orientation among overseas
Chinese has been documented in a general sense by Wang Gungwu (1970) .
Drawing insight from the political activities of the Malaysian Chinese, he distinguishes three types of political groupings among Southeast Asian
Chinese. As he states,
...the Chinese throughout South-East Asia have at all times manifested three distinctive political groupings based on their commitments to politics in China, to the politics of the respective overseas communities, and to local politics whe• ther indigenous, colonial, or nationalist (1970: 4).
The first group maintains links with the politics of China and is first and foremost concerned with the destiny of China; the second group is concerned with the indirect politics of trade and with establishing a community identity, while the third group, in Malaysia, is tentatively committed to some sort of Malaysian loyalty.
These categories are not directly transferrable to North Amer• ican Chinese, but some parallels can nevertheless be drawn. In Vancouver, the individuals who continued to be involved with homeland politics - those who belonged to Wang's first category - were usually traditionist 18
in orientation and involved with those associations that attempted to perpetuate traditional Chinese culture. The individuals who were com• mitted to overseas Chinese politics - Wang's second category - were more modernist in orientation and tended to participate in those associations that attempted to promote Chinese community interests, whether social, cultural, or commercial. Finally, those Chinese who were solely com• mitted to Canadian politics - whether municipal, provincial or federal
- were usually not involved in the associational network at all and are only peripheral to the concerns of this paper.
In spite of the increasing integration of the Chinese into
Canadian political processes, however, the associational network of the sixties continued to play an important role as a "boundary marker" that was instrumental in the definition of the Chinese community (see Barth
1969: 15-16). Thus, the network became instrumental in maintaining dis• crete categories of ethnicity despite changing membership and participa• tion in the community itself. This is not to say that the associational network became less important, but that the nature of its importance changed from former times. That associations are still integral to the definition of the Chinese community in Vancouver is attested to by the fact that some sixty to eighty new associations have been formed in the last ten years and that the associations seem to have a new appeal to 6 youth and new immigrants.
Some Operational Definitions
Political: "Political" is used here in a broad sense to denote those areas of social life concerned with ensuring internal cooperation, 19
regulating or resolving conflict, and directing public affairs (Balandier
1972: 49). Viewed in this sense, the associational structure of the Van• couver Chinese community assumes political significance throughout the history of the community.
Community: Community is used here in the sense that Crissman, after Maclver, has defined it, as "an area of common life based on common interests which can determine activity" and which "has ethnicity as well as locality as its basis" (Crissman 1967:' 188). Thus, the ethnic community is seen as having social, rather than strictly territorial, boundaries, although in the case of the Vancouver Chinese community the social community has always had a territorial nucleus in the form of Chinatown. As Barth states in his discussion of ethnic groups, "the boundaries to which we must give our attention are of course social boundaries, though they may have territorial counterparts" (1969: 15).
The formation of these social boundaries entails the existence of com• mon socio-psychological referents and of common sets of interrelated institutions (Baureiss 1971: 12); however, as Crissman has noted, whe• ther the community is a corporate group, a group, or a quasi-group is a matter for empirical verification (1967: 188).
Leader: Leader is defined for the purposes of this study to include those Chinese individuals holding one or more executive positions in Chinese associations in Vancouverrand who were mentioned at least twice in the Chinatown News from 1961 to 1965 (see Chapter IV). This definition is considered adequate because it hasubeen previously established that for the period under consideration Chinese leadership not based on associa• tional backing was almost non-existent (Erickson* 1966). 20
Integration and Assimilation: Assimilation is seen as the process that ends the ethnic community by changing culture patterns to those of the host society, while integration is seen as the process by which immigrants find a place in the host society without necessarily losing their ethnic identity (see Gordon 1964). These concepts, because they involve two different processes, must be carefully distinguished.
Network: The network of associations is created by interlocking directorships and memberships which "are the main channels of communica• tion and influence uniting the various organizations" (Skinner 1958: 200).
In the absence of formal hierarchies and lines of control, the political efficacy of the associations derives from the more covert relationships among them created by the interlocking of executive positions.
With these concepts minimally defined and the theoretical background of the study sketched out, it is possible to proceed to the discussion of the Chinese community in Vancouver. The next chapter,
Chapter II, attempts to document how immigration legislation has affected the structure of the community in Vancouver. Chapter III deals with the associations of the Vancouver community, examining their historical emergence as well as their significance in the 1960's. Chapters IV and
V are concerned with the leaders of the associational network of the
1960's and with the social characteristics of the men who tended to assume these leadership positions. Finally, Chapter VI deals with the
Vancouver Chinese community from the point of view of what it has to say about the wider social organization of overseasa Chinese. 21
FOOTNOTES - PREFACE AND CHAPTER I
1. The directors of this team, W.E. Willmott, E. Wickberg, and G.E. Johnson, are at present working under the auspices of two projects, one funded by Canada Council entitled the Organizational Adaptation of the Vancouver Chinese and the other funded by the Secretary of State (Citizenship Branch), which is concerned with producing a comprehensive history of the Chinese in Canada. They kindly gave me access to materials from both projects.
2. For a summary of relevant political anthropological theory prior to Swartz et al. (1966) see the introduction to Willmott's Political Structure of the Chinese in Cambodia (1970).
3. "Sub-community" is Crissman's term, and it seems to confuse the issue rather than clarify it. I would prefer the term "sub-group" or "community segment".
4. Xian can be roughly translated as county or district. The system of romanization adopted in this paper is generally that of the pin-yin system currently used in China today. I make exceptions to this sys• tem when a Cantonese style of translation is in common use, such as in the names of Chinese associations in Vancouver, or when another romanization of Mandarin is conventionally accepted, such as in the name of the province Kwangtung. Place names in Kwangtung are given in pin-yin, followed by the Cantonese in brackets.
5. This is essentially Gluckman's theory as presented in his Custom and Conflict in Africa (1955). I am indebted to Willmott for point• ing out its applicability to the overseas Chinese.
6. This information is based on research currently being carried out by William Yee, a member of the project investigating recent Chinese migration to Vancouver. 22
CHAPTER II
THE EFFECTS OF CANADIAN IMMIGRATION POLICY ON THE
CHINESE COMMUNITY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
In spite of the fact that this thesis deals primarily with lea•
dership and voluntary associations in the Vancouver Chinese community
as it existed in the 1960's, some knowledge of the history of the Chinese
in British Columbia is needed to provide a background to this topic.
Therefore, this chapter presents a short historical account of Chinese migration to British Columbia. Special emphasis is placed on the effect
that discriminatory immigration legislation had on the structure of Chi• nese communities in the province, and particularly on the structure of
the Vancouver Chinatown district of the early 1960's.
Immigration Policy and the Vancouver Chinese
The Chinese have formed a distinct and organized ethnic commun• ity in Vancouver at least since a group of Chinese males first banded together there after the Canadian Pacific Railroad was completed in 1 1886. From its inception, the community was plagued by restrictive immigration policies and anti-Oriental legislation that inhibited its growth and structured the nature of relations within it. In this short historical account, I attempt to document how these policies - only one manifestation of the widespread racism that promoted them - affected the social organization of the community and invited conflict.
One author has recently noted that in Canada "immigration is neither a national myth nor is it widely accepted as an essential element 23
in national development" and that French-English relations have often pre-empted the place of immigration in national mythology (Hawkins 1972:
34). Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Canadian immigration policy has been characterized by uncertainty and inconsistency. Whatever the cause, the lack of a consistent perspective in immigration policy has certainly created an undue amount of hardship within Chinese communities throughout Canada. From the time B.C. joined Confederation in 1871 un• til the almost total prohibition of Oriental immigration in 1923, anti-
Oriental legislation was a major issue that kept B.C. and Ottawa in a state of constant disagreement. In addition, labour, professional groups, employers, immigrants' associations, railway and steamship companies, and such organizations^ as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce all tried to make their voices heard, and, more often than not, the decisions made by the federal government were the result of pressure by the most powerful groups. Needless to say, these were not the immigrants' associations.
Thus, the Chinese, in particular, often became the victims of domestic political struggle.
Canadian immigration policy has progressed from an almost purely racist orientation to one based more on manpower considerations. In 1966, with the creation of the Department of Manpower and Immigration, immigra• tion was for the first time to be systematically related to occupational demand. Between the time of the repeal of the Exclusion Act in 1947 and the formation of a new immigration approach in 1966, however, the "solution" to the problem of immigration was seen to lie in the sponsorship system.
At first it was thought that this system was indeed a successful solution, 24
but as the years progressed some of the problems Inherent in this approach began to appear, namely: (1) a major bias in favour of previously es• tablished groups, (2) the potential for sudden and unexpected growth,
(3) hardship for immigrants in terms of long-term adjustment, and (4) the tendency toward the creation of segregated and self-contained ethnic communities (Hawkins 1972: 49).
The Canada Manpower and Immigration Council Act of 1967 changed the nature and extent of Chinese migration to Canada. At this time, a great number of unsponsored, relatively highly trained Chinese from Hong
Kong migrated to Canada, creating some important changes in the Vancouver
Chinese community. Until this time, however, the Chinese tendency of
"chain migration" was reinforced by the sponsorship system. In the
1960's, therefore, the vast majority of Chinese immigrants in Vancouver, as in Canada at large, came from a small region in the southern province of Kwangtung in the Pearl River delta that includes the following coun• ties: Zhong-Shan [Chung-San], Pan-Yu [Pun-Yu], Shun-de [Sun-Dak], Tai-
Shan [Toy-San or Hoy-San], Kai-Ping [Hoy-Ping], En-Ping [Yan-Ping,]., and
Xin-Hui [San-Wui], Very few immigrants originated from other places in
China, hardly any from northern China. Because the immigrants from this region all speak various dialects of Cantonese, the Vancouver Chinese community, unlike those in most of Southeast Asia, is not segmented on the basis of language, but mainly on the basis of differences of surname and county of origin. Other Chinese communities in the Western hemisphere also seem to be fairly homogeneous with respect to language. 25
The history of the Chinese in Vancouver can be divided into five stages based on major policy changes in immigration. These are:
(1) 1858-1885: Background to the Chinese Community in Vancouver, the
Gold Rush and Railroad; (2) 1886-1903: Beginnings of the Community;
(3) 1904-1922: Reaction against the Chinese; (4) 1923-1947: The Per• iod of Exclusion; (5) 1947-1967: Growth and Conflict, the Sponsorship
System; and (6) 1967 to Present: Expansion and Diversification, Impact of the Point System.
This periodization, based on immigration legislation, differs only slightly from those of Willmott (1970b) and Foon Sein (in Willmott
1970b). Willmott's periodization, however, was formulated with regard to a sociological approach to the development of Chinese community organiza• tion in B.C., while Foon Sein's is based on his personal historical pers• pective. The fact that all three categorizations are similar lends sup• port to the contention that immigration legislation is significant to the understanding of the Chinese in Canada from whatever perspective one is interested in: historical, sociological, or political.
Finally, the history of the Chinese in British Columbia can be viewed in another way, that of a progression from an initial period in which the Chinese and white population occupied distinct economic niches and were in minimal competition for resources, to one in which they were in competition for resources and racism and discrimination prevailed, and lately, to one in which they are in more reciprocal positions and in which certain important goods and services are interchanged (see Barth
1969: 19-20). 26
I. 1858-1885: Background to the Chinese Community in Vancouver, the Gold Rush and the Railway
Up until 1885, when the first indications of an expanding
Chinatown in Vancouver began to appear, British Columbia was open to un• limited Chinese immigration. Due to the impact of the Cariboo Gold Rush, the town of Barkerville quickly grew to immense proportions, the popula• tion being estimated from five to twelve thousandoin,theel860's • (Willmott
1970b: 43). Of these, the Chinese probably accounted for three to five thousand, most of whom had followed the miners up from California to ful• fill such service occupations as cooking, laundering, and peddling vege• tables. Some of them provided mine labour, while others became known for
"digging the gold waste". The Chinese who made his fortune in gold, however, was the exception, even among those few Chinese who became in• dependent miners themselves (Willmott 1970b: 44).
During this time, wealthy Chinese merchants in California had established the credit-ticket system whereby a would-be immigrant's passage was forwarded to him in advance.
Although superficially this system appears innocuous, it was in actuality based on a debt/bondage system and not on service/contract obligations. Campbell (1923: 28) points to the role of the Six Companies, a Chinese association in San Francisco, in securing repayment of the debt
- for which they often charged as much as 4 to 8% monthly interest. The leadership of this association was composed of a wealthy Chinese merchant elite who were among the first Chinese to migrate to North America.
In the early 1880's, five to six thousand coolies were shipped directly from China to Canada under engagement to the contractors of the 27
Canadian Pacific Railway, and by 1884 more than 15,000 Chinese had en• tered B.C., most of them to work on the railroad (Campbell 1923: 37).
By this time, in spite of the fact that the majority of Chinese were still in the fairly remote areas of the province, a sizeable Chinese district had developed in Victoria. It was also during this time in
Victoria that three very important associations that were later to play a significant role in the Vancouver Chinese community were established, namely: the Ning Yung Hing Tong locality association [ Ning-yang Xing-
Tang] , the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association [Zhong-hua Hui-Guan], and a local chapter of the Chee Gung Tong [Zhi-gong Tang], later called the Chinese Freemasons. The activities and structure of these asso• ciations will be discussed in the next chapter.
Sedgwick (1973) reports that up until 1866 the Victoria news• papers allude to the Chinese in favourable terms. After this, evidence of anti-Oriental prejudices and discrimination begins to appear in the literature, but there is no real evidence that the Chinese were in compe• tition with white labour until at least the mid-1880's (Wynne 1964). When the WWorking Man's Protective Association circulated a petition in 1878 urging the government to pass anti-Chinese legislation, the first instance of anti-Chinese labour agitation, the Chinese were still primarily in mar• ginal economic positions that no one else would fill. For instance,
Wynne states that with respect to the canneries, "White men were the foreman, mechanics, and fishermen; the Indians did some fishing and clean• ing; while the Chinese made the cans, filled them and soldered them up.
There seemed no desire by white labour to replace the Chinese" (1964: 28
368-369). With respect to the coal mines, he maintains on the basis of an analysis of original sources that: "The inference simply is that
Chinese competition even with coal miners was not felt to be intoler• able at that time " (1964: 369).
Nevertheless, labour was not the only anti-Chinese pressure group in the province. Anti-Chinese factions in the provincial govern• ment attempted time and again to instigate anti-Chinese legislation, only to have it revoked by the higher courts. In fact, at one point during the construction of the C.P.R., the Prime Minister became so irked at the constant complaints about Chinese labour in the province of B.C. that he remarked: "At present it is simply a question of alternatives: either you must have this labour or you cannot have the railway...."
(from Wynne 1964: 348).
At the beginning of this period, around the late 1850's, the
Chinese first followed the miners up to the gold fields in British Colum• bia. They soon established their own economic niche in this new setting by opening laundries and restaurants, establishing gardens to supplement the miners' unbalanced diets, freighting, supplies into the area, and setting up mercantile concerns to provide the growing Chinese community with goods (see Stanton and Prang 1970: 5). They were both innovative and creative in their adaptation to the new environment but nevertheless self-contained in their attitudes. As Stanton and Prang state:
Probably all white miners saw the Chinese as an enigma. While other minorities ... assimilated, the Chinese lived in a world of their own. They either grew their own food or bought it from Chinese merchants. If they lived in the min• ing districts, their supplies were freighted in by Chinese 29
teamsters. Their transportation from China to British Colum• bia and return was in the hands of more Chinese capitalists. They didn't even stay in the country when they died, but ...had their bones sent back to China in boxes for burial in their native land (1970: 22).
Thus, the period directly preceding the establishment of a Chinese com• munity in Vancouver was unique in the history of the Chinese in Canada in several ways. It was the only time that totally unrestricted Chinese immigration was ever allowed; it was the only time that the Chinese oc• cupied a really distinct niche in the Canadian economy, and it was the only time that the sojourner mentality of continued orientation toward
China was universally prevalent among the migrants.
II. The Beginnings of the Vancouver Chinese Community: 1886 to 1903
The beginnings of Vancouver's Chinatown along Pender Street are relatively undocumented, but it is known that many Chinese were faced with unemployment after completing the C.P.R. to Vancouver in 1886
(Willmott 1970: 46-47). The founding of the community also coincides with the passage of the first anti-Chinese law in Canada, a law that not only imposed a $50 head tax on incoming Chinese but also stipulated that: (1) a bill of health was required from every incoming Chinese;
(2) Chinese already established in Canada must secure a certificate to remain and would be fined $400 for not doing so; and (3) it was illegal for the Chinese to organize their own courts (Cheng 1931: 60). In spite of these harsh measures, the period 1886 to 1903 is characterized by continued growth of the community until immigration was temporarily halted by passage of the $500 head tax in 1904, as Table HA illustrates: 30
TABLE IIA
Head Tax and Chinese Immigration into British Columbia
Number of People Year Amount Paying Tax
1900 $ 50 4,231 1901 100 2,518 1902 100 3,525 1903 100 5,245 1904 500 4,719 1905 500 8 1906 500 22 1907 500 91 1908 500 1,482 1909 500 1,411 1910 500 1,614
Source: Canada Year Book 1910, p. 410.
By 1902, there were 2,011 Chinese in Vancouver, only about 900 less than in Victoria, the majority in both communities being male. Gam• bling houses and prostitution were common, and 1885 to 1899 was a peak period for the opium business. Many of the Chinese, being unemployed and finding that their former jobs were no longer available to them, began to look for other work which was formerly only done by whites. But compe• tition was still minimal and confined to marginal areas, as indicated by
Campbell's statement that "...the occupations which usually afforded work for boys, girls, and women" were "being mainly held by the Chinese and Japanese" (1971: 53). Physical confrontation between whites and
Chinese did take place during this period, but it was usually confined to 31
fights between individuals. No mass action by whites against Chinese was undertaken until the anti-Oriental riots in Vancouver in 1907.
Willmott notes that some occupational specialization accord• ing to place of origin was evident during this period. For instance, the
Zhong-Shan [Chung-San] people tended to peddle vegetables; the Tai-Shan
[Toy-Shan] people tended to be in the laundry business, and the Kai-Ping
[Hoy-Ping] people in the restaurant business (Willmott 1964: 34). Fur• thermore, the logging industry seems to have attracted mainly migrants from the San-Yi [Sam-Yap] area, while the cannery business seems to have 2 attracted migrants from the Si-Yi [Sei-Yap] area.
The period 1886 to 1903 in Vancouver is also characterized by the establishment and conseuqent elaboration of a myriad of associations that were formed to serve the needs of the Chinese in an increasingly hostile environment. Although immigration legislation became more and more restrictive during this period, however, the $50 head tax being raised to $100 in 1901, the community had not yet been hit by the full impact of discriminatory legislation. Worse measures were to come.
And in spite of mounting discrimination and prejudice, the fact that the
Chinese were not yet in full competition with whites allowed them a cer• tain measure of escape from confrontation. With the passage of the $500 head tax in 1904, reaction against the Chinese began in earnest, and the various welfare associations attempted to mitigate the effects of the crisis as best they could.
III. 1904 to 1922: Reaction Against the Chinese
The institution of the $500 head tax in 1904 was significant in several respects. Its immediate effect was to curb immigration drastically, 32
and in 1905 only eight Chinese were listed as having entered and payed the tax. The ultimate effects of the Act, however, were quite anti• thetical to what the anti-Orientalists had intended in that it made
Chinese labour more scarce, doubling and tripling wages andthus enab• ling the Chinese to earn enough to loan the necessary $500 to relatives and.friends (Wynne 1964). In this way, the business of the labour agen• cies was drastically reduced, and in 1908, much to the dismay of the anti-
Chinese, 1,411 Chinese paid the tax and entered B.C.
By 1910, Vancouver had replaced Victoria as a center for the
Chinese and functioned as "residential, economic and cultural locus"
(Johnson et al. 1972: 10).
Census figures for 1911 indicate that the Chinese population of Vancouver was larger than that of Victoria by about 100 people. By
1921, Victoria's Chinese population had remained almost constant while
Vancouver's had practically doubled to over 6,000.'. At this time the population was still composed mostly of single men, the women and chil• dren being left home in China. In 1921, there was about one female for every ten males (Willmott 1964: 34). In 1925, the proportion of males to females by age is given in Table IIB.
TABLE IIB
Proportion of Males to Females in Canada by Age, 1925
Proportion Age Male Female Males to Females
Under 20 2,200 1,800 1.2/1 21-45 41,800 1,000 41.8/1 Over 45 3,000 200 15 II All Ages 47,000 3,000 15.7/1 33
Source: Adapted from Cheng Tien-Fang, Oriental Immigration in Canada, The Commercial Press Limited, Shanghai, 1931.
Meanwhile, anti-Oriental feeling was becoming more and more intense. In 1907, B.C. adopted a policy of segregation in its schools that in theory was based on language inadequacy but in actuality preven• ted almost all Chinese children from attending public school. The
Chinese Benevolent Assocation protested vigorously and retaliated by forming its own school for Chinese children until the law was repealed a few years later. 1907 also marks the date that the Asiatic Exclusion
LeagTuewas formed in Vancouver. Wynne remarks in this regard that the impetus to found the organization had come from south of the border, and that "the anti-Oriental movement which had crept, sometimes not so slowly, from California northward had reached B.C." (1964: 406). He also mentions that the League hoped to draw support from both business and labour (1964: 406).
In September, 1907, an anti-0ri>ental riot broke out in Van• couver in which an angry mob pillaged both Chinese and Japanese sections of town. Wynne, who has very carefully documented the progression of the riot, asserts that it was a "sudden outbreak of mass hysteria bent on destruction" rather than a carefully organized attempt to run the
Orientals out of town (1964: 414). The difference in reaction toward the riot on the part of the Japanese and Chinese, however, is of inter• est. The Japanese actively resisted the rioters and mobilized their own patrols to protect their interests. The day after the riots, they continued to work, and most of them armed themselves against future 34
attack. The Chinese, on the other hand, "retired to their warrens in
Chinatown and announced that until the present unrest was completed, they would not stir out" (quoted in Sugimoto 1972: 106). They counseled physical moderation and sought to avoid violent confrontation wherever possible. They day after the riots, instead of returning to work, the
Chinese called a community-wide strike to protest the damages inflicted on their community. The strike quite effectively upset Vancouver's eco• nomy for some time.
