Richmond, B.C., considers banning Chinese-only signage

[st7860]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Wait, BC lets Chinese immigrants use their Chinese licenses to drive indefinitely?

In Ontario, immigrants have to surrender their home country drivers license when they get here. If they're from Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, the UK, or the USA it can be exchanged for an Ontario license 1-2-3.

From anywhere else, including China, you have to take a road test.

And that road test has to be taken in either English or French as they are the only languages offered for the service. Meaning if you're a Chinese immigrant who can't speak English... you can't drive.

Its not indefinite. Only about 90 days or so except for some categories(students i think is one of them)

the funny thing is a year ago the provincial insurance company and the RCMP were fighting over whether or not it is legal. the RCMP kept giving out tickets (overtime!!) and the provincial insurance company told them to knock it off since its not against the law for foreigners to drive. they eventually came to an agreement.

[Steveston]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I couldn't care less about 18 year olds driving Lamborghinis or massive stucco houses. 99% of the city's population could be Chinese for all I care. But for reasons previously mentioned the signs really bother me. It's not an "old guy cultural-NIMBY-anti-change" feeling either. I'm 20 years old and am an ESL immigrant myself (granted from a "white" country). I moved to Vancouver when I was 5 and so grew up in an already multi-cultural city. And I'm not the only one. Between Caucasians in Richmond, even among young people, it is completely socially acceptable to trash the Chinese. Even assimilated Chinese people complain about the non-English speaking Chinese. I'm not saying this is right, but it exists and "get over it" is not gonna change anything. Is simple racism a part of it? I think it is, but I think there are genuine concerns as well. Either way, do we really want to segregate our city by race? Or do we want to unite the different cultures, like Indian and Filipino which are also large communities in Richmond, into a cohesive city? I think by bringing people together we can get rid of the racial tension growing in the city and truly start building towards a colour-blind society.

Some of you are saying that it's a first generation problem and that children will assimilate. While this is true, more immigrants will keep immigrating. Are these stores ever going to become more English friendly? Or will the increasing Chinese immigration and white flight make them even more prominent? I'm leaning towards the second.

This really isn't such a big deal. The City's staff report found 13 Chinese-only signs out of 2,855. That's less than 0.5%. In my view, that's not enough to go through the trouble of writing a new bylaw and hiring more enforcement officers to act as "language police". It's far better to go to those 13 businesses and talk to them about the issue and attempting some gentle persuasion to add English.

[Acajack]

Thinking about this thread overall and there are quite a few (subtly) racially-charged posts on here. I know I speak for others when I say that that's not what people typically expect from Vancouver or from (Anglo?)-Canada in general based on the usual stereotypes.

I am not really being judgemental or even critical. It's just interesting to observe.

[memememe76]

Originally Posted by Steveston

This really isn't such a big deal. The City's staff report found 13 Chinese-only signs out of 2,855. That's less than 0.5%. In my view, that's not enough to go through the trouble of writing a new bylaw and hiring more enforcement officers to act as "language police". It's far better to go to those 13 businesses and talk to them about the issue and attempting some gentle persuasion to add English.

Can this be emphasized more? In the very first post, there were may be one or two signs that had no English in it. Honestly, I am Asian but am not Chinese, so I can't read or speak it. Who in the world has trouble finding whatever establishment you're finding when in Richmond?

[Acajack]

I would have thought there would have been a lot more than that across the city, given the tone of the discussion and the visibility of the issue.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Steveston

This really isn't such a big deal. The City's staff report found 13 Chinese-only signs out of 2,855. That's less than 0.5%.

Wait a minute...13 Chinese-only signs in all of Richmond is what is causing this uproar? Jeezus, there are a hundred shops with Chinese-only signs in the largest Chinese mall outside of Asia, the Pacific Mall in Markham, and hundreds more in the dozens of other Asian strip malls in the area.

Then again, a quick Google search produced the following news story from ten years ago describing events from twenty years ago:

"By 1995, with Hong Kong's handover to China imminent and Markham's detached homes a relative bargain, the town's ethnic-Chinese population had risen to 15 per cent.

The influx shocked some. At a retreat of regional politicians that summer, Carol Bell, then the deputy mayor, sparked an angry debate by demanding bilingual signs at Chinese malls. Chinese-only signs, she said, made Markham's white population feel unwelcome."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/not-made-in-china/article746929/

The whole "don't like Chinese-only signs" really does sound more like something from two decades ago. I've stated it before somewhere on this forum, but while I'm sympathetic to long-time residents who see their neighbourhoods changing beyond recognition and no longer feel at home there, I don't really see what could be done that wouldn't offend the greater concern of protecting freedom of movement.

