Monthly Archives: July 2005

Saltwater City Revisited: Demographic portrait of Chinese Canadians in Greater Vancouver – at the Central Library July 27

'Saltwater City Revisited:
A Demographic Portrait
of Chinese Canadians in Greater Vancouver',

Wed, July 27 at 7:30pm in the Alice MacKay Room.

Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch

350 West Georgia St.

Changing
immigration and settlement patterns, intermarriage, the state of elders
and voter  participation, present many challenges for Greater
Vancouver's Chinese Canadian population.

Andrew Yan is a doctoral student in the Department of Urban Planning at
the University of California. He is also a research associate from the
Simon Fraser University's Institute of Governance Studies, and a
visiting scholar at New York University.

Jen Lau from the Chinese Canadian Historical Society sends the message below:


Please find attached a flyer for Andrew Yan's upcoming talk at the
Vancouver Public Library: This free event is being
co-sponsored by the VPL, the UBC Department of History, and the Chinese Canadian
Historical Society of BC.  Feel free to circulate.

 Andy will kick off the evening with his presentation, to be
followed by 2-3 responders (Henry Yu and Karin Lee are confirmed) and
then a Q&A session. 
Rob Ho, CCHS Board member, will serve as moderator for the evening.


Andy has been quite the media darling – he was interviewed on Fairchild
Radio on Monday, appeared in the SIng Tao on Tuesday and will appear
on/in CityTV, CBC BC Almanac, 24 Hours and Ming Pao next week.


Although the talk falls on the same night as the fireworks, we're positive Andy's talk will be equally as sparkling.  🙂



Hope to see you next Wednesday! 




Jenn






Jennifer Lau

Co-ordinator

Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC

jennlau@gmail.com

http://www.cchsbc.ca

Gung Harrison Fat Choy! Fraser Valley Dragon Boat Races – our review and results



Gung Harrison Fat Choy!

We all had a lot of fun at the inaugural Fraser Valley Dragon Boat Festival – held at Harrison Lake.

All the paddlers integrated very well.
The Drunkn Dragon paddlers brought lots of humour and teasing to the
boat.  The CC Riders bring some centering, The GVRD 44 Cheeks
paddler/steers brought his camera and love for the team.  And our
GHFC paddlers provide the structure and the foundation.

And when combined – a heckuva lotta fun!
Our veteran paddlers shared their experience and supported our rookies,
and our newbie paddlers rose to the occasion.  Together we won our
first race as a team and it pushed us for medals.


Here's my breakdown of the day…

to share with our paddlers who couldn't make it!

There were 24 teams are randomly seeded.  


First race. 
We place 2nd.
uneven – Bob says the backs are pushing the fronts


2nd race
, We place 3rd.
I explain to the team – that race 2 is the race to
experiment as I switch the lead strokes.
More uneven – Bob says front half and back half were
paddling two different races.  Our slowest race.

24 teams are now settled into 3 categories.
2 heats of women's division
2 heats of Division 2
2 heats of Division 1


3rd race

This is the race that matters.  Only 1st and 2nd place
teams move to the medal round.
We are 7th seed for Division 2.
Switch the lead strokes back – no gap.
I pop into seat 5.
Dave Samis is steering now.

We have our best race ever!
Our time is 2:34.69
We win our first race of the year!
We are now the top seed going into Div 2 Finals
We are racing for medals
Deb is bouncing up and down she is so happy.
She has drummed a winning team!
Bob has to calm her down.


4th Race

Division 4 finals
at the start line – we discover that I don't have a pfd on.  shhh!
Dog fight from start to finish.
We are boat #2 – second from shore.
I paddle the right side, and I can see Boat #1 slowly
pull away from us.  I can hear the drum from boat #3 beside us,
ahead of us, behind us.  I am hoping that it is beside me –
because that would mean they are 5 seats behind our drum.

We cross the finish line.  Only Boat #1 is cheering.
Nobody else is certain of the finish order.
We congratulate everybody on our races.
Bob is at the Finish lane tent with Trev, as DBA was doing the finish line.  We are 4th, by just over 1 second.

Everybody is feeling good about the team, and their
performance.  We gave it our all.

What else?