These differences in reaction were also accompanied by dif• ferences in the manner in which the Chinese and Japanese were treated after the attack. Because of British alliance with Japan, a more con• certed effort was made toward remunerating the Japanese community than was made toward the Chinese community, and, with international diplomacy in mind, the Japanese consulate graciously declined an offer of a
$1,600 remuneration soon after the riots (Sugimoto 1972: 108). The
Chinese were also offered reimbursement, but the issue was not even con• sidered until the middle of the next year.
From a sociological point of view, the significance of the strike that the Chinese staged immediately after the riot was twofold:
(1) it indicated that Chinese labour was no longer insignificant in the economy, and (2) it indicated that the community itself was so well or• ganized that in times of crisis it could act as ansolidary unit. Wynne states in this regard that: 35
White union bosses must indeed have envied the power of the yellow opposite numbers....Not only was the domestic happi• ness of the upper crust disturbed; Chinese employed in restau• rants and hotels were also called off their jobs; tugs and boats arriving in port found that their Chinese crew members failed to return; and the Chinese cooks and helpers in nearby logging camps left instantly and went to Chinatown. For those who were slow to give up their work there were fines of up to $100; even their lives were threatened (1964: 427).
This statement is indeed indicative of the existence of very powerful leadership.
Ultimately, the effect of the riot was such that the Federal government could no longer feign indifference with regard to the ques• tion of Oriental immigration. Not only had the riot cost them dearly in the payment of indemnities, but it forced them to try to clear the name of Canada with respect to other nations (Cheng 1931: 7, Wynne 1964:
446). Sugimoto states in addition that "The Vancouver riots put the
British in an embarrassing position, both as allies of Japan and because they had vehemently denounced American behavior in the San Francisco riots only four months previously" (1972: 103).
On the national and international levels, then, the riot prompted a greater clarification of the issues involved in Oriental immigration. On the local level, however, it merely provoked heightened feelings of anti-Orientalism that were later to culminate in the total exclusion of Chinese immigration. One response of the Chinese community to the increasingly racist attitudes surrounding them was to greatly increase the number of associations devoted to welfare and protest. It was at this time, for instance, that relief and charity associations, such as the Vancouver Chinese Salvation and Welfare Committee and the Vancouver
Chinese Christian Association, first made their appearances. 36
It was also during this period that Sun Yat-sen made visits to
Vancouver and Victoria to raise support for his cause. Given the tumul• tuous events that China was undergoing at this time, the Chinese commun• ities overseas became increasingly preoccupied and concerned with the state of their homeland. Many associations also played a part in rais• ing funds for the revolution and in attempting to provide relief to relatives and friends in China (Willmott 19 70: 48, Sedgwick 19 73).
By the end of this period, Canada was immersed in a post-war depression, and Chinese and whites alike scrambled for whatever work was available. Before Chinese immigration was finally terminated in 1923, however, British Columbia had passed two more discriminatory measures.
The first consisted of an amendment to a previously established act and resulted in a situation whereby "Any Chinese who was suspected of being illegally in Canada could be arrested by the immigration officers with• out warrant, tried summarily by a magistrate, and deported if the magis• trate so decided" (Cheng 1931: 82). Furthermore, the burden of proof rested with the Chinese. The other legislation was even more offensive to the Chinese. It consisted of a prohibition on any white woman or girl working in an establishment owned or managed by Chinese (Cheng
1931: 89). The C.B.A. hired a lawyer to fight the case at the price of
$1,000, but four years later the Act was merely changed to stipulate that "no white or Indian women or girls could work in such places where in the opinion of a police chief or inspector it was dangerous to their morals to do so" (Cheng 1931: 89). 37
IV. 1923-1946: The Period of Exclusion
The 1923 Immigration Act was so drastic that only eight Chi• nese were able to enter Canada as immigrants between then and 1947.
The bill was a masterpiece of discriminatory legislation, and it alarmed the Chinese community in more ways than one. For instance, it stated that: (1) the previously exempt classes of clergymen, teachers, tour• ists, men of science, and wives and children of merchants and clergymen were to be abolished; (2) all Chinese currently residing in Canada had to register within one year of the Act, subject to a $500 fine or one year's imprisonment or both; (3) all prohibited classes in general immi• gration were to be made applicable to the Chinese, including that of illiteracy; and (4) immigration and peace officers were authorized to arrest Chinese under suspicion without warrant (Cheng 1931: 90, 99).
Before it was amended by the federal government, the Act was even more objectionable and could have resulted in the deportation of over half of the community in Vancouver. Even as it stood after amendment, such aspects as arrest without warrant, deportation without appeal, and the severance of family ties, created considerable hardship within the com• munity. The C.B.A. declared July 1st as Humiliation Day, and other associations followed suit, but to no avail.
The effect of this drastic measure on the community was ob• viously great. It preserved the predominantly male composition of the community just when the Chinese were beginning to have the wherewithal to reunite their families. Older men without family often joined a fang-kou
- collectively owned hostels supervised by the locality associations. 38
During the depression, Chinese who were not Canadian citizens could not apply for welfare for fear of being deported as indigents (Corbett
1957: 7). The Chinese had no vote - a circumstance that made the role of informal Chinese community leaders very important - and were not al• lowed to be employed on public works. These discriminatory measures forced the Chinese to rely on internal solidarity, and specifically, on the indigenous political and welfare systems that they had developed within their community. The Act froze the development of the community and forced consolidation of the associationalnetwork around four major types of associations: (1) fraternal, (2) community, (3) clan, and (4) locality. The Act created a false and very inappropriate stability in that it stunted the development of the community just at a point when, given the right conditions, it could have flourished.
During this period, the Chinese in Vancouver were serviced by four Chinese newspapers, which promoted internal communication and kept them informed about events in China. Orientation remained to a great extent toward China, as attested to by the fact that over one million dollars were raised when the Japanese invaded mainland China. Those born in China were still the majority of the Chinese in Vancouver, and
Wai (1970) estimates that only 12% of the population was Canadian-born in 1931. The distinction between China-born and local-born was not yet an important factor in community organization.
Associational activity at this time was quite pronounced. For instance, Cheng (1931) notes the existence of about twenty clan associa• tions around the beginning of this period, one of which offered a reward 39
of $6,000 for the murderer of one of its members (Chinese Times 1924).
In 1925, the Wong clan association founded the Mon Keong School. At the time of its establishment, the school had a policy of "all leaves fall back to the roots", meaning that the Chinese children were expec• ted sooner or later to return to China, and their grouding in Chinese should therefore be firm. Later, this orientation gave way to one in which Chinese was considered a second language. Around 1940, the Chinese
Freemasons established a Chinese language school - the Tai Kung Charity
School - and the Hon Hsing Athletic Club.
Almost all the associations of this period functioned to channel interest back toward the homeland. The constitution of an asso• ciation for all migrants from the Tai-shan [Toy-San] district of China, for instance, indicated at the time it was drafted in 1931 that "the vested interest of the Toy San people, at least the association was firmly implanted in their homeland" (Sedgwick 1973: 179). Similarly, some of the objectives stated in the constitution of the Hon Hsing Athletic Club were: (1) to promote a spartan spirit; (2) to respond to the suffering 3 of China, and (3) to enhance and glorify the Chinese tradition.
It is interesting to speculate on the question of why the Chi• nese were not assimilated during the 1923 to 1947 period, for, in some cases, severing the flow of immigration has resulted in increased assi• milation for the members of an ethnic community. In Vancouver, however, this process did not occur, probably because of the nature of the legal and social constraints that the Chinese faced. For instance, Corbett 40
notes that the depression intensified economic objections to the Chi• nese, documenting the legislative constraints that they faced during this period. As he states:
At that time, Orientals, even though they were British sub• jects, were ineligible to vote in provincial and municipal elections, or to hold office in the provincial legislature or municipal councils or school boards. The provincial voters' lists were used as the basis of exclusion in other aspects of life. In this manner Oriental British subjects were disqual• ified from voting in Dominion elections, and Orientals gen• erally were barred from the practices of law and pharmacy in British Columbia. They could not be employed by contractors engaged in provincial public works, or by companies holding Crown timber leases. They were being gradually squeezed out of the fishing industry by the withholding of licences by the Federal Department of Marine and Fisheries (1957: 34).
Another author comments on the social effects of these legal constraints:
In view of strict legislation, and in view of the 'social cli• mate' that existed during this phase of Chinese immigration (or non-immigration) the emergence and persistence of a strictly . Chinese quarter in the City of Vancouver is not surprising. The legislation tended to act as a further coercive and cohe• sive force upon the Chinese, who had already begun to live to• gether in the compact settlement of "Chinatown" (Cho and Leigh 1972: 71).
Thus, considering the combined weight of the legal discrimination and the social and personal affronts that the Chinese endured during this period, it is no wonder that in spite of the hiatus in immigration, the
Chinese in Vancouver continued to be predominantly oriented toward their homeland rather than toward the host society.
By the end of this period, however, many Chinese, especially those born here, yearned for a more permanent and egalitarian status in Canada. The repeal of the Exclusion Act in 1947 marked the beginning of a period in which assimilation became a real alternative for the Chi- 41
nese. Even for those Chinese who did not wish to become assimilated, however, the repeal of the 1923 Immigration Act was an occasion for joy.
Families were reunited; residential patterns began to change, and China• town soon became less of a ghetto.
V. 1947 to 1967; Growth and Development - The Sponsorship System
In 1946, the Liberal cabinet formed a sub-committee to consi• der the rather urgent problem of post-war immigration to Canada. Be• cause of post-war dislocation, immigration suddenly became a high prior• ity. Hawkins (1972: 90-91) outlines the following accomplishments of the committee: (1) it widened the categories for admission of relatives
"since there was an urgent need for this on humanitarian grounds;" (2) it suggested the repeal of the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act and placed the Chinese under the same still very restrictive clause as other Asians;
(3) it formulated emergency measures to bring refugees and displaced persons to Canada; and (4) i-it composed a post-war immigration policy that was outlined by Prime Minister MacKenzie King on May 1, 1947.
King's 1947 statement is one of the most significant policy statements on immigration in recent Canadian history. In terms of Asian immigration, its significance lies in his insistence that fairly stringent restrictions on Asian immigration must remain in effect so as to avoid
"a fundamental alteration" in the character of the Canadian population
(Hawkins 1972: 93). The government and the people of Canada were op• posed, according to King, to "large-scale immigration from the Orient"
(ibid.). As a result, Oriental immigration for the next sixteen years was limited to close relatives. In spite of these restrictions, the
Chinese population in Vancouver doubled between 1951 and 1961, and the 42
need for labour in the primary industries and in the skilled occupations from 1946 to 1957 made immigration to Canada generally attractive
(ibid.).
The Chinese community in Vancouver underwent rapid changes during this period. A sudden increase in population, the re-establishment of many Chinese families, and the lessening of discrimination had great impact on the community. By 1949, the Chinese were permitted to seek public office and were "no longer subjected to municipal, provincial or federal disfranchisement" (Wai 1970: 78). In 1957 Douglas Jung, a Pro• gressive Conservative, became the first Chinese to be elected to the fed• eral parliament. Because of greater access to formal Canadian political procedures, the role of internal community leaders became somewhat dimin• ished from former times. In general, assimilation began to assume a positive value for many Chinese, and the "sojourner mentality" (see be• low) came to be more and more restricted to the pre-1923 immigrants.
The extreme pro-assimilationist attitude, however, was limited to a small number of Chinese, predominantly represented by the Canadian- born group, or tu-sheng [tou-sang]. It was during this period that dis• tinctions among immigrants assumed great significance in the structure of the community. The Chinese themselves recognized three groups: (1) the early immigrants who came to British Columbia before 1923; (2) their
Canadian-born offspring; and (3) recent arrivals from the Orient. By
1961, Wai (1970) estimates that 39.5% of the Chinese population was
Canadian-born, many of whom no longer wished to live in or around China• town. Thus, it is also in this period that the geographic boundaries of the Chinese community become blurred. 43
The first group, the early immigrants, can be largely charac• terized by what Rose Hum Lee terms "the sojourner mentality" (Lee 1960:
69). The phenomenon of the "sojourner mentality" originated at a time when the primary purpose of a migrant Chinese was to amass a certain amount of wealth and return home as soon as possible. Because of this objective, these immigrants sought employment that yielded liquid assets and were intent on retaining Chinese customs to as great an extent as possible. The latter objective was not that difficult to achieve given the fact that these individuals typically migrated after childhood, when their cultural values were well engrained, and that they were usually os• tracized by Westerners and denied access to crucial institutions when they got here. Due to various circumstances such as revolution in China and the failure to realize adequate savings, many of the "sojourners" could not attain their objective of returning to China and have since integrated, but not assimilated, to Canadian society.
The offspring of these early immigrants, only about 30% of the
Chinese community in the 1960's, exhibited very different attitudes to• ward Canada from those of their elders. Although greatly influenced by the Chinese cultural tradition, Canada was their home. They received the benefits of universal education and wereooften urged by their parents to achieve in areas formerly barred to Chinese. Some of them became lawyers, doctors, or professionals of other sorts. This group, called tu-sheng [tou-sang], literally "native born", usually married other tu- sheng. Occasionally they would marry a recently arrived Chinese immi• grant from Hong Kong, or even a Westerner, but this was fairly atypical. 44
In addition, this group often preferred to live outside of Chinatown, perhaps to escape the lower-class, unassimilated image that outsiders usually maintained of Chinatown residents.
The third group in the community, the recently arrived immi• grants, were in the early 1960's usually the wives, children, or other relatives of previously established Chinese who had been left behind in the early years of immigration and then prohibited from immigrating during the closure from 1923 to 1947. Up until 1962, in fact, all Chi• nese immigrants had to be sponsored to gain admission to Canada. These migrants were usually fairly traditional in orientation, often having been born and raised in rural China, but migrating via Hong Kong. In• teraction between these immigrants and the tu-sheng group was not exten• sive when there were no kin relations. After 1967, the social organiza• tion of the Chinese community was made even more complex by the influx of more highly skilled, independent, immigrants from Hong Kong. The impact of these migrants on the community will be taken up in the next section of this chapter.
With respect to politics of China, most Chinese residing in
Canada during the period 1947 to 1967 were either pro-Nationalist or neu• tral; very few were actively pro-Peking. Erickson characterizes this last group as "a small set of young men with more racial or national pride than Marxism who pursue harmless activities in two small but active associations" (1966: 68). Of course the fact that Canada had not yet recognized mainland China probably discouraged many Chinese from voicing pro-Peking sentiments. 45
In 1961, the Chinese population of Vancouver was 15,223, mak• ing it the largest Chinese community in Canada at that time. Cho and
Leigh estimate for this period that the Chinatown area contained at > least 50% of the Chinese population of Vancouver, also noting, however, that the community had become progressively less segregated over the years (1972: 72). This indicates that the Chinese had undoubtedly been residentially segregated during their initial period in Canada. The
Chinatown area itself was composed of two sections, a commercial district and a residential district, the whole of which was bounded on the west by
Carrall Street, on the east by Campbell Avenue, on the north by Powell
Street, and on the south by False Creek and Prior Street. The area en• closed consisted of about fifty blocks.
The commercial section of Chinatown could again be divided into two sections, the dividing line being Main Street. West of Main
Street were Chinese establishments that catered predominantly to tourists and Euro-Canadians, while the commercial sector east of Main Street was more solely patronized by Chinese. This part of Chinatown has been des• cribed in the following manner:
In the latter area, stores are more oriented to the Chinese community itself, and food stores, herb stores, and less ex• pensive cafes predominate. This is therpart of commercial Chinatown that retains many of the old "inward looking" func• tions, serving the residential community (Cho and Leigh 1972: 77).
Immediately adjacent to the commercialldistricts lay a large residential area in which Chinese were the main residents but in which other ethnic groups were also represented. The houses in this area were typically two-storey wooden-frame buildings, old and run-down - an inevit- 46
able result of the "industrial" zoning of the district which made it very difficult for home owners to secure mortgages for home improvement (Cho and Leigh 1972: 75). In the early sixties, there were few lawns or parks in the area, and the fields in the public school and the parks were cemented.
In spite of the fact that the city was not overly concerned with making the "backyard" of Chinatown more attractive, the vitality of commercial Chinatown was then, as it is now, marked. Weekend mornings teemed with activity, the best produce on display and the streets crowded with shoppers. A significant number of merchants enjoyed profitable business, and new investments in both commercial sectors - i.e., the
Chinese and the Western - were common. Restaurants hosted frequent even• ing banquets of Chinese celebrating one or the other of improtant festi• vals and observances.
Chinese voluntary associations also underwent fundamental changes during this period. One author has characterized this series of changes as a loss of "political machine" characteristics, meaning that the associations no longer acted as the exclusive intermediary be• tween the sub-group and the political system, and that they exerpeienced a decrease in effective political authority (Wai 1970: 3). This charac• terization is no doubt valid, and the associational network at this time can no longer be said to represent the community in its entirety. It was, however, still important to large segments of the population and in times of crisis. From data collected in the early 1960's, we know that around this time there were over 80 Chinese associations in Vancouver of quite diverse nature (see below, Chapter III). 47
Finally, in spite of the fact that the role of unofficial commun• ity leaders was challenged by the greater access that Chinese had to for• mal Canadian leadership positions, internal leaders continued to have wide acceptance. When the Canadian government, from the municipal to the federal branches, really wanted to get something done, it had no choice but to deal with them. Furthermore, since the leadership system was still very closely tied to the associational network, the associations them• selves retained significance in the eyes of the wider society.
VI. 1967 to Present: Impact of the Point System
In 1962, a point system was developed in which skill was made the most important criterion in selecting new ^immigrants to Canada.
With some exceptions, like the small clause which stipulated that Euro• peans could sponsor a wider range of relatives than most Asians, overt racial discrimination in the legislation itself was greatly lessened
(Hawkins 1972: 11). In 1967, the Department of Manpower and Immigra• tion replaced the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, creating
"a firm manpower orientation" in Canadian immigration policy (Hawkins
1972: 52). Of course, given the fact that many migrants have little opportunity to become skilled, a manpower orientation is still implicitly racist in its effects, but these aspects were not at issue. From 1961 to 1971, the population of Chinese in Vancouver doubled, and from 1964 to 1968 Chinese migration to Canada as a whole increased at least by 50%
(Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Immigration Statistics, 1964-
1968). Table IIC gives a breakdown of Chinese population in Vancouver by decade. 48
TABLE IIC
Population of Chinese in Vancouver by Decade, 1911-1971
Date Number
1911 3,559 1921 6,484 1931 13,011 1941 6,065 1951 8,729 1961 15,223 1971 30,640
Source: Census of Canada, 1911-1971.
By 1967, the social organization of the Chinese community in
Vancouver had undergone fundamental changes. It is impossible to fully document all the effects of this new legislation due to lack of space and data; however, some of the more obvious and radical changes have been the following. While prior to 1962, only sponsored immigrants were allowed admittance, there is now a great influx of independent Chinese migrants. As Vivian Lai has remarked, "Chinese immigration is at this time undoubtedly bringing a new type of Chinese migrant to Canada"
(V. Lai 1971: 121). Lai's study also gives us several important indica• tions as to the characteristics of these "new" migrants. Firstly, 40% of
Lai's sample of new male migrants in Toronto had post-graduate training,
50% of her total sample thought they could write English fairly fluently, and most indicated that they had come for permanent settlement (1971:
124). Secondly, the majority of her sample were Chinese who had been 49
born in China but who had lived in Hong Kong from six to twenty-five years. Finally, in spite of the fact that these migrants generally have a high educational level, they experienced some status dislocation upon migration but are in general making "a highly successful adaptation"
(1971: 123).
A similar study on these new types of Chinese migrants in Van• couver is yet to be undertaken; however, the preliminary data for Van• couver suggest that in spite of the more cosmopolitan attitudes of these new migrants, Chinese associations still play an important role for them.
Recent research, for instance, has uncovered at least 60 to 80 new asso• ciations that have been established since the mid-sixties, most of them quite different in character from the traditional clan and locality associations of earlier periods. In particular, there has been an amaz• ing upsurge in the prevalence of martial arts associations. These are also important in the context of urban Hong Kong, and transplanted into the context of the Vancouver Chinese community* they perform important functions for young migrants from Hong Kong (Johnson 1971a: 141-143).
Also relevant to the changing nature of the community in the
1970's is the development of new attitudes towards the People's Republic of China. Canada's recognition of China in 1970 was undoubtedly instru• mental in the creation of these new attitudes.
Given the fact that Chinese residents of Vancouver are not a homogeneous group, it is impossible to generalize to what extent the Van• couver Chinese as a whole continue traditional practices. In 1969, Cho and Leigh sampled 125 Chinese households, verifying their hypotheses 50
that the Chinatown Chinese were the most apt to celebrate Chinese fes• tivals, speak Chinese most of the time, and patronize the Chinese asso• ciations (1972: 79). They also suggested that the Chinese outside China• town were to a greater extent locally born and educated, better off fi• nancially, and more "assimilated" socially (1972: 79). Place of resi• dence, however, is only one of many variables of interest in the study of assimilation and integration. As I have suggested above, such vari• ables as place of birth, period of immigration, length of residence in
Hong Kong, educational and occupational specialization are also signi• ficant. Some of these issues will be discussed with relation to the leaders of the Chinese community in Chapters IV and V.
Some traditional practices have been given up, even by the most traditional Chinese. Marriages, for instance, are usually Canadian- ized, although some Chinese indicated that wealthy members of the com• munity often give two weddings for their children, one Canadian and one
Chinese. Traditional mourning rites have also been simplified by most
Chinese, the three-year mourning period being reduced considerably.
This very brief outline of recent changes has been introduced only to indicate that changes in immigration legislation are still greatly influencing the structure of the community and to provide a bit of hindsight from which to view the central topic of discussion, the nature of the community in the sixties. In one sense, the role of China• town has become less important because the Chinese community is no longer territorial, but in another sense, its social organization has become more and more complex as it has had to accommodate to increasingly 51
different types of people. The Chinese associations have played an important role in creating and maintaining the complexity of Chinese community social organization, and it is their historical significance and structure that is the topic of Chapter III. The account of recent developments in the Vancouver Chinese has been necessarily brief, but it is hoped that the short history provided here will serve to impress on the reader the struggle that the Chinese have faced in their adapta• tion to Canadian society. 52
FOOTNOTES - CHAPTER II
There is, however, some evidence to indicate that a sizeable Chinese community did exist in Vancouver prior to this time. For instance, the Wells Fargo and Company Directory of Chinese Businesses lists twenty-nine Chinese business establishments operative in Vancouver in 1882, at least half of which seemed to have dealt with a Chinese clientele. Without further detailed historical research into this matter, it is impossible to ascertain specifically at what point during the latter half of the 19th century an integrated community of Chinese began to exist in Vancouver.