[Steveston]

IMO, a lot of the problem in Richmond is due to the fact that Council is hyper-sensitive to complaints. While some might say that this is a good thing (Council listens to its residents/voters/taxpayers), it also results in a waste of staff resources (Council asks for a staff report on the potential relocation of a dog off-leash park because one resident complains about barking). So, someone complains about a Chinese-only sign, even though that person is likely never to visit that store, and Council commissions a staff report.

It doesn't help that the local paper (as all local papers do) publishes "letters to the editor" from every wingnut who knows how to use a computer. People get whipped into a frenzy, get their panties in a knot, all over what is, really, a fairly minor issue.

It must drive staff crazy.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Thinking about this thread overall and there are quite a few (subtly) racially-charged posts on here. I know I speak for others when I say that that's not what people typically expect from Vancouver or from (Anglo?)-Canada in general based on the usual stereotypes.

I am not really being judgemental or even critical. It's just interesting to observe.

I wrote a really long post but my internet crashed and I don't feel like writing it all out again, so I'll just go through the main points:

-Vancouver is much less culturally-friendly and left-wing as its image, and racist comments about the Chinese are very common among the other races (not just the whites). I assume you're including me in subtle racism so all I can say is it's difficult to grow up in this climate and not adopt a hint of it. I might be challenged on this, but at least in my experience, it's been all around me.

-The city might not segregate itself to the degree I talked about, and it's very possible I'm overreacting. But the two groups were extremely segregated in high school (each had their own popular group for example) and I think built form is a factor.

-Yes there aren't many signs exclusively in Mandarin, but there are many more with only one of multiple signs having English (often the least visible) and/or with English being significantly smaller. And nobody's marching with pitchforks, it's just frustration and a worry of how much further it could go. The vast majority of people who don't like it don't feel particularly strongly about it, so it's not as big an issue as this thread is making it out to be.

-Regardless of the local relationship with the Chinese, personally I am against this sign issue fundamentally. I think that if country A speaks language A and lots of immigrants come speaking language B, immigrants B should not be able to change neighbourhoods to become exclusive of the original inhabitants. I guess a simpler way to put it would be that I dislike ehtnoburbs reagardless of ethnicity. I feel the same way about Brighton Beach in Brooklyn.

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by lio45

I may be wrong but I think what bugs people in this case is precisely the lack of diversity... since so many immigrants have the same ethnic origin, they're large enough as a group to be somewhat overwhelming (and they can afford to cut themselves off from the rest with that lingusitic barrier).

If Vancouver was a very diverse city then the city's historically dominant language and planet's lingua franca (English) would be essentially mandatory for business; you wouldn't see significant amounts of businesses catering only to an unilingual group of another language. It's not the case, and that seems to be exactly the complaint here...

In places like Toronto and NYC, it's not a problem, because the sources of immigrants are pretty diversified.

I've never been to Richmond, but looking at its demographic profile it seems pretty diverse to me (by far more so than most other places in Canada). About half of the population is Chinese, true, but there are plenty of other places in this country where the largest ethnic group comprises a much greater chunk of the population.

It can be difficult not to conflate race, ethnicity and ethnic diversity in these discussions, so forgive me for veering into that direction for a moment. But at least in terms of racial diversity, the percentage of people who are non-White, non-Chinese and non-Aboriginal in Richmond is about the same as it is in Winnipeg or Ottawa (~20%). The composition of the remaining ~80%, obviously, is very different in each city.

Richmond has a relatively small White community (for lack of a better term), but that's not particularly unusual for a suburb of Vancouver or Toronto. That does make some White people (even recent immigrants themselves) feel nervous and threatened - oh they'd never say so in public, but you hear some muttering in private about "those people taking over"* (I certainly have from some White people in Markham, Brampton, Scarborough, &c.). The doctrine of multiculturalism is not and cannot be an antidote to good ol' fashioned racism. It's no surprise really that this sentiment is often expressed as anxiety over language - after all, they do say language is to Canada what race is to the US and what class is to the UK. I think the displacement of English from the public sphere in Quebec (or its perceived displacement at least) has sown a seed of linguistic anxiety in the Anglo-Canadian psyche. Combine that with a legacy of sinophobia on the West Coast and you get this controversy.