This information was acquired from an interview with Seto Ying- Shek, a prominent, well-known, and scholarly member of the Vancouver Chinese community. San-Yi [Sam-Yap] and Si-Yi [Sei-Yap] are two areas in China that include most of the counties, or xian, from which the migrants typically originate.
This material was taken from a periodical issued by the Hon Hsing Athletic Club and was translated from the Chinese by Jennie and Bessie Yu. 53
CHAPTER III
VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS AND THEIR EMERGENCE
IN VANCOUVER'S CHINESE COMMUNITY
In this chapter, I trace the development of voluntary asso• ciations in Vancouver's Chinese community from the time directly follow• ing the Gold Rush when the Chinese formed a small and isolated settle• ment in Vancouver to the end of the sixties when there were over 20,000
Chinese residents dispersed throughout the city. The associations and the role they played in the community underwent many changes during this time. Some associations changed in their orientation and in their basis of recruitment; others changed in the degree of influence they exercised in the community. Near the end of this historical period, new types of associations emerged that challenged the existing hierarchy of associa• tions, and throughout the period the associations were continuously realigned with respect to new political issues.
Freedman has offered a general hypothesis concerning the ef• fect of an increase in scale and complexity of the community on the dev• elopment of associations among urban South-east Asian Chinese which is of relevance to the Vancouver Chinese. He states that:
The associations which in a small scale and relatively un• developed settlement express social, economic, and political links in an undifferentiated form tend, as the scale and the complexity of the society increase, to separate into a network of associations which are comparatively specialized in their functions and the kind of solidarity they express (1967: 47-48). 54
Thus, he places the Chinese community of urban Sarawak as described by
T'ien in the 1950's at one end of a continuum in which a "simple and relatively small-scale overseas settlement" exhibits associations that perform multi-functional roles in the spheres of economics, politics, and social life and that merge the principles of shared dialect, clanship and locality, while he places contemporary Singapore at the other end of the continuum because it exhibits a greater number of associations with more specialized functions, and consequently, more overlap among mem• bers. It is this criterion of cross-cutting memberships that creates a network of associations in contemporary Singapore, which in Freedman's view, is "presumably the model of the most developed form of immigrant
Chinese settlement in Southeast Asia" (1967: 44). Unlike Sarawak, this network can be shown to be "relatively independent of economic groupings and to some extent of political groupings" (1967: 44).
Willmott has stated that "the number of Chinese associations in
Vancouver places it toward the complex end of the continuum suggested by
Freedman" (1970a: 147). Indeed, by the 1960's, Vancouver's Chinese settlement boasted over eighty associations that formed a network by virtue of cross-cutting memberships and interlocking directorships.
Furthermore, this network was, as Freedman describes for contemporary
Singapore, relatively independent of economic groupings. For early per• iods, however, the community fell more towards the end of the continuum characterized by Sarawak. For instance, the associations were more multi• functional in nature, performing economic as well as political and cul- 55
tural functions, and there was some correlation between place of origin in China and occupation (Willmott 1964: 34), Although compared to
Sarawak the number of associations in the nineteenth-century Vancouver community was rather large in proportion to the population, their nature differed qualitatively from later times.
In addition to the increasing specialization of function that the associations in Vancouver underwent as the community became larger and more dispersed, some associations reorganized themselves on more universalis tic bases. On the basis of data collected on religious asso• ciations in Singapore, Marjorie Topley abstracts two broad groups of
Chinese organizations on the basis of particularism and universalism.
She states that:
In one group, membership is based exclusively on personal iden• tity. In other words, the associations are "particularistic". They are also multi-purpose, covering a wide range of inter• ests, mainly economic....Associations of the other group are open to "all Chinese", that is to say, they tend towards uni• versalism in membership. As main qualifications for entry they stress common interests in religious matters and belief in a particular ideology....As secondary interests they pursue philanthropic and cultural activities (1967: 56-57).
In Vancouver, however, the historical development of associa• tions cannot simply be characterized as one in which relatively particu- larist associations were replaced by relatively universalistic ones.
Rather, the first two associations to be estbalished - the Chee Gung Tong
[Zhi-gong Tang] and the Chinese Benevolent Association [Zhong-hua Hui-
Guan] - were based on relatively universalistic principles. It was only after these were established and dealt with the external threats facing the Chinese as a whole that the more particularistic associations based 56
on surname and native place of origin began to assume a significant role in the community. Later, around the advent of the fifties, the authority of these particularistic and traditionist associations was challenged by the renewed appeal of older fraternal societies and by the rise of new universalis tic associations. These latter associations, which were more modernist in orientation, were not integrated into the traditional hier• archy of associations and offered competition to it.
It is essentially this process of increasing differentiation and complexity of the associational network that is the underlying theme of this chapter. I attempt to document this process by first describing the kind of associations in existence in the 1960's and then by taking each important association in turn and exploring its historical develop• ment. The dichotomies of traditionist/modernist, particularistic/univer- salistic, and functionally diffuse/specific are important to the under• standing of this process, but it should be stressed thatt'these are heuris• tic devices that "fit" the data better for certain historical periods than for others. This is a result of the fact, of course, that they are ideal types being applied to concrete historical situations.
Finally, I demonstrate near the end of the chapter how the increasing scale and complexity of the community in the 1960's and the changed nature of the relationship between the Chinese community and the host society resulted in a network of associations that was comparatively specialized in its function and that was defined with respect to inter• locking directorships and factional alignment based on wider political issues. 57
Chinese Voluntary Associations in Vancouver in the 1960's
The number and diversity of Chinese associations in Vancouver is quite remarkable. To those unfamlil-iarwith overseas Chinese social organization, the multitude of associations, clubs, committees, and or• ganizations that the Chinese community exhibits is often perplexing.
Moreover, since the declared purposes and names of the associations are sometimes misleading, outsiders have little way of knowing what functions the associations serve. What follows is an attempt to clarify the nature of Chinese associations in Vancouver.
At first glance, the Vancouver Chinese seem to use almost every principle of grouping imaginable to form associations; actually, however, these principles are relatively few in number. Willmott has noted, for instance, that for political analysis the approximately eighty associations in existence in the 1960's could be grouped into essentially four categories: clan, locality, fraternal, and community (1964: 34).
Because the associations that did not fit into the above categories were of minimal political significance, Willmott placed them in a residual category of "other", including among these music societies, youth clubs, gambling clubs, and reading rooms (1964: 34). Upon further investiga• tion, I have found that these miscellaneous societies can be grouped into the following categories: athletic, charitable, leisure, alumni, 1 and commercial. Therefore, I separate the eighty associations in exis• tence into nine categories, of which the first four are the most crucial.
In addition to the types of associations outlined above, the situation is made more complex by the boards of Chinese language schools, 58
Chinese newspapers, and the Mount St. Joseph's Hospital, which are of course not formal associations themselves but which nevertheless func• tion in a manner quite analogous to that of the associations. Fur• thermore, many of these institutions are formally connected with specific associations, and their executive boards exhibit a concentration of par• ticularly influential leaders from a variety of organizations. Table
IIIA presents all the associations operative in the Vancouver Chinese community in the early 1960's, as well as "those institutions, such as
Chinese language schools and churches, that were relevant to the asso• ciational structure.
It can be seen from Table IIIA that, similar to other overseas
Chinese communities, there was only one association in Vancouver that aspired to community-wide representation - the Chinese Benevolent Asso• ciation - while there were five associations based on fraternal princi• ples, eleven associations based on native place in China, and over twenty surname associations. In addition to these, which comprised the most important associations in the community, there were a variety of associa• tions dealing with commercial, musical, social, and charity interests.
The commercial associations, although potentially significant from a political point of view, had gradually decreased in influence as the eco• nomic and political systems of the community became increasingly differ• entiated.
Before the issue of how these associations are interrelated can be explored, however, I must first explain the nature of specific associations in more detail, and the historical conditions that influenced their development. TABLE IIIA
Chinese Associations in Vancouver in the Early 1960's
ENGLISH CHARACTERS MANDARIN (PIN-YIN)
Community Zhong-hua Hui-guan Chinese Benevolent Association
Fraternal Zhi-gong Tang Chinese Freemasons Hua-fu Shi-zi Hui Chinatown Lions Hua-ren Hui-bing Hui Chinese-Canadian Veterans Chinese Elks Guo-min Dang Zong-shi Bu Chinese Nationalist League
Clan ^ 4%^ ^ Zhao-lun Gong-suo Chau Luen Society Chen-ying-chuan Tang Chan Wing Chwun Feng-lun Tang it 4* * Fung Lun Tong £ £ % iL *\ Zhi-xiao-du-qin Gong-suo Gee How Oak Tin Association Zheng Rong-yang Tang Jung Wing Young Association Wu Xu'-shan Tang Ing Suey Sun Tong Gao-yang Shu-bao She Ko Young Reading Room Lin Xi-he Tang Lam Sai Hor Society Li-shi Gong-suo 4 A ^ ^ Lee Clan Association Liang Zhong-xiao Tang Leong Chung How Tong Liao Wu-wei Tang
Lew Mu Way Society TABLE IIIA (Continued)
ENGLISH CHARACTERS MANDARIN (PIN-YIN)
Clan (continued) Lore Yee Jang Tong Luo Yu-zhang Tang Lung Kong Tien Yee Long-gan Gong-suo Mah Society & & '** #f Ma-shi Gong-suo Nam Young Tong & it & * Nan-yang Zong-tang Oylin Society Ai-lian Gong-suo Quon Lung Said Tong Guan Long-Xi Tang
Sue Yuen Tong & -4 at- f Su-yuan Zong-tang Wong Kong Har Tong Huang Jiang-xia Tang Wong Wun San Huang Yun-shan Gong-suo Yee Fong Toy Tong Yu Feng-cai Tang Lee Kwong Kai Society Li Gang-xi Tang Look Ming Reading Room Lu-ming Bie-shu J& 4s ») % Ming Sun Reading Room & /f (A % ti- Min-xing Yue-bao She Locality Sam Yap District Association San-yi Tong-xiang Hui Nam Hoy District Association Han-hai Hui-Guan Yue Shan Association Yu-shan Gong-suo Shoon Duck Association Shuri-de Tang Five Districts Association of H6ng Kong |£ -$l Wu-yi Gong-suo Hoy Sun Ning Young Tai-shan Ning-yang Guan Hoy Ping District Association Kai-ping Hui-guan TABLE I HA (Continued)
ENGLISH CHARACTERS MANDARIN (PIN-YIN)
Locality (continued) Yin Ping District Association jg, 5^- ^ En-ping Hui Kong Chow District Association %~ /f£ Gang-zhou Hui-guan Shon Yee Benevolent Society Chong-yi Hui Chung Shan Lung Jen Society vj* Jj 4$ )«) jft]5 Zhong-shan Long-zhen Tong- xiang Hui
Athletic All Chinese Basketball League jf^ Lan Lian Chinese Bowling Club I^^Mh Bao-ling-qiu Hui Chinese Golf Club % m K Gao-er-fu-qiu Hui Masonic Athletic . lu _ & If If ^ Min-zhi Dang Ti-yu Hui Hai Fung Association j£ Hai-feng Hui Hon Hsing Athletic Club •y%4\W HiT Han-sheng Ti-yu Hui Tai-Chi Chuan Exercise Club J^&jfcM- Tai-ji-quan She Leisure Chung Wah Cubs and Scouts Zhong-hua Tong-jun Chinese Varsity Club 1*1 >ff ^~ Jai-li Tong-xue Hui Chung Wah Youth League 'f ® Zhong-hua Qing-nian Tuan Overseas Chinese Students ^ 'ill *3 iff ^ Zhong-guo Tong-xue Hui Association Y.W.C.A. - Pender Street ^- Jfc ^ Nu-zi Qing-nian Hui Chinese Youth Association \ Qing-nian Lian-yi Hui Ngai Lum Musical Society * *Mf # & Yi_lin Yin-yue she TABLE IIIA (Continued)
ENGLISH CHARACTERS MANDARIN (PIN-YIN)
Leisure (continued) Jin Wan Sing Musical Society ZneMhuaiSheng Yasn-yue She Ching Won Musical Society Qing-yun Yin-yue She Chinese Art Society Chinese New Year Festival Xin-nian Qing-zhu Chou-bei Committee Xiao-zu
Commercial B.C. Lower Mainland Cooperative Ping-yuan Nong-ye He-zuo Association She Strathcona Property Owners and Shi-da-kong-na Ye-zhu Yu Tenants Association Zhu-ke Xie-hui Chinese Chamber of Commerce Zhong-hua Shang-ye Hui Chinese Trade Workers Association Zhong-guo Zhi-gong Hui Chinatown Development Association Yun-gao-hua Hua-fu Fan-rong Hui
Charity Charlie Kent Golden Anniversary Charity Foundation Community Chest Red Feather/Red Cross Free China Relief Association
Alumni North American Alumni of Pei-zhen Tong-xue Hui Poy Ching TABLE I HA (Continued)
ENGLISH CHARACTERS MANDARIN (PIN-YIN)
Alumni (continued) Chung Shan University Zhong-shan Da-xue Tong- Alumni Association xue Hui Jen Guan Alumni Association Zhen-guang Tong-xue Hui Kuangchow University Alumni Guang-zhou Da-xue Xiao- you Hui
RELATED INSTITUTIONS
Chinese Religious Groups Chinese Anglican Church ^"/^^./^/f^ Hua-ren Sheng-gong Hui Chinese Catholic Center ^ -|&_ Hua-ren Tian-zhu-j iao Hui Christ Church of China
Chinese Language Schools St. Xavier School (Catholic Center) Chinese Public School (K.M.T.) Yun-fu Hua-r^iao Gong-li Xue-xiao Tai Kung Charity School (Freemasons) Da-gong Yi Xue-xiao Mon Keong Chinese School (Wongs) Wen-qiang Xue-xiao TABLE IIIA (Continued)
ENGLISH CHARACTERS MANDARIN (PIN-YIN)
Chinese Language Newspapers The Chinese Times *. >%. >* fa. Da-Han Gong-Bao Chinese Voice Daily * fa Qiao-Sheng Ri-Bao New Republic Daily Xin Min-Guo Ri-Bao
Hospitals Mount St. Joseph's Hospital, 65
The Fraternal Associations
The associations within this category are a diverse group.
They range from an organization whose roots reach back to 16th century
China to one that is actually a branch of a wider Canadian association but whose membership is nevertheless Chinese. Specifically, this cate• gory includes the Chinese Freemasons, the Kuomintang, and the Chinese
Elks, Lions, and Veterans. Although the Kuomintang is the only one of these that is overtly political in nature, it has been classed with the others because it also is largely based on a fraternal solidarity among its members. As Willmott states, "...aside from its participation in the politics of China," the Kuomintang association "fulfills the same func• tions as the Freemasons in grouping the Chinese across the lines of local• ity and clan" (1964: 34).
a. The Chinese Freemasons. This organization was the first to be established by the Chinese in British Columbia. It has no connec•
tion with Western freemasonry, but stems from an old-fraternal order in
China that originated in the 16th Century with the aim of overthrowing
the Manchu dynasty to restore the Ming dynasty (Lyman et al. 1964: 352).
It assumed the English name Freemasons around 1910, probably to combat
its former status as a secret society. The Freemasons' sister organi•
zations in Hong Kong, in fact, are still secret (and illegal) and main•
tain few, if any, relations with Chinese Freemasons in North America
(see Morgan 1960). The Chinese name for this association is "Chee Gung
Tong" [Zhi-gong Tang] and when referring to its role in the Vancouver
Chinese community before 1910, I will refer to it by this name. 66
I use two different names to refer to this association during different periods in the community's history to reflect the immense changes that it has undergone since its establishment in British Columbia in 1862. From its beginnings in the province as an authoritarian and powerful secret society, the organization developed into a modernist and politically liberal group. In the sixties, the Freemasons were undoubtedly one of the three most important groups in Chinatown. One source attribu• ted its power and influence in the modern community to extensive property 2 holdings in the Chinese district.
While this was certainly a factor underlying their success, another reason why the Freemasons were able to retain their prestige throughout the sixties was that they maintained a fine balance between the preservation of Chinese heritage and the creation of a "Canadian
Mosaic Cultural Pattern" (See Appendix I: Constitution and By-Laws of the Chinese Freemasons of Canada). Concerned both with the problems of integration and assimilation but nevertheless anxious to preserve cer• tain aspects of the Chinese tradition, the Freemasons were one of the few organizations in the community that attracted all three types of Van• couver Chinese: the early immigrants, the Canadian-born, and the recent migrants.
The Freemasons were also able to attract a strong membership because they attempted to maintain a "neutral" position with respect to both Chinese and Canadian politics. Referring to Chinese politics, for instance, one member of the Freemasons stated that the organization was against "dictators" of any kind. The "neutral" position that the Free- 67
masons voiced, however, was in actuality anti-Kuomintang without being pro-Communist. The reasons underlying this position are examined in the section dealing with the history of the Chee Gung Tong in British Col• umbia. With respect to Canadian politics, the Freemasons attempted to concern themselves predominantly with community projects.^, not national politics. As one member stated, "If anyone is interested in that [na• tional politics] they can join the CCF or Social Credit. But community 3 projects - that's what the Freemasons should do."
In the 1960's, the Freemasons appealed to a broad section of
Chinese and were concerned with the pursuit of cultural and philanthropic activities. Thus, the organization conformed to a great degree to what
Topley described as the "universalistic" type of association (1967:
56). As a main qualification for entry, for instance, the Freemasons stressed belief in the ideology of love and justice (symbolized by the characters ren \z~ > and Zi 4^' > both frequently used in Freemason materials). The original form of the association in British Columbia, however, was quite different from its modern character.
b. History of the Chinese Freemasons in British Columbia. The
Chinese who journeyed from California to Barkerville, B.C., in the mid•
dle of the 19th century found themselves in a strange and often hostile milieu, without their families and the benefit of a wide kinship network,
and with no one to look after their interests. Perhaps this accounts for
the establishment of the Chee Gung Tong in the gold fields of Barkerville
as early as 1862, thus making it the first association to be established f
68 i
by the Chinese in Canada. The Chee Gung Tong was probably brought up from
California, and in its new setting created bonds of fictive kinship among its members, provided mutual aid for the early Chinese settlers, 4 and protected them from the ever-present threat of white exploitation.
A recently discovered and translated set of rules from a branch of the Chee Gung Tong in 1882 gives us some insight into its early func• tions. The rules are concerned with the conditions under which disputes are to be settled, the forbidding of members to appeal to legal courts for aid or to collaborate with outsiders to collect debts, and the regulation of the area within which mining was allowed and the size of mines to be alloted to one person (Lyman et al. 1964: 534). In addition, the rules allude to stringent punishments for the failure to abide by its regula• tions .
By 1897, the Chee Gung Tong was established in Victoria, and by
1903, the organization "had been hierarchically organized with local, regional, and provincial divisions" (Lyman et al. 1964: 532), presumably including a branch in Vancouver. Now transplanted into a growing urban context, the Chee Gung Tong assumed diverse functions, including: (1) the provision of financial assistance and welfare for members; (2) the running of youth programs and "male oriented" recreational services such as gambling, opium dens, and brothels; and (3) the settling of disputes between Chinese, negotiation of settlements, and the hiring of lawyers in case of Chinese-white disputes (Wai 1970: 37).
Another source points to a growing conflict between the pro- revolutionary and anti-revolutionary factions within the Chee Gung Tong 69
5 and notes that the pro-revolutionary faction soon won over the majority.
By the time that Sun Yat-Sen made his first trip to Vancouver in 1897, he found ready ideological and material support for his cause within the
Chee Gung Tong.
In 1910 and 1911, Sun Yat-Sen again visited Vancouver and
Victoria. At this time, he modified the constitution of the Chee Gung
Tong and was instrumental in transforming it from a secret society to an open political association: the Chinese Freemasons (Sedgwick 1973: 119;
Wai 1970). Sedgwick further reports that by changing some of the regu• lations of the Chee Gung Tong, Sun attracted converts from the Empire
Reform Association, one of the first associations to exist for a predomi• nantly political cause in the history of the Victoria Chinese community
(1973: 120). One of the principal ways in which the Chinese community here contributed to Sun's cause was by mortgaging Chee Gung Tong real• ties; over $150,000 was raised in this manner, one of the largest con• tributions to this cause from any overseas Chinese community (Willmott
1970b: 48).
In 1917, the Dart Coon She was organized as a sub-organization of the Chee Gung Tong that included only the most loyal members of the association. It is not completely clear why such an organization was needed at this time, but it appears that some time after the establishment of
the Republic of China in 1912 a conflict developed between the Kuomin•
tang (K.M.T.) and the Chee Gung Tong over the refusal of the new Nation•
alist government in China to honour certain pledges of participation made
to them before the revolution (Willmott 1970b: 49). Thus, even today, 70
having declared their "neutrality", the Freemasons are noted for their opposition to the K.M.T. At any rate, by 1917, older members of the
Freemasons were being wooed over to the K.M.T. and thus were considered
"turncoats" by loyal Chee Gung Tong members. The Dart Coon She appar• ently functioned to separate this inner core from the rest of the members and thus to permit a purge in the membership. °
During this period of exclusion, from 1923 to 1947, the Chee
Gung Tong/Kuomintang conflict continued and provided the basis for exten• sive factional alignment within the Vancouver community as well as in 6 smaller Chinese communities throughout British Columbia. It was during the civil war in China (1946-49), however, that the Freemasons first publicly declared their neutrality, a daring step even then considering the strongly pro-K.M.T. alignment of the U.S. and Canada. At a world con• gress in Shanghai in 1946, the Freemasons called for cooperation between the Nationalists and the Communists.
In reviewing the history of the Chee Gung Tong in British
Columbia, a gradual trend from relative particularism to relative univer- salism, as well as a reduction in the scope of functions assumed, can be seen. First, in its earliest form in B.C., the Chee Gung Tong was a secret society, with elaborate initiation rites, and it was more concerned about the welfare of its own members than that of the Chinese in general.
In fact, one informant states that the impetus to form a community-rwide organization in Vancouver first arose as a response to Chee Gung Tong complaints that it could not be expected to be held responsible for the actions of all Chinese, but just those of its members. Secondly, the Chee 71
Gung Tong in its early phase was very functionally-diffuse. It was concerned with all aspects of a member's existence - economic, political, and social - and had a complex body of regulations that "set out in pre• cise and detailed instructions the domestic arrangements under which fellow-members shall live together" (Lyman et al. 1964: 534).
In modern times the Freemasons, no longer being an underground society, take pride in the broad base of their membership. The scope of their functions had been reduced from former times, and in spite of their political origins, they presently view themselves strictly as a fraternal society. The long heritage of the Chinese Freemasons, however, still manifests itself in many of their present activities. In the 1960's, the Freemasons were not only hierarchically structured with national and local branches, but had developed quite a few subsidiary bodies to deal with the many functions that used to be handled by the Chee Gung Tong alone. These related organizations include an athletic blub, a realty division, a Chinese language school, a Chinese newspaper, and the Dart
Coon Branch - whose origins have been described above. Table IIIB pre• sents the subsidiary organizations of the Freemasons as they existed in the early 1960's.
c. The Kuomintang Association. The Kuomintang is the Nation• alist Party of China and is currently in power on the island of Taiwan after fleeing the mainland following its defeat by the broad masses of the peasants led by the Chinese Communists in 1949. In the 1960's, the
Kuomintang organization in Vancouver was politically conservative and TABLE IIIB
The Freemasons and Subsidiary Bodies In the Early Sixties
ENGLISH NAME CHINESE NAME CHARACTERS Chinese Freemasons National Hong Men Min Zhi Dang & n & & 'l & t- %f Headquarters of Canada Zong Zhi Bu
Chinese Freemasons Vancouver Hong Men Zhi Bu M 11 £ 4f Branch
Chinese Masonic Athletic Club Min Zhi Dang Ti Yu Hui fa & f %
Hung Mood Dart Coon Association Hong Men Da Quan Zhi She Jd£ f ^ ^ ^ jL
Chinese Freemason Realty Division Min Zhi Dang Shi Ye Bu ]/&
The Chinese Times Da Han Gong Bao
Tai Kung Charity School Da Gong Yi Xue 73
traditionist in orientation, and held little appeal for Canadian-born Chi• nese. For some Chinese, however, it gained prestige by virtue of the fact that it was a staunch defender of the Chinese tradition,that its general secretary was sent from Taiwan, and that it maintained close relations with the Consulate, the body officially recognized by Canada.
In the 1960's, its members were largely composed of China-born individuals and businessmen.
It must be remembered, however, that the Kuomintang was origi• nally a progressive party formed after the overthrow of the Manchu dy• nasty in China in 1912. Its predecessor, the revolutionary T'ung-meng
Hui ( l£l 5$. ) . was established by Sun Yat-sen in 1905 in or• der to facilitate this overthrow and establish a republic in China.
Although by the 1960's the conflict between the Freemasons and the Kuomin• tang could be largely seen as one between liberalism and conservatism, the conflict originated at a time when this was really not the case.
The history of the Kuomintang association in Vancouver is not known in much detail; however, it has been established that the roots of the Vancouver Kuomintang association reach back to 1908, when a group of dedicated men in Victoriak affiliated themselves with the T'ung-meng
Hui in order to distribute revolutionary material and effect political change. After the success of the revolution in 1912, the organization became a branch of the Kuomintang, and in 1923, the organization was legally established in Vancouver.
As time went on, the nature of the Kuomintang in China deviated a great deal from the revolutionary party that Sun Yat-sen had founded and increasingly appealed to Chinese "heritage" to block reform and thwart 74
change (see Wright 19 71: 112). Developments in homeland politics there• fore widened the gulf between the Freemasons and the Kuomintang organi• zations in Vancouver; however, the associations were antagonistic towards each other for local reasons as well. The local issues that created this antagonism probably included fights over the control of gambling interests in Chinatown and resentment on the part of the Freemasons about the increasing dominance of the Chinese Benevolent Association by the 7 Kuomintang. There is some reason to believe, then, that subsequent to the Kuomintang's formal establishment in Vancouver in 1923, the conflict between the Kuomintang and the Freemasons became more disassociated from homeland politics as these associations emerged as contending fraternal societies in Canada (Willmott 1970b: 49).
The popularity of the Kuomintang association reached a height in the early 1940's, when it had as many as 31 branches across Canada, but the association's popularity began to wane after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and the Nationalists' removal from the mainland. By the 1970's, the association's importance had dras• tically diminished. In the 1960's, however, although its base of member• ship was not as large as that of the Freemasons, the Kuomintang was still considered an influential association by many Chinese, and the Freemason/
Kuomintang conflict was an important concern in the community.
d. The Chinese Lions, Elk's, and Veterans. The Kuomintang and Freemasons are both fraternal associations that stem from the immi• grants' homeland. Quite antithetical in nature to these associations, then, were the Chinese branches of the Lions, Elks, and Veterans. Recently 75
established, and oriented more toward the associational structure of the host society than to that of the Chinese community, these associa• tions nevertheless played a very important role in that they provided an alternative to traditionist segmentary structure of associations that was characteristic of the early period. These associations fur• ther served to attract the participation of many influential second- generationrChinese, and because of their modernist orientation, they integrated second-generation Chinese as a whole into the associational structure.
Traditional Chinese tended to reject the importance of the
Chinese branches of the Lions, Elks, and Vets. One traditional China- born leader, for instance, remarked that these associations were "Canadian-
controlled" and therefore had little prestige in Chinatown. Another re• marked, however, that because these associations could ignore the regula•
tions and customs of the community they could "be more daring than the
real Chinese organizations". Perhaps this lay the basis of their success
in Chinatown. At any rate, the extent of "authenticity" of these associa•
tions was seen differently by different segments of the population, and
the criterion of authenticity itself was of lesser importance to the
Canadian-born. The more "modernist" Chinese who participated in the asso•
ciational network did not demand that the associations they participate
in have traditional precedent, and to these men such clubs as the Lions,
Elks, and Vets served their purpose well.
There is some indication that the membership of each of these
service organizations correlated with common occupational interests. One 76
member of the community, for instance, termed the Lions "a professional clique", and it did appear that the Lion's Club attracted a greater pro• portion of professionals and men of affluence than did the Elks and Vets.
Furthermore, the Elks seem to have been of white collar background, and the Vets more of working class and small shopkeeper background. One member of the community described the Elks in the following manner:
They are new in the area, and composed of a different income bracket [from the Lions]....They have more working class peo• ple, most of whom never went university [sic]. It has about fifty members who are salesmen, clerks, self-employed service businessmen - like real estate and insurance. They have only one lawyer in the Elks, while the Lions have at least eight.
Not since a very early period in the history of the community, when some occupational specialization according to native place was evident, has there been any indication of a particular class orientation within certain associations. Perhaps this represents a significant trend for the future. Furthermore, it is a reflection of the fact that the class structureoof the Chinese community has become considerably more complex since the early period of the community's history, when only two classes were operative: merchant and labourer.
The Lions, Elks, and Vets were classed as "service organiza• tions" by members of the community and, in contrast to fehelelan asso• ciations, were seen by the Chinese as one of the few types of associa• tions to concern themselves with welfare over and above consideration of their own members. The Lions, in particular, led several important welfare drives in the community. These were based more on the univer- salistic ideals of altruism and concern for humanity than on the narrower, and more particularistic, idea of providing for fellow-clansmen or fellow- 77
countrymen. Again, this is an indication of their more "modernist" character.
The Clan Associations (Gong-Suo)
In the early sixties, there were twenty-one clan associations in Vancouver. These associations nominally served to represent all
Chinese of the same surname residing in Vancouver.
Contrary to the West, ChMese surnames are extremely limited in number, only about 500 being operative in all of China. In tradi• tional China, all persons sharing a common surname were thought to share a common mythical ancestor, a belief which formed the ideological basis of the clan. In the context of Vancouver of the early 1960's, however, not all resident members of a clan recognized the Gong-suo's right to represent them. The clan associations, therefore, must be differentia•
ted from the clan as it operated in traditional China.
Among overseas Chinese, agnatic kinship is significant as an organizational device, not in terms of lineage and clan, but in terms
of associations based on the principles of surname or clan (Willmott
1964: 33). In Southeastern China, the clan was often an outgrowth of an
intricate lineage system and functioned to link these lineages together
in wider patrilineal groupings (Freedman 1958: 5). Overseas, however,
the lineage system could not be replicated, and therefore the clan took
over a different function, namely, as Freedman notes for the Singapore
Chinese, to "bring together men who came from widely separated communities
in China" (1967: 38). 78
The significant characteristics of clan associations overseas
is that they are traditionist, that is, oriented toward traditional Chi•
nese values, and particularistic, that is, based on relatively narrow
loyalties and on ascribed statuses. Because of these features, clan asso•
ciations in the modern Vancouver context were as a whole less influen•
tial than the fraternal associations. Specific clan associations, how•
ever, were still quite powerful and were rated among the five most influ• ential associations in the community by important community leaders (see below: Chapter III, The Network of Associations in the Early 1960's).
In the sixties, about half of the clan associations in Van•
couver represented only one clan each, while the others each represented two or more. The relationship among clans united in the same associa• tion was typically based on a myth of alliance, usually involving a common distant ancestor who was seen to bind the clans together. Practi• cally speaking, however, the less commonly represented surnames had to bind together for protection against the larger clans, which often attempted to control or exploit them. Table IIIC presents the clan asso• ciations operative in Vancouver in the sixties and the specific surnames
8 they represented.
It is important to note that while in many overseas Chinese communities clan associations are segmented with respect to locality of origin and/or dialect differences this type of segmentation is at a min- inum in Vancouver. Three societies combine the principles of surname and native place as criteria for membership - the Lee Kwong Kai Society
[Li Gang-xi Tang], the Look Ming [Lu-ming Bie-Shu] and Ming Sun Reading TABLE IIIC
Clan Associations in the 1960's
ASSOCIATION CLANS INCLUDED
Cantonese/English Mandarin (pin-yin) Characters Cantonese Mandarin (pin-yin) Characters
Chau Luen Society Zhao-lun Gong-suo *l 4& % iff Tam, Hui Tan, Xu, Xie, Yuan , ^ Tse, Yuen
Chan Wing Chwun Chen-ying-chuan Chan Chen Tang
Fung Lun Tong Feng-lun-Tang Seto, Tse Si-tu, Xue
Gee How Oak Tin Zhi-xiao-du Qin Chan, Wu, Chen, Hu, Yuan Gong-suo Yun
Jung Wing Young Zheng Rong-yang Jung Zheng Tang
Ing Suey Sun Tong Wu Xu -shan Tang Eng Wu 1*
Ko Young Reading Gao-yang Shu-bao Hui Xu it Room She
Lam Sai Hor Lin Xi-he Tang Lam, Lim Lin Lee Clan Li-shi Gong-suo 4 & Lee Li Association
Leong Chung How Liang Zhong-xiao Leong, Liang Tong Tang Leung
Lew Mu Way Liao Wu-wei Tang Lew Liao
Lore Yee Jang Luo Yu-zhang Tang Lo Luo Tong TABLE IIIC (Continued)
ASSOCIATION CLANS INCLUDED
Cantonese/English Mandarin (pin-yin) Characters Cantonese Mandarin (pin-yin) Characters
Lung Kong Tien Long-gan Gong-suo ^ ")^J frj- Lew, Guan, Liu, Guan, Zhang j^j &j ^ ^ Yee Chang,Chew Zhao * J1
Mah Society Ma-shi Gong-suo ^ fa ffj" Mah Ma
Nam Young Tong Nan-yang Zong-tang ^ f£ /j? Yip, Dong, Ye, Ding, Ceng .T. Jang
Oylin Society Ai-lian Gong-suo ^ jyfj Eng, Chew, Wu, Cai, Zhou Chao
Quon Lung Said Guan Long-Xi Tang gj fj^ $ & Guan Guan m Tong
Sue Yuen Tong Su-yuan Zong-tang ^ ^ gg. ^ Lew, Fong, Lei, Fang, Kuang Kuang
Wong Kong Har Huang Jiang-xia Tang ^ |f_ Wong Huang, Wang Tong
Wong Wun San Huang Yun-shan Gong-^ q| M fa ^ Wong Huang, Wang suo
Yee Fong Toy Yu Feng-cai Tang Yue'Ye e Yu Tong
Lee Kwong Kai Li Gang-xi Tang 4 4 Lee from Li from Kai-Ping Society , Hoy-Ping
Look Ming Lu-ming Bie-shu ft Wong from Huang and Wang Reading Room Toy-Shan from Tai-Shan
Ming Sun Min-xing Yue-bao Wong,r from Huang and Wang Reading Room She *i %ffij ft i t Hoy-Ping from Kai-Ping 81
Rooms [Min-xing Yue-bao She] - but since the Vancouver Chinese speak
mutually intelligible dialects, no segmentation is evident with respect
to language. Instead, segmentation seems to be largely a product of
scale, or of particular historical circumstances. As Willmott states,
"Those few cases of segmentation that do exist have their origin in the
local politics of Chinatown rather than in cultural differences stem•
ming from China" (1964: 34). He goes on to note that the clan with the
largest representation in Vancouver - the Wongs - have two associations, neither of which correlates with a specific locality (1964: 34) nor with
the difference in surname between Huang ( ^ ) and Wang ( Jfc/ - )• 9
Rather, it appears that the Wong Kong Har Tong was established first,
around the turn of the century, while the Wong Wun Sun was established around the beginning of the thirties as a response to disputes arising
among Wong clan members regarding a murder incident. In the sixties,
this dispute was largely forgotten, and the two Wong societies exhibited
interlocking directorships and were complementary in nature. Today,
the two societies have since merged into one: the Wong Sye Jong Chun
Society ( ^ Aj f&j *.% ^- ).
Vancouver's clan associations in the sixties were predominantly patronized by China-born males who immigrated to Canada before the immi• gration closure in 1923, although there were some important exceptions to this generalization at the leadership level (see Chapter IV). Many recent immigrants to Canada, deriving from a vastly changed China, had already rejected the traditional loyalty to clan and surname and there• fore were not likely to join clan associations upon their arrival. Fur- 82
thermore, membership in the clan associations was usually male. As
Willmott stated in 1964:
Although membership in clan associations is open to women of the same surname, there are very few female members. The older generation is, of course, overwhelmingly male. Fur• thermore, both old and new ideas link women more effectively to the clan associations of their husbands, where they are often asked to perform the tasks of cooking and serving for banquets and celebrations (1964: 35).
Thus, the clan associations reinforced the traditional subordination of women to men.
In the sixties, the clan associations provided recreational and social activities for their members, settled minor disputes between members or between a member and a non-member, and furnished welfare programs based on earnings from real estate investments. Some clan associations, for instance, owned buildings in Chinatown valued at $75,000 to $100,000 or more, typically using one floor for the associations head• quarters and renting out the rest (Willmott 1964: 36) . Another important function of the clan associations was their sponsorship of traditional
Chinese celebrations, such as the Chinese New Year and Qing Ming ( \^
•0$ ), a festival having to do with the remembrance of ancestors. The clan associations, then, were in a broad sense concerned with the preser• vation of traditional Chinese culture, a function that decreased their appeal for certain pro-assimilationist Chinese.
These associations were organized on a similar model regard• less of their size. As Willmott notes, they usually had a twenty- member standing committee with a five-man executive that acted on the basis of informal consultation. These leaders thus had a great deal of 83
informal influence within the association. Further, there appeared to be no formal links between clan associations in Canada and those in other countries. Members of clan associations in Vancouver stressed the autonomy of their organization, except in cases when their associa• tion was the national hheadquarters for Canada (Willmott 1964: 34).
Much rivalry has existed among clan associations in Vancouver.
The Wong and Lee clan associations, the two biggest and most influential in the community, have traditionally formed opposing factions. Inter• esting in this respect is the fact that three of the four most influen• tial leaders in the 1960's were of the Wong clan, while the fourth was a
Lee. One community leader remarked in this regard that:
The power of Chinatown comes out of Wong clan superiority. The other clan associations are not as powerful as the Wongs and are always fighting among themselves. The Wongs can't agree with the Lees, and the Lees can't get along with the Jungs, you see.
In terms of Chinatown politics, then, the Wong societies were foremost among the clan associations in influence. In the field of economics and business success, however, members of the Lee association were quite distinguished, and since wealth is very highly regarded by the Chinese community, achievement in this regard was undoubtedly a source of in• fluence, and prestige for the Lee clan.
A member of the Yee Clan related the following story concern• ing clan rivalry in Chinatown. During the Vancouver Chinatown Queen contest in 1959, two candidates, a Miss Yee and a Miss Lee, were nominated as finalists. Everybody in Chinatown knew that Miss Lee was going to win, because the contest was based, not on the beauty or intelligence of 84
the candidate, but on the number of tickets she could sell. Miss Lee, representing a large clan, was expected to sell the most tickets, while
Miss Yee, coming from a small and relatively poor clan, was not expected to drum up much support. The Yee clan association, however, appealed to their branch associations in the U.S. and to the Mah clan association, with which they had a strong affinity. As a result,Miss Yee gained an overwhelming majority of votes. When the Lee's began to realize the trend of the contest, it was already too late for them to buy additional tickets. Finally, in an attempt to maintain the status quo, the judges nominated two queens on the grounds that some tickets could not be counted because of uncertainty regarding their date of purchase.
This story does not deal with issues of the same import as were dealt with by clans earlier in the history of the community, but it nevertheless illustrates some aspects of the nature of clan rivalry and solidarity in the community of the sixties. First, the Lee clan could not lose, no matter what the true result of the contest. Thus, the ten• dency to prevent loss of face in this instance was a powerful mechanism for maintaining the status quo. Second, the story illustrates that cer• tain clans were seen to maintain alliance based on criteria other than those of common mystical ancestorship or agnation. The Yees and Mahs were considered to have a special affinity for each other because of a long 10 history of inter-marriage. Third, the story indicates that although there are no formal relationships between clan associations in different countries, some kind of informal solidarity did exist. Thus, one could expect that were a Mah from Canada to travel in the U.S., he would not 85
be considered as much of a stranger to other Mali's than would a Chinese of another surname.
The establishment of the clan associations in Vancouver post• dated that of the Chee Gung Tong and the Chinese Benevolent Society by almost two decades, probably a result of the fact that the small size of the community and the nature of the external threat to the Chinese in the 1800's first necessitated the formation of relatively inclusive soci• eties that could represent the Chinese as a whole to the host society.
As noted before, the impetus to form a community-wide association arose only after it became apparent that the Chee Gung VTong alone was not equipped to handle the problems of representing all Chinese to the hos• tile environment surrounding them. It was only later, as the scale of the community increased and as representational needs were cared for by the Chinese Benevolent Association, that distinctions among Chinese be• came as significant as those between Chinese and non-Chinese. It was at this time that the clan and locality associations, serving intra- community needs, began to flourish.
The clan associations as a whole, then, were not really fully developed until the second decade of the 20th century, but from this time on they played a significant role in the community. Their early functions included such economic responsibilities as providing capital for bankrupt businessmen, serving as employment agencies, and
furnishing welfare benefits accrued from real estate investments. In addition, they settled disputes, both serious and minor, between members 86
or represented them in case of a dispute with a non-member (Willmott
1964: 36).
In this early period (1920-1940), however, the clan associations did not seem to inspire the same amount of loyality among their members as did the locality associations. Perhaps this was due to the fact that the bonds among members of the locality organizations were reinforced by long-time acquaintanceships that had originated in China itself. By the 1960's, however, the clan associations had become of greater impor• tance than the locality associations, conceivably because they united a more heterogeneous group of people and appealed to a broader loyalty, at least in the context of overseas society. Canadian-born Chinese, for instance, seemed to be more willing to relate to an organization based on common surname than one based on a district with which they were unfam• iliar. The nature of these locality associations, once the backbone of the associational structure in Vancouver, will be discussed next.
The Locality Associations (Hui-Guan)
In Vancouver, the locality associations were very important historically but by the sixties had diminished in influence quite con• siderably. This was largely a result of the fact that these associations were extremely traditionist in ideology and oriented toward the homeland, therefore best suiting those migrants of the so-called "sojourner mental• ity" (Lee 1960) . As this' type of mentality became less pervasive and as the homeland became less vital to the community as a whole, the locality associations were considered important by a smaller and smaller segment 87
of the population. Among the members of this segment of the population who were predominantly China-born and elderly, however, the criterion of native place significantly affected the structuring of their social relationships.
There were eleven locality associations in existence in the early 1960's. These are presented in Table HID with the names of the districts they represented.
As can be seen from Table HID, some locality associations were more inclusive than others. The locality associations, therefore, ex• hibited a segmentary structure among themselves. For instance, a per• son from the Pan-yu [Pun-yu] district in the San-Yi.[Sam-Yap] area of
China had the option of belonging both to the Yue-Shan Association (repre• senting migrants from Pan-yu) and to the Sam-Yap Association, in which he would find himself united with individuals from the Nan-Hai [Nam-Hoy] and
Shun-de [Sun-dak] regions. There was, however, no one locality asso• ciation that represented all the localities from which migrants to Canada typically originated; this function was largely assumed by the Chinese
Benevolent Association, whose executive board was for many years com• posed of representatives from all the locality associations (see above, page 93 ) .