*It's interesting that the city and town councils of Canada's "ethnoburbs" (including Richmond) are all disproportionately White. Would this issue have gained as much traction at City Hall if council better reflected the community at large? I would imagine not.

[ue]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

-Vancouver is much less culturally-friendly and left-wing as its image, and racist comments about the Chinese are very common among the other races (not just the whites). I assume you're including me in subtle racism so all I can say is it's difficult to grow up in this climate and not adopt a hint of it. I might be challenged on this, but at least in my experience, it's been all around me.

I noticed this as well. It's very subtle, but it's there. I think in general there is a lot of yearning among Vancouverites for the pre-1986 version of itself. Before the skyrocketing prices, before the condos, before the surge of East Asian diaspora.

I for one am for more integration than less in the case of immigrants. I understand wanting to keep some parts of heritage and the mother country, but not to the point of exclusivity with the rest of society.

[st7860]

In public they'll say they want everything to go back to the cheap ways of pre 1986 and in private they sell for the new prices and go to the suburbs

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

-Vancouver is much less culturally-friendly and left-wing as its image, and racist comments about the Chinese are very common among the other races (not just the whites).

Interesting you say that. I've only been there once, in the 1990s, but I experienced some of that sort of xenophobia second-hand.

My wife and I stayed in a youth hostel on Main Street next to Chinatown for two nights, and the kid in charge was the sort of jackass redneck in his mid-twenties that stumbles out of pickup trucks in rural areas everywhere. Apparently his mother owned the hostel, or something to that effect. It was a bit jarring to see in a big city.

While he and his rustic buddies sat in the office getting drunk, some of the multicultural residents staying there, in particular a group of three or four Korean kids, set about cooking some fish on the stove. I thought it smelled quite good, actually, but the jackass redneck was livid at the aroma, and charged into the kitchen threatening violence to the "damn Asians" if they didn't stop cooking. I intervened and managed to calm the guy down while apologizing profusely to the Koreans in embarrassment--this was not exactly how I'd envisioned showing off the multicultural utopia that I'd been idealizing for the past several years in Taiwan to my wife, in Canada for the first time.

It was just one incident, but it was the only one of its kind that we encountered in Canada. And to be honest, it was frankly flabbergasting that a youth hostel in the downtown of a major city was being run by a crew of xenophobic "Fubar" yokels.

You just really can't imagine those kinds of people or that kind of thing happening in the West End or the Plateau. The idea of a youth hostel somewhere on College or Spadina being managed by a country bumpkin griping about the "damn Asians"...it's just not possible.

Sure, it was undoubtedly a one-off (and there's also just no way that that kind of thing could possibly be widespread at youth hostels in Vancouver, right?). Maybe the owner had left the assholes in charge of the place for just a few days, but then, you have to wonder what kind of person owning a youth hostel attracting an international clientele would allow that kind of person to manage it in the first place?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Interesting you say that. I've only been there once, in the 1990s, but I experienced some of that sort of xenophobia second-hand.

My wife and I stayed in a youth hostel on Main Street next to Chinatown for two nights, and the kid in charge was the sort of jackass redneck in his mid-twenties that stumbles out of pickup trucks in rural areas everywhere. Apparently his mother owned the hostel, or something to that effect. It was a bit jarring to see in a big city.

While he and his rustic buddies sat in the office getting drunk, some of the multicultural residents staying there, in particular a group of three or four Korean kids, set about cooking some fish on the stove. I thought it smelled quite good, actually, but the jackass redneck was livid at the aroma, and charged into the kitchen threatening violence to the "damn Asians" if they didn't stop cooking. I intervened and managed to calm the guy down while apologizing profusely to the Koreans in embarrassment--this was not exactly how I'd envisioned showing off the multicultural utopia that I'd been idealizing for the past several years in Taiwan to my wife, in Canada for the first time.

It was just one incident, but it was the only one of its kind that we encountered in Canada. And to be honest, it was frankly flabbergasting that a youth hostel in the downtown of a major city was being run by a crew of xenophobic "Fubar" yokels.

You just really can't imagine those kinds of people or that kind of thing happening in the West End or the Plateau. The idea of a youth hostel somewhere on College or Spadina being managed by a country bumpkin griping about the "damn Asians"...it's just not possible.

Sure, it was undoubtedly a one-off (and there's also just no way that that kind of thing could possibly be widespread at youth hostels in Vancouver, right?). Maybe the owner had left the assholes in charge of the place for just a few days, but then, you have to wonder what kind of person owning a youth hostel attracting an international clientele would allow that kind of person to manage it in the first place?