The significance of the locality associations historically derived from the fact that the segments on which they were based usually formed corporate, closely-knit units in which the members all knew each other or were genealogically related (Crissman 1967: 193-194). Crissman summarizes the importance of native place among overseas Chinese in the
following words: TABLE HID
Locality Associations of the 1960's
DISTRICT REPRESENTED NAME OF ASSOCIATION
Cantonese Mandarin Characters English Mandarin Characters
Sam-Yap San-Yi >• & Sam-Yap District San Yi Tong ^ )^) jlfsfr. Association Xiang Hui Nam-Hoy Nan-Hai Nam-Hoy District Nan Hai Hui Association Guan Pun-Yu Pan-Yu Yue Shan Assoc. Yu Shan Zong Gong Suo Sun-Dak Shun-De Shoon Duck Assoc. Shun De Tang
Sei-Yap Si-Yi Five Districts Assoc. Wu Yi Tong of Hong Kong* Xiang Hui Toy-San Tai-Shan ^ Hoy Sun Ning Yung Tai Shan Ning Iff* Benevolent Assoc. Y-ang/Hui Guan Hoy-Ping Kai-Ping Hoy Ping District Kai Ping Hui v Association Guan Yan-Ping En-Ping \ Yin Ping District En Ping Hui fa % ^ Association S an-Wui Xin-Hui Kong Chow District Gang Zhou Hui Association Guan
Chung-Shan Zhong-Shan BenevShontYee Benevolent Chong Yi Hui Society it Chung Shan Lung Zhong Shan Long >.f l». fi\ ^ Jin Society Zhen Tong Xiang Hui * The Five Districts Association of Hong Kong represents the four districts of Sei-Yap [Si-Yi] plus one additional district, Hok-San [He-Shan >#|> ^ ]. 89
Every Chinese has a native place, the area of China where his lineage.is localised and where his ancestors are buried and worshipped. He may never have seen it, having been born elsewhere in China or abroad, but he knows it as the place where his father or forefather originated. It is important to emphasize that a person's native place is permanent and cannot be changed. It is ascribed or inherited like a name or lineage membership, and in foreign context one of the most important things about a Chinese is his native place in China. (1967: 190).
As one member of the Vancouver Chinese community stated:
The locality here was more important than the clan because relatively speaking there was more relation to the locality, especially among the older Chinese. They knew each other, gave news to each other, and discussed the old places.
It is no wonder, then, that one of the most famous Chinese associations
in North America - the Six Companies of San Francisco - was in actuality a confederation of locality associations. That the leaders of this insti•
tution succeeded in exercising effective criminal jurisdiction over
their members, in controlling the influx of migrants, and in securing repayment of advances made to coolies and labourers, gives some indica•
tion of the strength these associations attained among overseas Chinese
there (Campbell 1923: 30).
The first reference to a locality association operative among
the B.C. Chinese was in regard^to the Ning Yung Hing Tong [Ning-yang Xing- 11 Tang], established in Victoria in order to provide mutual aid for fellow-countrymen. Its early functions consisted of arranging for trips back to the homeland, supervising the return of bones to China for inter• ment, settling disputes and collecting debts for members, and maintaining hostel facilities for transients (Willmott 1970b: 46). 90
By the turn of the century, eleven locality organizations were
active in Vancouver. One of their more important tasks was to collect
the bones of deceased Chinese and send them back to China. This was
done periodically as a collective endeavor, each time costing over $10,000.
The funds were raised in part by the collection of an exit fee (chu kou
piao) of $2.00 whenever a member lefththe country for any period of time.
Furthermore, these associations remitted large sums of money to their
homeland villages:iand districts in times of disaster or great need.
Some even funded the building of schools or other institutions in China.
As time went on, it became more and more difficult to return
the bones to China, and 1937 is cited as the last date that a shipment of bones was successfully returned to China by the locality associations.
One.member of the Vancouver Chinese community stated that around this time 2,000 bones were held up in Victoria, until a suggestion was fi• nally made to bury them there. After this, the main functions of the locality associations centered around welfare, especially for the aged members. Many of the locality associations owned their own buildings, renting them out for income, and some of them supervised or maintained hostel facilities for elderly men or seasonal labourers. The inhabitants of these hostels, or fang-kou, were one of the many groups in Chinatown threatened by the redevelopment plans of the sixties.
Thus, the locality associations were among the most traditionist in the community by the 1960's. One of these organizations, however, had gained a reputation as an important welfare organization within the
) community. As one member of this association said: 91
Shon Yee is a true benevolent association and is recognized as such by the Canadian government. We contribute to many Canadian charities and have a death benefit of $400 for mem• bers. The others are not up to the same standard; they only take care of their own members.
This organization, however, was somewhat atypical. The other district associations followed the more traditional practices of providing wel• fare benefits only for their own members. As a whole, then, the influen• tial! ty of these associations diminished as the sixties progressed.
Community Associations: The Chinese Benevolent Association
The Chinese Benevolent Association (C.B.A.) was the only asso• ciation in Vancouver in the sixties that attempted to represent the Chi• nese community as a whole. Although not all Chinese recognized its right to speak for them, the C.B.A. nevertheless held a privileged posi• tion in the community by virtue of the fact that it transcended many of the factions in the community and that, as a federation of associations, it theoretically represented the totality of an otherwise segmented struc• ture. It also derived singularity from the fact that it traditionally acted as an intermediary between the Canadian political system and the
Chinese. In the early history of the community, in fact, the provincial government tacitly delegated control to the C.B.A., and up until the establishment of a Chinese consulate in Vancouver in 1909, the C.B.A. was recognized as the sole Chinese representative to the Canadian government.
The functions of the C.B.A. in the sixties were diverse in nature; for instance, it simultaneously acted as.a welfare agency, appeal system, publicity bureau, and charitable institution. It was furthermore, the "highest commission of reconciliation" within the community itself 92
(Willmott 1970b: 148), and Vancouver was the headquarters of this asso•
ciation nationally.
The C.B.A. was first established in Victoria in 1884 as the
Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, in response to a need for
an association that could represent the Chinese on a community-wide
basis (see C.Y. Lai 1972) . From a translation of Inside the Chinese
Benevolent Association we learn that a suggestion to set up a C.B.A. in
Vancouver was first made in 1889 and that it was established shortly
thereafter. From its inception, the C.B.A. held a singular position in
the network of associations. It was instrumental in presenting a common
front to the outside in times of crisis and discrimination as well as
caring for the needy and adjudicating disputes internally.
In 1907 the C.B.A. founded the Chinese Public Hospital. At
first located on the first two floors of the C.B.A. building, the hospi•
tal was later transferred to a wing of Mount St. Joseph's. The hospital
operated on a charitable basis according to need, and in 1943 the Chi• nese community donated over $30,000 to improve it. During this early
period, the C.B.A. also established a Chinese-language school on its
premises, one which was to play an important function when racial dis•
crimination prevailed in the public school systems. Throughout the early
decades of the 20th Century, the C.B.A. was instrumental in protesting
the ever-increasing head tax to the government. Perhaps to facilitate
external recognition, it registered with the Canadian government as a
charitable institution in 1907, and when the Exclusion Act was passed in
1923, the C.B.A. proclaimed July 1st as "Humiliation Day", urging all 12 Chinese to protest this legislation annually. 93
The internal structure of the C.B.A. has varied with its mul•
tiple and changing statuses within the community. When the C.B.A. was
first established, it was the unchallenged representative of the Van•
couver Chinese; however, as time progressed and official representa•
tion became more accessible to the Chinese, the predominance of the
C.B.A. came to be questioned.- In response to this trend, efforts were
made to make the association more inclusive through greater represen-
taiton on its executive. The history of the structuring and restruc•
turing of this executive, then, sheds light on the role of the C.B.A.
during different stages of the community's development.
When the C.B.A. was first organized in Victoria, the associa•
tion was controlled and directed by a few wealthy merchants who were the
undisputed leaders of the community (Sedgwick 1973: 70). Although we have no direct evidence for Vancouver, the situation during the first few
decades of the C.B.A.'s existence was probably much the' same. In 1918, however, with the base of merchant leadership somewhat declining and with the role of the C.B.A. challenged by the Consulate, the executive was broadened to that of a board consisting of a representative from
each of the locality associations. Because the locality associations, being such corporate and closely, knit groups, played such an important
role in the community until the end of the Exclusion Act, this system sufficed with few changes as late as the 1960's. At this time, the struc•
ture of the executive was again altered due to the fact that represen•
tation of the basis of locality associations was no longer an accurate reflection of the real loci of power within the community. In 1962, 94
therefore, an attempt to revitalize the C.B.A. by adopting a new con• stitution and incorporating a council of representatives from the major• ity of associations then in existence was made.
In spite of these efforts, the C.B.A. in the sixties continued
to be largely identified with the traditionist sector of the community.
The modernist Elks and Vets, for instance, were not invited to send rep• resentatives to the newly formed C.B.A. council. This was a foreseeable development, however, because changes in the structure of the community itself and in its relation to the wider Canadian society precluded the possibility that the C.B.A. play as preeminent a role in the community as it had previously. By the time that the revitalization efforts took place, it was clear to even the most solid C.B.A. supporters that the
C.B.A. was losing its appeal to youth and that many Chinese no longer recognized its right to represent them.
It also became apparent that while whites regarded the C.B.A. as representative of all Chinese, the Chinese themselves regarded it as representative of only certain factions within the community, particu• larly the Kuomintang. As one leader of the community stated,
The C.B.A. is the Chinese spokesman. It is the symbol of uni• ty. We use the C.B.A. to give such an impression to the Canadian government, although we know ourselves that not all support it.
By the 1960's, then, the Chinese Benevolent Association still assumed certain important functions for certain segments of the Chinese popula• tion, but its base of support was not as great as in former times. 95
Other Associations: Athletic, Commercial,Charitable, Leisure and Alumni
The other associations played a less important role in a poli• tical sense than the ones described above. Nonetheless, they were impor• tant in that they contributed to the richness and diversity of the asso• ciational network, a factor that distinguishes the Vancouver Chinese community from others, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. I will briefly describe the salient characteristics of each of these types of associa• tions .
Commercial: One would expect that commercial associations would have occupied a prominent position in the associational network, but for reasons not entirely clear commercial associations have not played a very significant role in Vancouver's Chinese community. Perhaps in the
1960's this was due to the fact that commercial interests were represen• ted in the political system in other more indirect ways. Whatever the reasons, commercial associations have exhibited a history of ineffective and sporadic existence.
Of all the commercial associations, the Chinese Chamber of
Commerce had the most enduring influence, although it, too, was inoperative during certain periods of the community's history. This association was founded in 1910 as the United Chinese Chamber of Commerce in order to protect the interests of merchants and businessmen. It attempted to facilitate the exchange of information with other Chambers of Commerce in Shanghai, Hankow, Hong Kong and San Francisco and to combat unfair treatment of Chinatown merchants by the white population. The association 96
was most powerful at a time when merchant control of the community was 13 still operative. In the 1960's, certain influential community lea• ders attempted to revive this association, but their efforts werennot very successful.
Other commercial associations in the 1960's included the
Vancouver Chinese Restaurant Association, the Chinese Trade Workers'
Association (a right wing organization affiliated with the Kuomintang), and the B.C. Lower Mainland Cooperative Association. This latter asso• ciation was established in the early sixties as the Chinese Farmers'
Association ( --ip" /^yp^, J=J£- ^ )» later changing its name to the B.C. Lower Mainland Farmers' Cooperative Association when it accepted a few non-Chinese members. In the sixties, this organization was concerned with raising the standard of living of Chinese farmers and investigat• ing farming methods and conditions in the B.C. Lower Mainland Area. In
1967, it represented more than 100 farms.
In addition to these, certain associations were formed on a temporary basis to promote the redevelopment of Chinatown. These were the Chinatown Development Association and the Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association.
Athletic: During the early sixties, at least seven Chinese associations based on athletics were in existence. Some of these - such as the All-Chinese Basketball League and the Chinese Golf Club - were important in that they provided a social context within which influential
Chinese leaders were able to meet. Others were affiliated with larger associations. The Hon Hsing Athletic Glub and the Masonic Athletic Club, 97
for instance, were related to the Wong clan association and the Freemasons,
respectively. The Hon Hsing Club was established in 1940. In the six•
ties, it sponsored weekly folk dances, Cantonese music, and an annual
Lion's Dance in addition to various athletic activities. The Hai Fung
Association was established later, around the mid-fifties, but it quickly
gained prominence by virtue of the popularity of its r,table-tennis and
chess tournaments. The majority of its members were in the twenty-five
to thirty-year-old age bracket, although members of all ages and occupa•
tions were represented (personal communication).
Charitable and Leisure: Among the charitable associations were
the Charlie Kent Golden Anniversary Charity Foundation, established by
one of the wealthiest Chinese in Vancouver,and Chinese branches of the
Red Cross and Community Chest. Each year, these latter associations would
ask influential leaders of the community to head "teams" of canvassers
and were quite successful in raising welfare donations because of their
support.
The leisure organizations of the sixties fell into the follow•
ing groups: youth, recreational, and musical. The last were generally
traditionist in orientation and were concerned with keeping alive the
old instruments and ancient, music of China. The Gin Wah Sing Society
[Zhen-hua Sheng Yin-yue She] was founded in 1934 and sponsored an annual performance of a Cantonese opera. For the most part, however, the social
clubs consisted of recreational youth organizations. The Chung Wah Cubs
and Scouts and the Chung Wah Youth League were both clubs for children,
the last of which provided scout activities as well as a band that par- 98
ticipated in parades. The Chinese Varsity Club and the Overseas Chinese
Students association were organizations for university students. The
Chinese Youth Association was not limited to students but was open to all youth. It deserves particular mention in that it was the only association in Vancouver in the sixties to voice pro-People's Republic of China sentiments. The members of the association published a small newspaper, showed movies from the People's Republic, and versed them• selves in the revolutionary theatre that was;«an integral part of main• land Chinese political and cultural life.
Alumni: The four alumni organizations in existence in the sixties were based on graduation from the same school in China. As noted above (Chapter I), the formation of associations on the basis of common graduation from the same school was not an innovation for over• seas Chinese but stemmed from their homeland. In Vancouver, graduation from the same middle school (about equivalent to our high-school) as well as from the same university was significant. These associations were similar to the locality associations in that they were oriented to• ward the homeland and were generally traditionist in nature.
The Network of Associations in the Early 1960's
The network of associations under consideration is not a for• mal structure but indicates informal loci of power in the Vancouver Chi• nese community that results from the interlocking of directorships among associations. Skinner has analyzed the structure of power in the Chinese community of Bangkok by means of interlocking directorships, and his words on their significance are best presented verbatim: 99
The Chinese associations, unlike the agencies of a real gov• ernment, are not arranged in a formal hierarchy with speci• fied lines of control. To be sure, the superordinate posi• tion of the Chamber of Commerce is generally recognized [in Vancouver the Chinese Benevolent Association]....But the Cham• ber's supremacy is based only on the "charter" of tradition, and acting alone it has no power to dictate policy or issue orders to other associations. On the basis of formal or written charter, the Chinese associations are independent and unaffiliated; the only exceptions are provided by the schools subordinate to speech-group associations....In the absence of a formal organization hierarchy and of formal lines of authority among the Chinese associations, the functional importance of interlocking directorships is obvious. They are the main channels of communication and influence uniting the various organizations. It. is largely because of them that groups of Chinese associations can co-ordinate policy and exercise unified control (1958: 200).
Unfortunately, the data collected on associations in Vancouver
are far less complete than those that Skinner collected and analyzed
for the Bangkok Chinese community. In particular, no information con•
cerning the executives of Vancouver Chinese business corporations has been collected, an aspect that Skinner considered essential to his analy•
sis. In spite of these shortcomings, I have used the data available on
the Vancouver Chinese community to map out a network of associations
as it existed in the early 1960's. Although based on incomplete data,
it does illustrate some important points about the nature of power in
the Vancouver community that have been confirmed by other observations.
Figure I indicates, then, that interlocking directorships
created four main loci of power within the associational structure.
These are: the Chinese Benevolent Association [Zhong-hua Hui-guan], the
Freemasons [Zhi-gong Tang], the Kuomintang [Guo-min Dang], and the Wong
Kong Har Tong [Huang Jiang-xia Tang]. Of all the associations, the C.B.A. 100 101
interlocked with the most number of associations and is therefore placed
in the center of the diagram. The Freemasons and K.M.T., being antagon•
istic toward each other, had no interlocking directorships themselves,
but each interlocked with the executive board of the C.B.A. The C.B.A.,
in fact, was at this time attempting to maintain a careful balance be•
tween conflicting Freemason and K.M.T. spheres of influence. Its three
co-chairman, for instance, included by design one representative from
the Freemasons, one from the Kuomintang, and one who was "neutral" with
respect to this conflict. From the point of view of political efficacy,
it was crucial for the C.B.A. to maintain this "neutralist" position,
for the more it leaned toward one side or the other, the more it weakened
its position as an effective mediator within the community - a quality
that largely determined the extent of its power.
The structure of interlocking directorships indicates that
the basic factional alignment of the associations in the sixties falls
into three broad groups: the Kuomintang, the "neutralist", and the Free• mason spheres of influence. If Figure I is viewed from the perspective
of these factions, it can be seen that all the associations in the middle
sector of the diagram fall into the neutralist category. The Wong Kong
Har Tong and its affiliates, then, played an important role as neutralist
organizations in that they served to mitigate the Kuomintang/Freemason
conflict by including representatives from both of these associations on
their executive boards.
It is also of interest that the Kuomintang bloc exhibited
shared directorships with the more traditionist clan, locality, and music 102
societies, while the Freemason bloc was based on links with the more mod• ernist associations such as the Vets, Elks, and Shon Yee [Chong-Yi Hui] societies. Thus, the Kuomintang sphere included a much greater proportion of traditionist associations than did the Freemason sphere.
Also important in this respect is the fact that the Kuomin• tang bloc maintained more links with the neutralist (or C.B.A.) sector than did the Freemason bloc, this being only one indication of the closer relationship that the C.B.A. held with the K.M.T. in spite of its efforts toward neutrality.
As noted above, these four power foci were determined by an analysis of interlocking directorships among the associations. Another indication of the relative influence of the associations was gained from interview data on forty-nine associational leaders within the community.
These leaders were asked to name the five associations they thought to be most influential. Some leaders nominated less than five associations, but each time an association was nominated, it was given one'Vote". The associations nominated were then ranked according to number of "votes" received, every association receiving more than one vote being included in Table HIE.
TABLE HIE
Relative Influence of the Associations
Association Number of Votes
Chinese Benevolent Association 29 Freemasons 21 Kuomintang 16 Wong Clan Association 14 Lee Clan Association 10 Lions 10 Vets 5 Elks 2 Hoy San Locality Association 2 103
These data indicate that the associations that formed the foci of the four power blocs isolated by means of interlocking directorships were also thought to be most influential by these community leaders.
Table HIE also points to the fact that the Kuomintang association was thought to be less influential by these leaders than the Freemason or• ganization, an opinion that was expressed by other members of the com• munity as well.
In light of the changing relationships among the associations and of the changing degree of influence that specific associations exer• cised in the community, then, it is to be expected that the associa• tional network of the seventies would look quite different from that of the sixties. Indeed, it is not possible to predict from the data col• lected for the sixties what form the network of the seventies assumed, and future research in this area might provide some interesting com• parative material. The next topic of discussion is the type of men who formed the links among these associations. 104
FOOTNOTES - CHAPTER III
1. By commercial I do not refer to actual corporations or companies, but to associations formed with respect to commercial interests. The analysis of the political structure of the Vancouver Chinese presented here is partial because, due to lack of data on the subject, it does not consider the role of corporations and corporate executive boards in the political system.
2. This opinion was voiced by a member of the Chinese community who was not a part of the leadership structure of the 19601s. Quite a few of the Chinese leaders interviewed, however, also indicated a relation• ship between the Freemason's political influence and their success in real estate.
3. Actually, the Freemasons were known to have supported the Liberal Party in the late fifties and early sixties, much to the dismay of some members who felt that the organization should remain apolitical.
4. It is of interest that secret societies were often the first associa• tions to be established by the Chinese in Southeast Asia as well. See Blythe, The Impact of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya, for a description of early Chinese secret societies in Java, Singapore, Malacca, and Penang (1969: 45-62) and Freedman (1967) for an analysis of the significance of the secret society in Singapore's early history.
5. Based on an interview with Seto Ying-shek (see Footnote 1, Chapter I).
6. This conflict, however, was subdued during the first years of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), when all factions came together to sup• port the Nationalist government in Chungking against the Japanese invastion. By the time of the civil war in China (1946-1949), the split between the Freemasons and the Kuomintang once again became complete.
7. The Chinese Benevolent Association was apparently dominated by the Kuomintang until at least the early 1940's, at which time its leaders attempted to make it more of a non-partisan organization.
8. Table IIIC is amended from that appearing in Willmott's (1964) article on Vancouver's clan associations in that it includes one association that was omitted from his table and in that it presents the names of the associations as they are known in the community (that is, either in English or in various Cantonese romanizations), as well as in their Mandarin transcriptions.
9. This •romanization is in Mandarin. Both of these characters ( •% ) and ( ) are pronounced Wong in Cantonese. 105
10. Freedman notes essentially the same phenomenon occurring among lin• eages in Southeastern China. As he states, "...lineages might be grouped not only by similarity of surname but also on the basis of certain traditional alliances between surnames....We thus find a situation in which any localized lineage at a given point in time might be grouped in alliance with certain lineages and in hostility against others. Alliance might be based upon agnation, linked sur• names, or connubium...." (1958: 5).
11. The name of this association was later changed to Hoy Sun Ning Yung [Tai-shan Ning-yang]. Hoy-Sun is the local pronunciation of Tai- shan ( ^ j-b ) .
12. The factual information in this paragraph was obtained from Inside the Chinese Benevolent Association, an association periodical trans• lated by Jennie and Bessie Yu.
13. From the series of interviews with Seto Ying-shek. 106
CHAPTER IV
LEADERS AND LEADERSHIP IN THE CHINESE COMMUNITY OF VANCOUVER
This chapter views the social characteristics and patterns of
leadership among the key community leaders of the Vancouver Chinese
community. The general context within which this is done is to view
leadership in Vancouver as a variant of a genre of overseas Chinese
leadership that exists to one extent or another in all overseas Chinese
communities. Also central to this approach, however, is the question of
how, within this broad type of leadership, the specificities of the Cana•
dian situation demanded innovation and adaptation. To this end, I examine
the effect of such variables as i) the nature of Chinese migration to
Canada; ii) the size and growth of the community; and iii) the nature of
the relationship between the Chinese, community and the wider Canadian
society on the kind of leadership that emerged.
The Historical Emergence of Chinese Leadership in Vancouver
The significance of the findings to be presented on the struc•
ture of leadership in the Vancouver Chinese community of the 1960's are better understood within a historical context, for Chinese leadership
can be seen to have evolved from a situation in which merchant status
and wealth were the only bases of leader-elite status to one in which
the social characteristics of the leaders are more varied and more than
one type of leader is recognized. The early leaders as well as those of
the 1960's operated within a network of associations, although the net• work itself has become progressively diversified. It seems fruitful, 107
therefore, to examine the kind of leadership that existed in the early
community and to assess what directions this leadership has taken.
Although the history of the Chinese community in Victoria is
outside the scope of this paper, the nature of Chinese leadership in the
early years of that community (1880-1900) is nevertheless relevant to an
understanding of the development of a leadership elite in Vancouver. We
know, for instance, that merchants were almost the sole spokesmen for
the Victoria Chinese community and that they occupied the executive posi•
tions of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association and of other
associations. We also know that they were engaged in flourishing trade,
often acted as bankers for their customers, had contacts with other mer•
chants as far away as the United States and China, and that they drew
fairly rigid status distinctions between themselves and Chinese of the ser• vice and labouring classes (Sedgwick 1973: 47). Although as yet undocu• mented, it is altogether likely that similar merchants were the main source
of leadership within the Vancouver Chinese community during this period.
For a slightly later period, around the turn of the century, we have indications that the prominent role of merchants in the leader• ship structure continued. The 1902 Royal Commission, for instance, re• ported that merchants "exercise a strong influence over the immigrants of the labouring classes and largely control the numbers coming into the
country" (Wai 1970: 52). In addition, Sedgwick reports that:
The merchants of this period are still vividly remembered by older members of the Chinese community today. They are referred to not only in terms that allude to their higher status economi• cally, socially, and politically, but also as leaders that fully represented their community in a way which is unknown today (1973: 96) . 108
These merchants fulfilled most of the important associational positions;
however, they were not usually elected, but appointed by the C.B.A.
With the advent of exclusion in 1923 the base of leadership begins to broaden. Sedgwick, for instance, notes a decline in the power
of the traditional Chinatown merchants of Victoria, and in 1924 he notes
that the K.M.T. executive is almost devoid of merchant control (1973:
150-151). Furthermore, in 1916, the Chinese Times reported that some
groups in Vancouver were pressing for a restructuring of the CTBJA. exec• utive. In 1918, after initially vetoing any change, the election system was changed from one in which a few wealthy merchants constituted the
executive to one in which a representative from each of the locality
associations was to be nominated to form an executive board (see Chap•
ter III). Perhaps this was a means of wresting power out of the hands of a few people who had controlled the C.B.A. for a long period of time.
Whatever the reason, the first election was threatened by trouble from groups opposed to wider representation, and police were hired to prevent it (Chinese Times 8/7/1918).
This controversy over the constitution of the C.B.A. executive seems to indicate that by the end of this period some groups were ques• tioning the basis of merchant leadership. The community was beginning to accept other criteria in addition to wealth as significant in leader• ship. Leadership based on political grounds, such as support of Sun Yat- sen, was undoubtedly instrumental in this change, as was the fact that all Chinese were no longer engaged in commerce by the 1930's. By the end of the period of exclusion, then, merchant status was no longer the 109
sole criterion for community leadership. The 1940's mark the beginning
of Foon Sein's career, one of a new type of leader in Vancouver's China•
town whose prestige was based more on community service than on financial
standing.
I have attempted to demonstrate that by the 1960's, the struc•
ture of leadership had become considerably more diversified than in the
early stages of the community. Different types of leaders came into exis•
tence who reflected the major groupings within the community. Although
there was still a certain amount of overlap, political leadership had
become distinct from mercantile leadership, and the diverse nature of
the associatonal network made it impossible for one leader to form the
apex of a single hierarchical structure.
N-afcuEeeof the Data on Leaders of the 1960's
Most of the data for this analysis were collected in 1965 and
1966, some additional research being completed as late as 1969. The
study for which the original data was collected (Erickson 1966) differs
from this one both in scope and general direction and is primarily concerned with using the Chinese case to further elaborate and validate specific
techniques and theories for the study of community power. The data there•
fore impose certain constraints on the type of analysis that can be car•
ried out. In spite of these limitations, however, much valuable material was collected, not all of which was relevant to the purposes of the
original study. This study therefore makes wider use of the data collected and views it from a different perspective. 110
"Leader" 'was operationally defined for the purposes of the ori•
ginal study as any Chinese who held at least one executive position in a
Chinese association and who was mentioned at least twice in the Chinatown
News from 1961 to 1965, and this definition is conformed to here. The
total population of this category was found to consist of 152 individuals.
Files were kept on these individuals in which items of interest from the
Chinatown News and other public sources were recorded. Specifically,
items such as banquets attended, election to association offices, over•
seas trips, and meetings with prominent men were kept in chronological
order in each file.
In addition, forty-nine of the 152 leaders were interviewed.
Since the interview schedule was designed in order to test certain hypo•
theses which are only of peripheral interest to this study, it contained
some items which were of little or no use here. Such questions, however,
as respondent's age, place of birth, period of immigration, proportion of
friends and business contacts who were Chinese proved to be significant,
and respondents' nominations for the most influential leaders and associa•
tions contained in the interviews form the basis of much of the following
analysis.
The sample was not collected in a strictly random fashion and
therefore cannot be used for predictive purposes. As nearly as I can
reconstruct it, the biases of the sample consist of over-representation
in the areas of: i) second-generationaleaders, due to a slight second-
generation slant in the Chinatown News; ii) respondents belonging to
"high-level" associations and to what I term the "leadership elite"; and Ill
iii) leaders with adequate facility in English, due to greater ease in
interviewing and greater accessibility. Although the original study
states that "the research procedure was to gather comparable data from a
generally representative, though not random, selection of association
officers" (Erickson 1966: 47), the biases of the sample must be taken
into account. Because the extent of effect of the over-representation
is not great, however, the sample retains some utility.
A thorough analysis of the leadership structure among the
Vancouver Chinese should include examination of the following aspects:
i) the internal structure of leadership - the relation of leaders to
each other, their social characteristics, composition of leader elites
andlhierarchies, business and kinship ties, and methods of recruitment;
ii) the relation of Vancouver Chinese leaders to the Canadian government
- the nature of unofficial representation, the dichotomy between external
and internal types of leadership, the role and function of mediators in
the community; and iii) the nature of the linkage of Chinese leaders in
Vancouver to China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and to other overseassChinese
communities - the extent of contact, the structural similarities between
Vancouver Chinese leadership and Chinese leadership elsewhere, and,
finally, differences in the subjective components of leadership ideology.
The data, however, are unfortunately too limited to merit such
an extensive analysis. Therefore, the areas in which the data are suf•
ficient - predominantly those dealing with the internal structure of
leadership and the nature of representation to the outside community - will be the central topics of discussion, while the areas in which the 112
data are limited - those dealing with kinship and business ties among the leaders, and the specific ties they maintain with other Chinese community leaders - will be treated only superficially. Interesting trends and relationships are noted, although the inadequacy of the data available often renders these speculative in nature.
G-ivenn the nature of the data, the analysis was organized around two conceptual divisions: i) an analysis of the leadership sample, forty- nine men who were derived from a universe of 152 leaders and who are in a limited way representative of this universe; and ii) an analysis of the leadership "elite", which comprises only the more influential leaders in the community (see Chapter V). The aim of the first section (Chapter IV} is to explore the social characteristics of the^general category "leader" as defined above and to examine in what respects this category is analyti• cally distinct from the general propulation, while the second aims to explore the different types of elites and hierarchies operative within the leadership elite category, the social characteristics of the most influential leaders, and the ideological bases of this influentiality
(Chapter V).
The Social Characteristics of Forty-Nine Chinatown Leaders
In this section I deal with the social characteristics of forty- nine Chinatown leaders: the major divisions, extent of assimilation, and associational affiliations among these leaders as well as their place of birth, age, generation, family situation, educational levels and occu• pations. Where possible, I attempt to assess the extent to which this group differs from the general population and from the leadership elite. 113
Age and Sex
All of the leaders in the sample were male. The only instance of a woman being active in a leadership capacity was within a husband- and-wife team where the wife derived almost all her political influence from her husband. More than one interview respondent spontaneously re• marked that this husband-and-wife team was an unusual phenomenon in the
Chinese community. Leadership was almost exclusively a male domain, and when women participated in this structure at all, it was almost always in a subordinate fashion.
The age of the leaders can be broken down into the following categories:
TABLE IVA
Age of Forty-Nine Chinatown Leaders
Age Number
71+ 3 64-70 3 59-63 2 52-58 7 45-51 9 38-44 14 31-37 5 24-30 _2
Total 45
Not Known 4
Table IVA indicates not only that there was a concentration of leaders in the middle-aged strata but also that all age groups among the forty- nine leaders interviewed were represented. The role of age in traditional 114
Chinese society was an important aspect of social organization (see Levy
1968: 63-140), and there is some indication that it also forms a basis of prestige and respect in the Vancouver Chinese community. One leader, however, suggested that age "counted for more" in the traditionist organ• izations and was less important in the more recently formed, modernist groups. Another leader, himself second-generation and fairly young, in• dicated that there was a "fundamental split" in leadership, opinion, and loyalty between the young and the old. Although it is no doubt true that differences between young and old created a dichotomy both within the population at large and within the leadership structure, the situation was further complicated by other factors. The importance of the vari• able of age in leadership was often superceded by that of generation, period of immigration, and place of birth, and newly arrived immigrants were often as "traditional" in their orientation as the oldest members of the community. The importance of age in leadership, therefore, must be viewed in a fairly wide perspective.
Place of Birth
The significance of age in the leadership structure is compli• cated by the variables of place of birth and period of immigration. The importance of place of birth among the general population has been com• mented on before, and three categories based on place of birth and period of immigration were delineated: i) the China-born who immigrated before
1924; ii) the Canadian-born, or tu-sheng, group; and iii) the China-born who have immigrated since 1947. In addition, the period under discussion 115
first witnesses the arrival of a new type of Chinese migrant to Canada:
the unsponsored, more highly skilled immigrant from modern, urban con•
texts such as Hong Kong (see V. Lai 1971). However, the impact of this
type of migrant on the social organization of the community was not really
felt until the beginning of the 1970's.
Among the forty-nine leaders interviewed, place of birth and
period of immigration were important considerations. Many respondents in
discussing leadership remarked that a certain leader "was popular with
the second generation" or that so-and-so was recognized as a leader only
among the older, China-born members of the community. Furthermore, when
nominations for the most influential leaders were analyzed (see Chapter
V, The Leadership Elite), it became apparent that certain of these lea•
ders derived almost all of their "votes" from either China-born or from
Canadian-born respondents. Some leaders, however, were nominated by both
groups equally.
The relative influence of associations was analyzed in much
the same manner. Some associations were disproportionately nominated as most influential by either second-generation leaders or by China-born
leaders. In particular, over 80% of the people who nominated the Kuomin•
tang association as influential were China-born, and 68% of the people who nominated the fraternal associations (the Lions, Elks, and Vets) were
Canadian-born.
Twenty-five of the forty-nine leaders interviewed were born in
Canada or the U.S., twenty-three in China, and one in Bangkok. Even
taking into account a moderate bias toward second-generation leaders in 116
the sample, participation in the leadership structure on the part of
Canadian-born was high, inasmuch as it is these individuals who typically were considered least interested in assuming leadership positions in
Chinatown. On the basis of information gathered from a variety of sources, it is estimated that the proportion of Canadian-born leaders in the leadership structure as a whole was about equivalent to the pro• portion of Canadian-born Chinese in the population at large. Wai (1970) , for instance, estimates that about 39% of the Chinese population in 1961 was Canadian-born. No estimate of the proportion of Canadian-born to the general population exists for 1966, but it can be assumed that this proportion either remained constant or declined in number at this time due to the increasingly liberal immigration legislation of 1962 and 1965 that caused an influx of Chinese immigrants into Canada. Many infor• mants commented that leadership in the 1960's seemed to consist of a little over one-half China-born.
The following table indicates the birth-place of those leaders born in China:
TABLE IVB
Place of Birth of China-born Leaders
Kwangtung (unspecified) 10 Tai-Shan [Toy-san] 5 Kai-Ping, En-Ping, and Xin-Hui [Hoy-ping, Yan-ping, and San-wui] 3 Hong Kong 2 China excluding Southeast China: Shanghai 1 Hangchow 1 Szechuan 1 3 Born elsewhere than China or Unknown 26^
Total 49 117
Seven of these men had immigrated before the immigration closure in 1923,
two during the closure itself, and 14 after the liberalization of the ;
immigration laws in 1947. Three had arrived as re_cejvtly_as_the—1-9-60's . (
These data, limited as they are, seem to indicate that the same
divisions that underlie the community as a whole were also significant
in the structure of leadership. Each category - Canadian-born, China- born early immigrated, and China-born late immigrated - had its represen•
tatives in the leadership structure, although the type of leadership
they exercised and their ultimate functions as leaders often differed.
These differences will be discussed with reference to leadership elites.
The data also indicate that in spite of the differing needs of these three groups, the associational network held certain attractions for each of
them.
Family Situation
a. Place of Origin of Family. The forty-nine leaders inter• viewed were asked to name the area in China from where their families had come. Crissman (1967) has noted the importance of native place in the social organization of overseas Chinese communities (see below, page
89 ), and Vancouver is no exception to this rule. Even second- and third-generation Chinese were familiar with the xian, or county, from which their families had originated. Unfortunately, the interview did not specifically demand name of xian, so whetehr county (xian) or pro• vince (sheng) was named was left up to the respondent. The leaders' families came from the following areas in China: 118
TABLE IVC
Place of Origin of Leaders' Families
Kwangtung (unspecified) 23 Tai-Shan [Toy-san] 11 Other Si-Yi [Sei-yap] 6 Zhong-Shan [Chung-san] 5 Southeast China excluding Kwangtung 0 China, excluding Southeast China 3 Other (Bangkok) _1
Total 49
It can be seen from this distribution that all but four of the leaders' families came from the province of Kwangtung and that almost all of them originated from a tiny area adjacent to Kwangchow. These findings are consistent with those found for the community at large, and their significance lies in the fact that xian and district provided the basis for segmentation within the community. Unlike other overseas Chinese communities, however, segmentation on the basis of speech group did not occur due to the fact that Cantonese was the native language of almost all the areas from which the migrants originate. The leadership struc• ture, then, like the community at large, was not segmented on the basis of language.
b. Marriage. Of the forty-nine informatns, forty-three were married, two widowed, and four single. Among these four never-marrieds, however, two were engaged at the time the data was collected, and three have actually married between then and the present time. There seemed to be a high valuation of marriage on the part of the leaders that was also reflected in the community as a whole and in China itself. Consider- 119
ing the group of (forty-six) married men, the Canadian-born group showed
a greater tendency toward endogamy (marriage to other Canadian-born Chi•
nese women) than did the China-born group. Only one China-born male,
however, was married to a non-Chinese, while three Canadian-born men were
married to non-Chinese, one of whom was married to a Japanese woman and
belonged to several Japanese associations in addition to Chinese ones.
TABLE IVD
Place of Birth and Ethnicity of Wife
China-born Canadian-born Non-Chinese Wife Chinese Wife Wife Canadian-born Males 15 China-born Males 9 11 1
Total 13 26 4
Of the leaders married to Chinese women, amost all, with one or
two exceptions, had married a woman of a different surname. One leader
remarked with regard to marriage within the clan that, "It's frowned upon, but it is done - and the people forget about it." Among the leaders interviewed, however, clan exogamy seemed to be practiced almost consis• tently .
c. Number of Relatives in Canada. This was considered a sig• nificant variable in light of the importance of kinship and lineage in tra• ditional China. Migration overseas has usually precluded the development of lineage in any extensive sense, and in spite of the fact that the role 120
of kinship among overseas Chinese has been investigated in some contexts
(for instance Freedman 1957), further research is needed in this area.
While the data collected on kinship among the Vancouver Chinese are ex• tremely limited, it can at least be said that lineage development was impossible due to the nature of Chinese migration to Canada.
Although many respondents refused to name the number of their relatives in Canada due to the sensitivity of the question of illegal immigration, the data collected illustrate that some of the respondents functioned within a greatly reduced kinship network. For instance, seventeen of the thirty-nine individuals who responded to this question indicated that they had no relatives of the first ascending generation in Canada, and eleven stated that they had no relatives of their own gen• eration currently residing in Canada.
Education and Occupation
The majority of the leaders were well educated, and eight of them were classed as professionals of one variety or another. Many of the leaders expressed the hope that their children would become profes• sionals, the fields of dentistry and law being cited as particularly at• tractive. Aside from this rather high valuation of professionalism, which actually was directed more toward the leaders' children than to• ward their own peer group, educational level did not seem particularly important in determining prestige among the leaders. The following table indicates the educational achievements of the forty-nine leaders: 121
TABLE IVE
Leaders' Educational Achievement
None or Grade School 0 Some High School 1 Completed High School 9 Some University 9 Completed University 10 Some Graduate or Professional Training 5 Completed Graduate or Professional Training 8 No Information _3
Total 49
Occupation, business success, and wealth were more often men•
tioned by the respondents as significant in determining prestige than
was educational level. A successful merchant or importer/exporter was
assumed to have sufficient contact and influence to assume leadership
positions, as were the lawyers and doctors in the sample. As one leader
remarked, "The wealthy people have leadership at their call and can have
a position if they want it." It was also noted, however, that some wealthy
Chinese preferred to remain as much as?possible removed from the Chinese
community, unless the nature of their business demanded extensive contact
with the community. Some leaders remarked in this regard that men who
had their businesses predominantly within the Chinese community or who were engaged in enterprises with predominantly Chinese goods, services,
or clientele, were apt to be active in leadership positions.
The leaders interviewed were divided among the following occu•
pations : 122
TABLE IVF
Occupations of the Leaders
Professional: Lawyer 6 6 10 Other 4 4 Entrepreneur: Chinese goods, services or clientele 8 14 Western goods, services or clientele 6 White collar - managerial 15 White collar - other 4 Worker 1 Retired 1 Other 2 No information _2
Total 49
Many of the individuals falling in the "white collar - managerial" category were engaged in prestigious, high-income occupations such as that of bank manager. Managers of restaurants were also significant in this category. One informant remarked with regard to restaurants that they were "the most important businesses in Chinatown" and that there were three or four really successful ones, each of which was owned, not by one man, but by shareholders who hired managers.
About one-half of the leaders interviewed stated that their busi• ness contacts were predominantly Chinese, again reinforcing the idea that men who assumed active leadership positions in Chinatown tended to have extensive business contacts within the Chinese community:
TABLE IVG
Proportion of Business Contacts Chinese
Mostly Chinese 24 About Even 11 Mostly Other than Chinese 9 No Information _5
Total 49 123
Furthermore, when type of occupation is cross-tabluated against propor• tion of business contacts Chinese, it can be seen that even occupations that did not demand extensive contact with other Chinese often still maintained this contact.
TABLE IVH
Proportion Business Contacts Chinese vs. Occupation
Mostly Mostly No Chinese Even Other Information
Professional 5 3 1 1
Entrepreneur, Chinese goods, services or clientele 3 3 1 1
Entrepreneur, Western goods, services or clientele 0 15 0
White-Collar 12 4 2 0
Worker 0 0 Qt 1
Other _2 _0 0_ 0_
Total 25 11 9 3
For example, doctors tended to have predominantly Chinese patients, and white-collar workers were employed in establishments around Chinatown.
A few leaders pointed to their bilingualism as significant in their business success, and others remarked that one could never achieve a prominent leadership position or a successful business in Chinatown without proficiency in Cantonese. 124
Political Alignment
In light of the nature of Chinese politics, one would think that a Nationalist/Communist split could create serious factions within the structure of leadership. In the 1960's, however, the conflict was not articulated in this manner but as one in which the "neutralists" were opposed to the pro-Kuomintang faction (see below page 98 ). The Canadian- born leaders, in particular, most often adopted a neutralist stance, sometimes coupled with an urgent desire to dissociate themselves from overseas politics entirely. As one Canadian-born leader stated:
I don't want anything to do with it; I don't know which side to take. I'm here in Canada yet I'm also Chinese in origin, so what do I do? The Canadian government recognizes one and the English government the other, who is right? The only op• position to the Kuomintang are the Communists and they are nothing in Canada....Personally I don't know. Why, even in travel - I would like to go to the East and see my place of origin, but where exactly should I go?
Yet another stated, "Chinese politics are not any good here in Canada - they can't help the Chinese."
Among the China-born leaders, however, the situation was some• what different. Pro- and anti-Kuomintang factions created much antagonism, and careful efforts were being made on the part of the Chinese Benevolent
Association executives to umaintain a political balance. The Freemasons played an important role in this conflict. Because of their "neutralist" stance, they attracted both the younger Canadian-born who wished to di• vorce themselves from the problem as well as those members of the community who had ideological objections to the Kuomintang. None of the leaders were actually pro-communist; however, the fact that Canada had not yet recog• nized the legitimacy of the Peking government probably stifled any open support for the Chinese Communist Party. 125
In terms of Canadian politics, many of the leaders were Lib• erals, although their support tended to go to whichever party had the best stand on immigration.
Extent of Assimilation
Data on the extent of assimilation was not collected in any systematic way. In particular, little information was gathered on such questions as proficiency in English, background of wife, number of years spent in China, or holidays observed. In spite of these deficiencies, some indication of the extent of assimilation can be gained from data collected concerning proportion of friends Chinese, home address, number of associations belonged to, and general associational affiliation.
a. Proportion Friends Chinese: Perhaps the best indirect measure of assimilation that was collected was on what proportion of the leaders' friends were Chinese. The results are as follows:
TABLE IVI
Proportion of Friends Chinese
All 7 Mostly Chinese 18 About Even 9 Mostly Other 3 All Other than Chinese 1 No Information _11
Total 49
Thus, of the 38 leaders who responded to this question, 34 declared that
50% or more of their friends were Chinese.
j 126
b. Home Address: The addresses of the respondents were plotted on a map of Vancouver to determine whether the leaders were grouped in any particular areas of the city and also to determine what proportion of them resided within the Chinatown district. It was found that only four of the thirty-eight leaders who responded to this question resided within the confines of Chinatown, probably a reflection of the fact that most of the leaders wanted to escape the lower-class,unassimilated image that accompanied Chinatown residents. Of the remainder of the respondents, four resided in the upper-class suburbs of North and West Vancouver, while the majority lived in the predominantly middle- and upper-middle-class areas in the central and eastern parts of the city. In addition, it was found that eight of the leaders lived in a very small area of the city
(bounded by 41st Avenue, Oak Street, 49th Avenue, and Ontario), a middle class area that contains many Chinese residents.
c. Number of Associations Belonged To: This is a very weak measure of assimilation because it does not really measure actual par• ticipation in the political structure of Chinatown. Many leaders who listed that they were active in only one or two associations had in the past assumed a variety of executive positions that formed the basis of their prestige during the time of the study. Others who belonged to only one formal association often in addition held important positions on the boards of Chinese-language schools and newspapers and on other boards that seemed to be foci for leaders in the community. These are not in• cluded in the following tabulation, but the similarity in function of 127
•these boards to formal associations and their analogous position to
associations in the political structure has been noted before.