I wouldn't expect that in Toronto or Montreal. But not in Vancouver nor in Ottawa either. But anything can happen anywhere I suppose.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

-Vancouver is much less culturally-friendly and left-wing as its image, and racist comments about the Chinese are very common among the other races (not just the whites). I assume you're including me in subtle racism so all I can say is it's difficult to grow up in this climate and not adopt a hint of it. I might be challenged on this, but at least in my experience, it's been all around me.

.

I said ''racially-charged'' and did not mention racism. I realize it's a fine line but to me it's not exactly the same thing.

What I mean is that there is a blunt frankness on the racial aspect of issues here that you rarely hear.

It just contrasts with the usual Canadian discourse where everyone is deemed the same and any differences are glossed over.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Steveston

This really isn't such a big deal. The City's staff report found 13 Chinese-only signs out of 2,855. That's less than 0.5%. In my view, that's not enough to go through the trouble of writing a new bylaw and hiring more enforcement officers to act as "language police". It's far better to go to those 13 businesses and talk to them about the issue and attempting some gentle persuasion to add English.

The meaningfulness of this statistic depends a lot on what they consider English signage for a business. There are many businesses that will have one or two words in English or a transliterated proper name and then much more detailed signs that are not in English and have a lot more information on them. They are clearly not primarily geared toward English shoppers; it's hard to tell what these businesses even are a lot of the time.

That being said, I agree that this isn't much of a real issue, or at least it doesn't seem to justify meddling.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I wrote a really long post but my internet crashed and I don't feel like writing it all out again, so I'll just go through the main points:

-Vancouver is much less culturally-friendly and left-wing as its image, and racist comments about the Chinese are very common among the other races (not just the whites). I assume you're including me in subtle racism so all I can say is it's difficult to grow up in this climate and not adopt a hint of it. I might be challenged on this, but at least in my experience, it's been all around me.

-The city might not segregate itself to the degree I talked about, and it's very possible I'm overreacting. But the two groups were extremely segregated in high school (each had their own popular group for example) and I think built form is a factor.

-Yes there aren't many signs exclusively in Mandarin, but there are many more with only one of multiple signs having English (often the least visible) and/or with English being significantly smaller. And nobody's marching with pitchforks, it's just frustration and a worry of how much further it could go. The vast majority of people who don't like it don't feel particularly strongly about it, so it's not as big an issue as this thread is making it out to be.

-Regardless of the local relationship with the Chinese, personally I am against this sign issue fundamentally. I think that if country A speaks language A and lots of immigrants come speaking language B, immigrants B should not be able to change neighbourhoods to become exclusive of the original inhabitants. I guess a simpler way to put it would be that I dislike ehtnoburbs reagardless of ethnicity. I feel the same way about Brighton Beach in Brooklyn.

Of course the city is segregating itself. How many non-Chinese talk about moving into areas like Oakridge, UBC or even Kerrisdale lately? Go out to Langley and its the Vancouver of 30 years ago. Of course nobody talks about it directly, it's more like "Oh, we moved out of Richmond, it's changed so much but we really like our new home in Walnut Grove"

[giallo]

Growing cities change. Go figure.

I found the demographic change in the Fraser/Kingsway area to be quite striking when I stayed with a friend a couple of weeks ago. That area used to be super scuzzy (still kind of is after dark), and was populated mostly with Chinese and Vietnamese businesses. Today, it's the new Main St. with some really cool bars and restaurants on top of what made the area what it was when I was younger; good chinese food, Singaporean beef jerky, waterfalls of pho. The other big visual change was the sheer amount of young, white families living in the area.

Cities move and shake. Richmond will become something different in a couple of generations. You can count on it.

[Denscity]

I say go nuts and put up as many Chinese only signs as they want. Richmond is the most Chinese city in Canada. So thousands of people will be able to read the sign and if they sell items that the average Canadian doesn't want or need anyways who cares?

[saffronleaf]

Wow, pretty crazy to see that this thread is still alive.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Pinion

Disagree completely. Anyone still in Vancouver is ok with change and multiculturalism. What's happening in Richmond (and Vancouver and Burnaby) is a new ultra dominant monoculture that people think is inferior to the vibrant mix we had before. Not about race or house types, it's about culture.

If "dominant monoculture" is what you're against, why not target the 90%+ of Canadian municipalities that are 90%+ White English or French?

Seems odd to go after the one municipality that is ~50% Chinese.