TABLE IVJ
Number of Associations Belonged To
No
Number of Associations _1 _2 3_ _4 5_ j6 _7 8+ Information
Number of Leaders 69 12 84414 1
Table IVJ indicates that fifteen of the leaders belonged to one or two
associations, while thirty-three belonged to three or more.
Skinner (1958) has postulated for the Chinese community in
Bangkok that the number of joint officerships and directorships a leader
shares with other leaders can be taken as an index of his politico-economic
power. Thus, he maintains that leaders who are officers of more associa•
tions and corporations with which other important leaders are also connec•
ted will have wider channels of communication and influence. In Vancouver,
the situation is probably much the same but it is impossible to say with
certainty because an analysis of corporate executives was not included 2 in this study.
d. Associational Affiliations: It is assumed that the types
of associations that the leaders tend to patronize will be some indication
of the extent of "traditionist" or "modernist" orientation within the
group. Further, the structure of these affiliations should reflect the
basic organization of the associational network as it existed in the 1960's.
No one leader, for instance, belonged to both the Freemasons and to
the Kuomintang, given the antagonism between these two associations. Some 128
leaders, however, belonged both to the C.B.A. and either the Freemasons or the Kuomintang, again indicating the fact the C.B.A. was regarded as neutral territory by the two opposed groups.
The group of leaders indicated that they belonged to the three most influential associations in the following proportions: 42% in the
C.B.A., 22% in the Freemasons, and only 10%iin the Kuomintang. These findings correlate with the manner in which these same leaders ranked the relative influence of these associations, but the number of leaders active in the Kuomintang association is surprisingly low. Many of the leaders who listed this as a very influential and powerful associaton were not associated with its themselves. It is probable, therefore, that the Kuomintang association derived its influence, or at least its reputation for influence, from the fact that its leaders were appointed from Taiwan and that it was the Nationalist government which Canada recog• nized throughout the 60's. Even near the end of the 60's, however, and certainly after Canada recognized the People's Republic of China in 1971, the Kuomintang association declined in importance in terms of the inter• nal politics of the community. As one leadernstated:
The Kuomintang association is mostly political. Frankly speak• ing, I think the organization is gradually disappearing. Being political, it depends for power on politics, and as it declines, those who joined to get power will probably leave.
Whatever influence remained with the association during this period of decline was certainly limited to the China-born members of the community. Of the four leaders in the sample associated with the Kuomin• tang, for instance, all were China-born. Furthermore, almost no Canadian- 129
born Chinese who were interviewed expressed any interest in participating actively in this organization.
Fifty-three percent of the leaders interviewed claimed they were active in their respective clan associations. Rather than indicat• ing that the clan associations were more influential than the C.B.A., which only attracted 42% of the leaders, these results are a reflection of the fact that whenever a leader assumed a prominent role in a higher level association, he also tended to join his clan association to gain a wider base of support.
On the basis of the data collected on these leaders, then, it cannot be said that the clan associations appealed only to relatively powerless men who were in need of hostel facilities or welfare, but, on the contrary, that some important and even "modernist" leaders found use for their clan associations and consolidated their leadership positions 3 by virtue of them. For instance, the first Chinese to be elected to the federal parliament, a man who considered himself fully "Westernized," was active in his clan association, as was another prominent leader who was on the board of governors of a large Vancouver university and was a successful bank manager. When the leaders' membership in the clan asso• ciations is analyzed by place of birth, it is seen that Canadian-born and China-born are about equally represented:
TABLE IVK
Place of Birth and Clan Association Membership
Non-Member Member
Canadian-born 12 12 24 China-born 10 13 23 22 25 47 130
The locality associations attracted less active participation from among the forty-nine leaders than did the clan associations. What men were attracted to them seemed to be predominantly China-born. For reasons not entirely clear, then, the locality associations remained much more traditionist in orientation than the clan associations and therefore experienced a decline in political efficacy during the 1960's.
Conclusions
The following conclusions are based on overall impressions gained from my analysis of the interviews. The most striking impression received from the data collected on the forty-nine leaders described above is that the structure of leadership in the Chinese community of
Vancouver was by no means homogeneous. The divisions that provided the basis for factional alignment in the leadership structure as a whole and in the community as a whole were also of utmost concern to the leaders interviewed. Whether China-born or Canadian-born, old or young, tradi• tionist or modernist in orientation provided bases on which these leaders made distinctions among themselves. These distinctions in turn gave rise to different types of leadership, such as second-generation leadership,
"traditional" leadership, leaders who strove primarily to represent the community to outsiders, and finally, those who desired to be community- wide leaders. This latter type of leader, however, was rapidly becoming a thing of the past, due to the fact that one man could no longer satis• factorily represent all the factions within the community. Almost all of the leaders interviewed agreed that the Chinese who had influence through• out the whole community was rare or non-existent and that the situation 131
could be better described as one in which some Chinese had influence over certain groups than as one in which one or two leaders had influence over the whole community.
Likewise, the extent of assimilation among the leaders inter• viewed was not uniform. Some of them - those who were born in China, spoke Cantonese better than English, had primarily Chinese friends and business contacts, and belonged primarily to associations in the Kuomin• tang and C.B.A. sectors of the associational network - were extremely traditionist in orientation. These men could nevertheless attain impor• tant leadership positions in the community. They were, however, almost always internal leaders, their lack of proficiency in English and lack of familiarity with Western custom rendering them unable to have extensive contact with white society.
Other leaders were more integrated into the white world but selectively retained certain aspects of Chinese ethnicity. These could be placed in the middle on a continuum of assimilation and consisted of individuals who were both Canadian-born and China-born, who usually did not live in Chinatown but were apt to reside in a Chinese district, who maintained a high valuation of intra-ethnic marriage in general and of different surname marriage in particular, and who tended to marry other
Chinese. However, these same individuals usually had both -Chinese and white friends, were proficient in English as well as in Cantonese, and had businesses which were not necessarily limited to Chinese clientele or products. These men belonged to the more "modernist" associations - the
Freemasons, Lions, Elks, or Vets - but would at the same time participate 132
in their clan association or in the traditionist C.B.A2\. Thus, they served to mediate the factions of the community. It was also these men who, because they had one foot in the Chinese community and the other out, hadcenough contact with the white world and enough familiarity with its ways to represent the Chineseccommunity effectively to the outside. They were sufficiently assimilated to be able to meet the leaders of the Cana• dian government in the framework of the dominant culture, yet they also had an intimate knowledge of the Chinese community. Skinner, referring to the situation in Thailand, termed these "leaders from the periphery" be• cause their ethnic orientation (and loyalty) is mixed (1958: 243).
The leaders who were the most assimilated in the group typically had the following characteristics. Many of them lived in white neighbor• hoods, some in the wealthy suburbs of North and West Vancouver, usually spoke English at home, and had predominantly white friends. They were often charitably inclined towards the Chinese community, either for senti• mental reasons or because they might have made their fortunes from Chinese customers or products. In addition,they would often accept honorary positions in the community but shunned active participation. Others in this group were of more middle-class background and belonged only to the more modernist associations.
The leaders interviewed differed from the general population of the Chinese community in that they were probably slightly wealthier on the average and were apt to be better educated. They were similar to the general population in that they were divided by the same loyalties and by the same issues. The ways in which they differed from the leader• ship elite is the next topic of discussion. 133
FOOTNOTES - CHAPTER IV
It is doubtful whether the two men who stated they immigrated to Canada during the Exclusion Act of 1923-1947 actually immigrated from China directly to Canada during this period. Perhaps they im• migrated to the States at an earlier period and then to Canada. For this reason, I have grouped them with the pre-1923 immigrant group rather than with the post-1947 group.
On the basis of the data collected for this study, however, I believe that further research may prove that the economic and political sys• tems of the Vancouver Chinese community are more discrete than those of the Bangkok community studied by Skinner (1958). Should this be the case, a calculation of an "interlock score" for the Vancouver Chinese leaders would be a measure more of administrative and represen tational influence than of economic power.
These findings contradict those of Willmott's (1964: 33). He found that the clan associations drew their major support from elderly China-born males without families who were relatively powerless in the context of the community's political system. I found to the contrary that a significant proportion of the more powerful leaders of the community, as well as a good number of Canadian-born Chinese, were active in the clan associations. 134
CHAPTER V
THE LEADERSHIP ELITE
This chapter deals with the types of elites and hierarchies operative within the leader category, the social characteristics of men with high influence, and the ideological bases of this influence. These topics are discussed with reference to a particular elite that was iso• lated in the following manner.
The analysis of the leadership elite is based on a selection of 30 men (of the 152) who were judged to be particularly influential in certain respects. The selection was accomplished by means of tally• ing the total number of times any one leader was nominated by interview respondents as being one of ten men who would be "influential enough to make an important project affecting most of the CGhinese in Vancouver go through." Any leader that received two or more mentions was included in the category "leadership elite", and the group was then ranked in- ternally according to number of nominations received.
The word "elite", however, is used with caution because it is recognized that different elites exist with respect to different key cultural values and that, in particular, the internal ranking of the elite in question could differ with respect to different issues. It is in fact a major point of this paper that leadership in the Vancouver Chinese community has become a great deal more diversified over time and that the situation in the 1960's can be more correctly described as one in which possession of different key values forms the basis of different leadership 135
"elites" than one in which there is a single hierarchy of leaders.
Therefore, for the purposes of this investigation, the term "leadership elite" refers to those men selected by the interview respondents as most likely to make an important project affecting the majority of the Chinese 1 succeed. It is stressed that this elite is defined operationally and that it is only one elite among others, based on the possession of certain attributes and not others. However, since the defining attributes of this elite deal not only with possession of a high degree of influence but also with the probable exercise of this influence, they seem to be 2 quite significant in a study of leadership.
The elite in question, then, is based fairly broadly on general influence and prestige. It was found that the type of all-around com• munity leader of generalized influence who played such an important part in the early history of the community was no longer in existence in the
1960's. There were four men in the community, however, who came closer to this "ideal" type of leadership than others. They were cited again and again as men who had earned a great deal of respect and prestige in the community as a whole, who had the greatest amount of information about Chinatown, and who were called on to represent the community to various interested groups. These four leaders are termed "most influen• tial", and an attempt is made to describe each one individually.
In addition to these four leaders, about fifteen others were cited as "general influentials." These were men who were known throughout the community but who had not attained quite the same stature as the four singled out for special consideration. A few of them, however, seemed to 136
be on their way to replacing the older members of the "most influential" group. The general attributes of these leaders are described.
The remaining members of the leadership elite (about ten) were for the most part people whose reputations were based on a specific achievement in certain areas. Thus, members of this group were known for such things as their efforts in revitalizing the Chinese Public School, their stand on the redevelopment issue, or their political affiliation.
The following general questions concerning political elites within the Chinese community in Vancouver are posed. To what extent is the mercantile elite integrated into the political elite? To what extent do other key cultural values, such as wealth or education, converge with• in an elite based on influence and prestige? And, finally, what role does assimilation play in the acquisition of high influence?
The Four Most Influential Leaders
When these four individuals are viewed as a set, several sal• ient characteristics stand out. All belong to one or the other of the two dominant clans in the Chinese community, and all are relatively senior in age (especially in comparison to the leader category as a whole), the oldest being in his seventies and the youngest in his fifties. All were bom in China but immigrated to Canada when they were quite young, the oldest being 17 when he immigrated and the youngest merely a baby. An even more striking similarity among these men is that they all immigrated during the very short period of 1909 to 1911, reaching Canada at a time when anti-Oriental feelings were becoming more and more intense, when
Chinese had to pay a severe head tax to enter the country, and when the
Chinese population in British Columbia consisted mainly of single males. 137
These men shared the similar experience of having to cope with racial prejudice in an increasingly hostile environment.
Wong Foon Sein: Wong Foon Sein is perhaps the most well known
Chinese leader of the Chinese community, both internally and externally.
Often called the "Mayor of Chinatown", Foon Sein was undoubtedly an un• disputed leader of the Chinese community for about twenty years in the nineteenth century. A man deeply steeped in the early history of the
Chinese in Canada, Wong Foon Sein devoted his life to bettering the posi• tion of the QQriental in Canada. Born in Kwangtung, Foon Sein came to
Canada at the age of nine and settled in the mining town of Cumberland with his father. He was one of the first Chinese to attend the University of British Columbia and, after graduating, obtained a job as court inter• preter at a time when jobs for Orientals were severely restricted. Foon
Sein's reputation as a leader is almost exclusively based on his unrelent• ing service to the Chinese community rather than on prestige gained through wealth or position. In a memorial article, the Chinatown News described him as "a legendary name in the Chinese Canadian community"
(1971: Vol. 18: 34).
Foon Sein married a non-Chinese Canadian woman whose family had come from Nottingham, England in the 1930's. They had three children.
In 1936, he quit his job as interpreter to become full-time secretary of the Chinese Benevolent Association. During World War II, Foon was drafted as a translator. In 1948, after the war, he became president of the
C.B.A. for twelve consecutive years. Throughout this time, he led cam• paigns for the enfranchisment of Chinese Canadians and made twelve "pil- 138
grimages" to Ottawa to obtain a relaxation of the severe and unjust
immigration laws that pertained to Orientals at that time. In 1959, he retired from his position as head of the C.B.A. but was asked to remain
the organization's permanent senior advisor.
Foon Sein's participation in and commitment to the Chinese
community was immense. In addition to his central role in the C.B.A.,
Foon was active in the Wong Kong Har Tong [Huang Jiang-xia Tang] , the
Canada-China Citizens Council, the Chinese Trade Workers' Association,
and the Hoy Sun [Tai-shan] Locality Association. Because of his role
as spokesman and representative for the community, he was also active in many non-Chinese organizations such as the Vancouver Civic Association,
the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, the Liberal Party, and the
B.C. Ethnic sub-committee. Because of these and other contributions,
Foon Sein was chosen Citizen of the Year by the Vancouver City Council
in 1959.
Foon Sein's views of Chinatown are based on a long historical
perspective and great familiarity with the community. When interviewed
in 1965, Foon Sein still maintained that the C.B.A. was the most impor•
tant organization in Chinatown, although he was troubled by its apparent
decline. As he stated,
The C.B.A. is supposed to protect the Chinese and help them, but now it is becoming impotent. In my day, if the police saw a Chinese fall down - maybe he was old and got tired, say -"then they would just phone us up and send him in a taxi and we would pay for everything. The C.B.A. is more necessary than ever now. It changes with the times and does different things but it is still important.... 139
There is no doubt that during the mid-sixties, Foon Sein was
still an important leader in Chinatown and that his efforts at represent•
ing the Chinese-Canadian people to the federal and provincial governments were successful. The type of leader that Foon Sein represented, however,
stemmed from a time when the Chinese community formed an island within
a hostile milieu and thus when the need for a powerful all around com•
munity leader was great. As more and more Chinese came to regard them•
selves as an integral part of Canadian society, the type of leadership
that Foon Sein exercised in the earlier history of the community became
obsolete. The man himself, however, adapted to the changing conditions
and by the mid-sixties exercised a type of leadership more in tune, with
the times.
Wong Foon Sein died in 1971, and, in spite of his controver•
sially and the inevitable political enemies he had made, he was mourned
by the entire community.
Leader #2: This leader, who was about sixty at the time data
was being collected for this study, immigrated from China when he was
about five years old. Until he was 18, he attended Chinese school after
hours of public school in order to perfect his written and spoken Chi•
nese. In the late thirties, he earned a degree in Commerce and had hopes
of becoming a lawyer. The Chinese were prohibited from practicing law
at that time, however, and this leader states, "I couldn't see myself
being a lawyer if I couldn't practice in court." Instead, after marry•
ing a Canadian-born Chinese wife, he opened a general agency in which
he sold life insurance, did some interpreting, and some work as a notary 140
public. In the 1940's, he extended this business into a highly suc• cessful enterprise which caters mostly to a Chinese clientele. In 1967, the Chinatown News reported that a new building worth $100,000 was being built on his property.
Leader ill has a large family, remarking in this regard that
"the old Chinese like to have many children." In spite of his many busi• ness and family commitments, he was very active in the political struc• ture of the Chinese community. He formerly had been national head of his clan association for two years and at the time of the study was simultaneously active in the C.B.A. executive, on the board of a Chinese language school, president of his locality association, president of an athletic club, and on the director's committee of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
This leader believed that the C.B.A. was the most important association in the Chinese community, while the importance of the Vets and Lions was diminished because they were not really traditional Chinese associations. As he states, "The Lions and the Vetss are good clubs - but they are not really Chinese. They don't even report their activities to the Chinese newspapers." He also pointed out that there was little real cooperation within Chinatown, that the definition of the community was problematic, and that many leaders did not really know the sense of their projects. Somewhat regretfully he noted that there was no longer any one person who was able to represent Chinatown in its entirety.
This individual was proud of being a self-made man, of never having had to work for other people, and of the time he had spent in 141
community service. He was widely respected and known throughout the community and was the person most often referred to when asked what per• son "knew what was going on in the Chinese community."
The type of leader that this individual represented can best be illustrated by naming some of the activities he was involved in near the end of the 60's. That he attended a dinner given by the Consul Gen• eral, spoke at the C.B.A. anniversary of the Republic of China, attended a meeting for prominent Hong Kong travel agents, represented the C.B.A. at a K.M.T. convention, presented immigration briefs to the Canadian government, and welcomed the Republic of China's Ambassador to Canada in
1967 all attest to the fact that he was a singularly influential man in the Chinese community, one who helped bridge the gap between the
Chinese and the wider Canadian society.
Leader #3: Leader #3 was perhaps an equally influential lea• der as leader #2 but in quite a different manner. In his fifties at the time of the study, he was born in Kwangchow and immigrated to Canada as a baby. He returned to China, however, to study the Confucian clas• sics before graduating from a Canadian university in economics and marry• ing a Canadian-born Chinese woman. They had four children.
Leader #3 speaks English, French, and Cantonese fluently, and admits that his multi-lingualism had been an aid in his nineteen years in a bank adjacent to the Chinese district. This leader maintained a home in West Vancouver and was very active in the associational struc• ture. He tended, however, to assume more positions in the national and international branches of Chinese associations than in the local ones, 142
and some people therefore reported that he had a wider reputation inter• nationally than locally. In the sixties, he was active in his clan association and was the charter president of one of the newer fraternal associations. In addition, he was a member of the board of directors of the international body of this last association, deputy chairman of the
Vancouver Community Chest, on the Board of St. Joseph's Hospital, member of a community church, and on the Royal Commission of Bilingualism and
Biculturalism.
Leader #3 felt that the most important aspect of leadership was to "give your time and your money without thinking of yourself and
to do a lot of work for others." He noted quite perceptively that:
Chinatown is a community with a great diversity of thought and points of view, but the whole community can usually come to• gether in times of crisis. The older generation jealously guards their position and is very eager to keep the Chinese culture and pass it on to the younger generation.
He maintained that the C.B.A. (of which he was not a member) was
"mainly a steadying influence on the community" and stressed the function of the Lions as "completely a service group, giving everything and tak•
ing nothing; it is non-political, non-denominational, non-racial, just a service club." He further maintained that Chinatown was not divided by any serious issues or factions.
This leader's business activities in the early sixties inclu• ded a trip to Bangkok to attend the 4th Asian Chinese Overseas Merchants
Trade Convention and travels to Japan and Southeast Asia in which he was impressed with the "booming industries" of Singapore and Malaysia. 143
The Chinatown News noted in addition that he was very well received in
Taiwan. He has been termed a leader in the financial field, an apt characterisation that lies at the basis of his influentiality.
Leader #4; Leader #4, a distinguished gentleman in his seven• ties when this study was carried out, had immigrated from Tai-Shan when he was in his teens. He married a Chinese woman who was born in Vic• toria, and they had a large family. This leader was one of the few men in the community who was seen as a real community leader in spite of the fact that his prestige was largely based on wealth. Rated as the most wealthy member of the community by many informants, he was nevertheless a very active and trusted leader and was known as a philan• thropist locally and in Hong Kong.
As past president of his clan association, leader #4 had earned an international reputation which was enhanced by the important directorships he held in other associations: the Chinese Public
School, the New Republic Daily, and the Vancouver Chinese Commerce
Association. In addition, this leader was active in his locality asso• ciation and in the Lions Club.
Labelled "a captain of commerce" because offhis success as a merchant, leader //4 noted in an interview that his business contacts were for theemost part Chinese. His sons have also made distinguished careers for themselves, and three of them have also based their successes on Chinese relationships. Two of this leaderAs sons have assumed active leadership positions in the Chinese community and are included in the leadership elite category of this study. Also interesting is the 144
fact that one of his daughters married into another extremely wealthy
Vancouver Chinese family, thus linking two of the wealthiest Chinese
families in Vancouver.
When interviewed in 1965, leader #4 insisted he was no longer
really active, and it is true that his sons had assumed some of the
leadership responsibilities he himself could no longer handle. For
a man of his age, however, his leadership was still actively sought,
and his many contributions to the community during his long life had
insured his place as one of the most prominent men in the community.
These four brief life histories indicate some aspects of
the characteristics of high influence in the Chinese community of the
1960's. A long record of community service coupled with financial
standing was important in all but one case, as was having both the
contacts and the ability to represent the community to the outside
world. Of all the men in the "leadership elite" category (thirty indi•
viduals) , Foon Sein and Leader #2 were most often cited as men who rep•
resented the Chinese before the Vancouver, British Columbia, and federal
governments. Leader #3 was also important in this respect, although
not to the same extent as the other two. Leader #4, however, was
never mentioned in this category and was to a much greater extent
solely an "internal" leader than were the other three men.
In terms of associations, two of the four men had derived
their primary recognition from the C.B.A., one from one of the newer
fraternal associations, and one from his clan association. The leaders
were quite varied in educational achievement and occupation. Of more 145
significance than these factors, then, seems to be the fact that all were older, successful China-born immigrants who had migrated before the Exclusion Act of 1923. Also uniting these men in a different man• ner is the fact that the type of leadership they exercised was rapidly becoming obsolete by the end of the sixties.
Other Influential Leaders
The importance of the category of "Other Influential Leaders" lies in the fact that it contained the basis for a new type of leadership within the Chinese community. Many of the men who fell into this cate• gory were younger in age, more modernist in orientation, and less apt to aspire to be "all-around" leaders than were those in the "most in• fluential" bracket. Another significant characteristic of this group was that the majority of its members were Canadian-born. Moreover, very few of the China-born members in this group had immigrated in the pre-1923 days of harsh discrimination. Thus, a different type of mentality was markedly apparent in most of these men: they were more in tune with Canada and less aware of the struggle that the early Chi• nese immigrants to British Columbia had faced. In terms of age, over half of the sixteen men in this category were under forty-five, and only three were over 60. Many of the younger members of this group commented on the "very distinct" generation gap between them and the older members of the community. In addition, they noted a lack of lea• ders in the middle-aged brackets due to the fact that immigration was prohibited from 1923 to 1947 and that many members of the Canadian-born population had.not yet reached this age. 146
In terms of education, the group as a whole was well educated.
Only three of its members did not have the equivalent of a university education. Another respect in which this group differed from the general category "leader" was that there was a greater representation of white- collar/managerial occupations represented and fewer entrepreneurs. Con• sidering that, historically, leadership in the Vancouver Chinese community was almost completely based on merchant and entrepreneur status (see below, page 106), this represents a significant change.
Also interesting is the fact that kin ties united this group with the four "most influential" leaders and created strong bonds within the group itself. For instance, leader #2 of the most influential lea• der group married the sister of one of the men in the group of "general influentials", and, as mentioned before, leader #4's sons were also part of the leadership elite. Also within the group were a father and son and two brothers. These kinship relations were not researched in a systematic manner, and more of them may well exist.
Some of the second-generation leaders of this group deserve particular mention because their views were markedly different from those of the more traditional leaders. Often, they were more realis• tic, and sometimes more cynical. One such leader stated, for instance, that "there are no unchallenged leaders in the community" and that:
The Chinese do not elect someone because he has a good educa• tion or something, but for what he can do for them or give to them. They elect men with influence and wealth. 147
Many of these leaders expressed concern in their interviews that second- generation leaders receive adequate attention and recognition in the community and that the traditionist associations become more represen• tative in their membership and goals. Some of these leaders devoted themselves to encouraging the active participation of Chinese youth in the associational structure, and new youth and athletic clubs were established for this purpose.
Several members of this group, however, were extremely tra• ditionist in orientation, belonging to such associations as the clan, locality, C.B.A., and Kuomintang. One such leader was widely known throughout the community but definitely remained an "internal" lea• der due to his limited, proficiency in Englsih and to his involvement with overseas rather than local issues. Popular with the more traditional members of the community, his strongly pro-Kuomintang stand alienated him from many of the younger members of the community.
The Social Characteristics of the Leadership Elite
The social characteristics of the men belonging to the leader• ship elite category, then, were quite diverse. Wealth was an important factor, but it could no longer be said that the mercantile elite was synonomous with the political elite. Informants were asked, for in• stance, to name the five wealthiest Chinese in the city, and there was a remarkable consensus as to who these five men were. Only two of these five men, however, fell into the leadership elite category. The other three were not integrated into the leadership structure at all and 148
seemed to have played no part in Chinatown politics. As one leader stated, "the most important businessmen aren't in Chinatown at all."
There is no doubt, however, that wealth, financial contribu• tions, and business success were very important in gaining influence in the community. Another leader stated in this regard that:
Money in and of itself doesn't give a person prestige among the Chinese. Itissmore what money can do for you, I guess. Some people could have the presidency of any association they wanted. Not becuase they have lots of money, but because the people would know that they have lots of time to devote to their duties as an officer. Also when they already have money, people know that they aren't in the association to fur• ther themselves....
Wealth, then, was an important factor in leadership as it was an impor•
tant key value in the society itself. It was not a necessary pre•
requisite of high influence, but those men whose leadership was coupled
with solid financial backing were nevertheless seen by the community as
being the most reliable and enduring.
When the interview respondents were asked "How does a Chinese
leader gain influence; what must he have or do?", by far the readiest
answer was wealth. Other aspects of influence that the respondents men•
tioned, however, were also enlightening. For instance, participation
was mentioned second most frequently, being a "doer" and "working" for
one's leadership position being seen as an integral part of gaining pro•
minence. In addition, organizational abilities were quite frequently
mentioned, as were enthusiasm for welfare, community spirit, good con•
duct, knowledge and reliability. Table VA lists how the interview res- 149
pondents thought influence was gained, and the number of "votes" given to each attribute.
TABLE VA
The Acquisition of Influence
Wealth, contributions, financial background, business success 19 Time, participation by "working for it" 13 Organizational abilities 8 Community spirit, interest in the Chinese 5 Good conduct and reliability 4 Education 4 Age 2 Long residence in Chinatown 2 Contact with Occidentals 2
It can be seen that several key cultural values converge to form a political elite based on generalized influence and prestige. Wealth, participation, community "spirit" and good conduct are obviously crucial components of this elite status, while such criteria as educational attainment and age were secondarily important.
Not mentioned by any one respondent in particular, but a theme which emerged from the interviews as a whole was a growing emphasis on achievement as a criterion for successful leadership. Thus, a gradual trend away from particularism towards universalism could be discerned in the leadership structure at large. While membership in the strongest clan might have been a pre-requisite for leadership in the early days of the community, in the 1960's people were more apt to validate leader• ship on the basis of achieved, rather than ascribed, criteria. It can 150
be predicted, therefore, that there will be a move away from an emphasis on age, clan affiliation, and kin ties as components of leadership ide• ology towards the more universalistic criteria of success in the business world, professional status, success in negotiating with representatives of the Canadian government, and achievement in the wider society sur• rounding the Chinese community.
As success and achievement come to be judged more and more by the values of the dominant society, the role of assimilation in leader• ship should become even more important. This increased valuation of the mores of the dominant society, however, will do nothing to lessen what Skinner has termed "the paradox of overseas Chinses leadership"
(1968: 192). Since leadership in the Chinese community couples achievement in the outside world with a positive valuation of things Chi• nese, interest in the Chinese, and promotion of these interests, the lea• ders will still be torn between two fundamentally opposed tendencies, and their ethnic orientations will remain mixed. Skinner suggested that this paradox is a necessary aspect of successful Chinese leader• ship in Thailand. Perhaps it is also a necessary concomitant of Chi• nese leadership in Vancouver. 151
FOOTNOTES - CHAPTER V
1. The specific nature of this hypothetical project was not further defined in the interview schedules.
2. Skinner (1958) defines elite status with regard to possession of influence and leader status with regard to the exercise of this in• fluence. Although this differntiation issnot rigidly adhered to here, its general validity is recognized. See Skinner's analysis of the Bangkok Chinese leadership elite (1958: 77-109). 152
CHAPTER VI
THE WIDER PERSPECTIVE
In spite of the vast differences in the host communities to which the Chinese have immigrated, the persistence of distinct Chinese settlements alone is a matter of interest. But the fact that these settlements exhibit so many similarities in organization and structure is a matter that calls for empirical investigation and explanation.
Freedman has noted that the persistence of overseas Chinese communities cannot be attributed merely to the migrants' origin in China, but that the social organization of these communities plays a crucial role in their continuing existence (1965: 3).
It is unfortunate, however, that most general perspectives on overseas Chinese social organization have limited themselves to
Southeast Asian examples and materials. Crissman's ideal-type model of the segmentary structure of urban Southeast Asian Chinese communi• ties is a case in point. One of the best overall theoretical treat• ments on the subject of overseas Chinese, Crissman's work nevertheless does not integrate the examples of North American Chinese settlements into its framework. Now that more material on the North American Chinese has become available it is important to analyze what these new findings have to say about the Chinese overseas.
Data recently collected concerning North American Chinese communities, then, may indicate that an expansion, but not a rejection, of some df Crissman's ideas are in order. As Crissman himself admits, 153
the model he presents may "fit certain historical periods better than present situations and...is certainly more immediately apparent in the organization of some communities than others" (1967: 85). Basing his remarks on data collected from the Chinese community of Sacramento,
California, Weiss, for instance, objects to Crissman's model on the grounds that it assumes that all associations owe allegiance to a com• mon ideology, that they are all contained within a single hierarchical and segmentary framework, and that the leaders of high-level associations are also represented in lower-level associations. Because of these assump• tions, argues Weiss, the model cannot account for the growth of new types of associations such as he found in Sacramento (1971: 234).
Weiss proposes instead a tri-partite organization for the Sac• ramento community that includes Crissman's model as a sub-system. The components of this organization are: i) the traditionist sector, which attempts to perpetuate traditional Chinese culture in a new setting; ii) the modernist sector, which wishes to blend Chinese heritage with the American experience; and iii) the activist sector, which wishes to substitute Chinese exclusivity in favor of a pan-Asian identity and which calls for a reorganization of society at large (1971: 4). Weiss maintains that Crissman's model accurately describes the organization of the first sector but ignores the competition offered by the other two.
Willmott maintains that for Phnom-Penh both the traditionist and modernist associations fit into the segmentary model described by
Crissman (personal communication). For Vancouver, however, I believe that the political system as a whole is better analyzed in terms of net- 154
works as defined by Skinner (1958: 200) than in terms of the hierarchical segmentary structure described by Crissman. Certainly, these two methods of conceptualization are not incompatible, and the Vancouver community does exhibit many instances of segmentation such as described by Criss• man for urban Chinese settlements!in Southeast Asia. The overall picture in Vancouver, however, is in many ways similar to that in Sacramento, i.e., it is not strictly hierarchical; associations are not united with respect to a common ideology, and leaders of lower-range associations are not always represented higher up. Furthermore, the kind of segmentation described by Crissman was more apparent in the Kuomintang and Neutralist sectors of the associational structure (see Figure 1, page 100) than it was in the more modernist, Freemason sector. The Freemason sphere did not include many of the traditionist clan and locality associations upon which segmentation was traditionally based, and it maintained fewer in• terlocking directorships with the Neutralist sector than did the Kuomin• tang sphere. As mentioned before, the most modernist associations of this period - the Lions, Elks, and Vets - were not even asked to send official representatives to the C.B.A. council, and only one of these three organizations - the Lions - maintained any informal links with the C.B.A.
The situation in Vancouver, then, was more one in which fac• tions of associations proclaimed allegiance to different ideologies and were engaged in competition for power within a wider political system that was loosely and fluidly defined with respect to informal inter• locking directorships than one in which the traditional criteria of surname, 155
clan, and dialect group produced a segmentary and hierarchical struc• turing of associations that had at its apex one organization such as a
Chinese Chamber of Commerce or a Chinese Benevolent Association. Further, although I am unaware of the precise factions that are operative in the
Vancouver Chinese community today, I would venture to guess that the more activist and pro-People's Republic of China associations maintain few links with the more traditional and conservative Chinese Benevolent
Association and none, of course, with the Kuomintang.
The extent of inter-connection among traditionist, modernist, and activist associations in overseas Chinese communities in North Amer• ica and in Southeast Asia is a topic that demands further comparative research. Another area in which fruitful comparative work might be carried out is that of investigating the kind and nature of leadership
that has arisen in each overseas Chinese community. It is not within the scope of this thesis to present an extended discussion of the parti- 1
cularities of the various overseas Chinese settlements now in existence; however, in order to place the findings on Chinese leadership presented
in this paper in some perspective, I will briefly comment on the kind of leadership that has arisen in a few other overseas communities and on some common themes that these cursory comparisons bring to mind.
Willmott has documented for colonial times in Phnom-Penh, the
Chinese were placed by the French into congregations on the basis of
place of origin. The head,or chef, of each congregation was chosen by
the Chinese themselves but "had many responsibilities in the French
colonial regime" (1969: 283). In recent times, the power of a leader is 156
no longer externally validated, and the associational structure is more complex than was the congregation system organized by the French for administrative purposes. Willmott notes, however, that "Today's most powerful leaders not only transcend the congregation; they transcend the
Chinese community itself" (1970: 126), indicating that high ethnicity is not a part of successful leadership in Phnom-Penh.
For Bangkok, Skinner states that a Thai orientation among the leaders was "most positively associated with total influence" and that with regard to education, these leaders formed "a privileged group within Bangkok Chinese society" (1958: 40). Furthermore, these leaders were "an eloquent testimony of the high evaluation of wealth in overseas Chinese society and of the exceptional money-making abilities of this group of Chinese leaders" (1958: 48). For the Bangkok Chinese community, then, the most successful Chinese leaders are almost always
"leaders from the periphery of Chinese society and culture" (1958: 239).
T'ien, writing in the fifties, maintained that in Sarawak the British system of indirect rule encouraged the development of a
Chinese leadership elite. Economic strength was the main path to social power, and all Chinese leaders were wealthy (1953: 69). In addition, a highly developed system of patronage existed, leaders often being termed
"back-mountains". Further, the size of a patron's "clientele" gave a good index of his power. Thus, wealth played a great role in the defi• nition of Chinese leadership in Sarawak.
In the Semarang studied by D. Willmott in the fifties, the clearest social boundary within the Chinese community was that between 157
Totok (China-born Chinese) and Peranakan (roughly, the descendants of a
Chinese father and Indonesian mother). At this time, no leaders were acknowledged by the whole community, although historically under the
Dutch kapitan system, this was not the case. The social characteristics of leaders included wealth, organizational abilities, political neutral• ity, and ease in getting along with people (D. Willmott 1960: 152, 162).
Baureiss' sample of 192 Chinese males in Calgary, Canada revealed that 70% of this group belonged to at least one association (1971: 93).
These associations included clan, locality, Freemason, and Kuomintang or• ganizations that were autonomous locally but that had headquarters in
Vancouver. Baureiss notes that the associations were "run by a relatively small and select group" and that there was "an element of suspicion ex• hibited .. .towards a Chinese who had been too successful in the host community. The person with modestn success in the host community but actively involved in Chinese organizations..." emerged as a leader
(1971: 133). He also noted that leaders with "high ethnicity" became important persons within the Chinese community, though "they failed to become leaders in the larger community for that very reason" (1971: 133) .
Finally, I turn to the new territories in Hong Kong, where, like the situation in Southeast Asia, colonialism left its mark on the type of leadership that emerged there. Johnson reports for Tsuen Wan, for instance, that leadership was "largely the preserve of the middle ranks of economic power" and that this was "a contrast to the prevailing pattern throughout the overseas Chinese areas" (1971b: 215). The lea• ders were nevertheless highly educated and were defined with respect to 158
associations and elected village representation. The situation in Tsuen
Wan, however, was complicated by the fact that separate native and migrant communities existed and that the British aimed to "protect" the original inhabitants of the area, thus ensuring certain advantages for them in the area of leadership.
These brief comments about the nature of leadership in other
Chinese communities indicate that it might be particularly worthwile to examine the variables of ethnicity, wealth, and education in the recruit• ment of overseas Chinese leaders. The general trend seems to be toward relatively low ethnicity, high wealth, and above-average education, al• though there are important exceptions to this generalization that need explanation. A rigorous cross-cultural analysis of this problem, then, might yield some interesting insights. With respect to the Vancouver
Chinese, it can be seen from the few comparative comments presented here that the high valuation of wealth and assimilation that the Van• couver leaders generally maintain is not an uncommon phenomenon among overseas Chinese communities.
Among the overseas Chinese, leadership almost always seemstto occur within the context of an associational network. Wang Gungwu has said with regard to Chinese associations that:
We may even go so far as to say that, where the government was not Chinese and not likely ever to be Chinese, these organiza• tions provided the community with its highest kind of politics and at one level a very complex and demanding politics at that (1970: 9).
The Vancouver case illustrates the complexity of these politics very well. As the Chinese community was faced with the impact of population 159
growth, economic changes, and increasing urbanization, its political system became progressively diversified and complex.
The complexity of Chinese politics in Vancouver also results
from the fact that there has not been a linear progression from relative particularism to universalism in the recruitment of leadership and associa•
tion membership, but that these two principles have been used together or intermittently. For instance, Johnson notes with regard to Tsuen Wan
that:
One of the peculiar features of voluntary associations is that particularism is invariably used as a basis of recruitment and yet the ends of most of these organizations are to gain some accommodation with the demands of a society whose major charac• teristics are universalistic (1971a: 143).
This paradoxical situation can also be found among the Vancouver Chinese.
Thus, as in the case of many other ethnic groups, recruitment on the basis of origin, generation, and kinship affiliation remain? significant in the
Vancouver community.
This study was conceived with the idea of providing a background
for further research on the Vancouver Chinese. The question that immed•
iately presents itself as relevant for future research is that of how the
community of the sixties described in this thesis compares with the com• munity of today. To what extent is particularism still a basis for re•
cruitment within the political system, and what are the factional alignments
among associations and the kind of leadership operative today? Another
crucial but as yet unanswered question concerns the impact of the influx
of new migrants from Hong Kong on the social organization of the community. 160
From a wider perspective, it is also important to deal with the question of how Canadian Chinese communities compare with those in the United States and in Southeast Asia. For instance, given the dif• ferences in immigration legislation but the relative proximity of Canada and the United States, what are the salient differences among Chinese communities within these two countries? Also interesting from a com• parative perspective is the fact that many Chinese communities in
Southeast Asia exhibit a proliferation of religious associations and
temples. Aside from Christian church groups, I have found no evidence
for the existence of religious associations in the Vancouver Chinese
community. It would be useful to investigate whether this is a particu•
larity of the Vancouver Chinese community or whether it is a general
difference among Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and those in
North America.
Finally,',as I have suggested throughout this thesis, an in•
quiry into the nature of North American Chinese social organization would
in general benefit from controlled comparisons with Southeast Asian Chi•
nese communities. Although much work has already been done in this direc•
tion, more field studies and historical research are in order. FOOTNOTES - CHAPTER VI
For a good discussion of the differences among Southeast Asian Chinese communities see Freedman and Willmott's "South-east Asia with Special Reference to the Chinese" (1961) and Willmott's "The Chinese in Southeast Asia" (1966). 162
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PERIODICALS AND NEWSPAPERS CONSULTED
Chinatown News.
The Chinese Times.
Inside the Chinese Benevolent Association. 168
APPENDIX I
Constitution and By-Laws of the Chinese Freemasons Society of Canada (1970), Article II, Objects and By-Law I, Membership
Article II, Objects:
(a) To encourage and assist its members in the practice of good citi• zenship in the country wherein they reside;
(b) To provide suitable facilities for and assistance to new citizens;
(c) To preserve the rites and rituals of old Chinese Freemasonry that may be of historical and cultural interest;
(d) To preserve and cultivate Chinese culture, its arts and crafts, its culinary, its philosophy - e.g., its respect for family life and the respect for elders, all this with a view to add to the Canadian mosaic cultural pattern;
(e) To form committees, when needs be, to study political issues and form recommendations;
(f) To build a strong financial basis to better facilitate its cultural and welfare activities. To this end, it shall be the aim of the Society to encourage mutual loans amongst members, to purchase, build or repair their various lodges or other affiliated properties and buildings. Detailed by-laws shall be passed to encourage and regulate such activities for the protection of the members.
(g) To build effective publicity organs to promote its various cultural, educational and welfare activities. These organs shall:
1. Comply with the Society's aims of adopting the principle of the "Golden Mean" or the Middle Road on all issues, subjecting public affairs to just and balanced criticisms.
2. Comply with the aims and aspirations of the Canadian Government.
3. Research means of improving Chinese and Canadian welfare.
4. Discuss improving Canadian immigration regulations towards the Chinese.
5. To do research on improving Chinese Canadian productivity in their economic endeavours. 169
6. Research means of furthering Chinese Freemasons activities in Canada.
7. Help members to take pride in the image of the Society.
8. To create better understanding and communication between the Society and other Canadian organizations of good will.
(h) Promote athletic activities amongst its members and non-members with a view to achieving a healthier nation. All lodges shall be encouraged to engage in such promotions.
(i) Provide recreation and comfort for its members and the public and to this end, shall engage in providing rest homes, hotels, low rental housing and club facilities, etc.
By-Law I, Membership:
1. The members of the Society shall be subscribers to the Constitu• tion and By-Laws and those persons admitted as members by the Board of Directors.
2. Application for a membership to the Society shall be open to any Chinese residing legally in the Dominion of Canada, who shall be of good-imoral character and who shall be sponsored by two members of good standing. Under special circumstances, one sponsor may be acceptable, subjected to the decision of the Board of Directors.
3. Application for a membership shall be submitted at least seven days in advance of the Initiation Ceremony and shall contain the name in English and Chinese, address, age and occupation, place and date of birth, date of immigration into Canada (when applicable) marriage status, etc., and shall be sent to the Secretary of the Lodge accompanied by the initial membership fee, and by him de• livered to the Board of Directors for approval.
4. Except in special circumstances determined by the Board of Direc• tors, a new member is not eligible to hold office in the local lodge for the period of six months after initiation; nor is he eligible to hold office at Lodge Headquarters for a period of 3 years after initiation.
5. Memberships are classified as Active and Special. Members upon payment of full dues shall be designated "Active" members. Members delinquent in the payment of dues for 3 years shall become "Associate" members and may become Active members again upon the full payment of all past dues. 170
Friends of the Society who are not of Chinese ancestry may be admitted as "Special" members with no voting rights but sit in cor• respondence at meetings.
Only "Active" members shall have the privilege of voting at all general meetings and elections of officers. Each member shall have one vote.
Members who have shown special merit may be elected to the Dart Coon Sheah Auxiliary by a Special Board which is the senior inner group complementing and supporting all activities of the Chinese Freemasons, having its own charter and organization.