Mizz Drag-On-Boat contest.
Ian Paul of the Fraser Valley Dragon Boat Club comes by the tent before
the lunch break asking teams to enter a contestant.  Both Bob and
I have our kilts in the cars. I ask the team to vote on having Bob or
myself as our team contestant.  I ask people to put up their hands
to vote for Bob dressing up.  Nobody puts up their hand.  I
ask people to vote for me to dress up.  Everybody puts up their
hand.  As I start to head off to the car to change, Tammy 
offers me her pink bikini swim suit.  Enough said… except that
Jody heard people say that they thought I should have won.
Oh well… what can we do when we make up something on the fly. 
The contestants who won wore evening dresses and put a lot of effort
into their costumes and deserved their tiaras.


Next practice Wednesday 6pm

next race – Richmond or Vernon July 23(if you want to hop another boat – no official GHFC entries)
next race after that…
San Francisco
Vancouver Taiwanese Races

Cheers, Todd

Going to Harrison for Dragon boats and the Harrison Festival of the Arts


The Harrison Festival of the Arts,
has always sounded real cool. But I have never managed to find my way
out to Harrison since 1989.  This year there is a dragon boat
race, the inaugural Fraser Valley Dragon Boat Festival put on in conjunction with the Festival of the Arts.  Looks like I will finally get there.

Gung Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat team
will race with a recreational crew bolstered by some paddlers from CC
Riders and Drunkin' Dragons.  Our practice felt pretty solid on
Wednesday night with only 16 people in the boat.  I think we will
have a good time.

Two hours East of Vancouver is the idyllic resort community of Harrison Hot Spring,
known for its famous hot springs and the annual sand castle
competition.  I first visited the public springs when I was a
pre-teen.  I thought it was crowded.  But in my twenties, I
learned to search for the untamed wild hot springs such as Meagre
Creek, Halcyon, Hot Springs Cove and Hot Springs Island.  Today in
my 40's, I still resist learning to say “Yes” when my girlfriend offers
to take me to the Harrison Resort for a weekend.

Dragonboats and Hot Springs… could be a deadly combination –
especially if you throw in the words “party” and “wineries.” 
Maybe we will find a way to stay overnight in Harrison afterall.

Vancouver Folk Fest always has a great multicultural world music line-up

The Vancouver Folk Fest opens today with an always eclectic always multicultural program.

Matt Chan and Paul Belan of No Luck Club will be doing some
collaborative work as well as their own showcase on Sunday morning at
11:15 called “Welcome to the Funkateria”

Check out the Folk Fest schedule.

Catching my eye are:

hip-hop gets back to its griot roots in Senegal

(Sat night only)

The Dhol Foundation

raving Brit-bhangra to shake up the beach.

Dòchas

ancient ballads, reels and rhythms in the hands of five young Celtic women.

skins and strings from the dawn of time play the rhythms and sounds of the city.

Jaipur Kawa Brass Band

horns, drums and dance in a Roma-from-Rajasthan style.

rhythm and rhyming that grew up in Mogadishu and the Bronx.

One Book One Vancouver July events with Joy Kogawa and CBC Radio

The Vancouver Public Library and CBC Radio have just announced some 
joint events for One Book One Vancouver. All look very interesting.
Check them out!

Joy Kogawa will be Mark Forsythe's guest on CBC Almanac's Open Line
(690
AM) from 1 p.m. to 2 pm, this Friday, July 15. A few copies of Obasan
will
be given away to lucky listeners!

Joy Kogawa will be visiting library branches to read from Naomi's Road and
more
at Renfrew (July 20, 10:30 am), Hastings (July 21, 10:30 am),
Fraserview
(July 27 at 2 pm) and Oakridge (10:30 am).

Join Joy Kogawa at the Central Library on August 5 for the launch of
Emily Kato, which follows up on the life of Naomi's Aunt Emily from Obasan,
at 7:30 pm in the Alice MacKay Room.

The following day, August 6, Joy will be back at Central for a Japanese
Canadian Cultural fair featuring a recorded broadcast with Sheryl MacKay
and CBC's North by Northwest in the Promenade - we'll also be announcing
the winner of the Haiku Contest at this event. Check the OBOV page on our
website more more details as they become available.

Carving our dragon boat head at Sea Vancouver Festival

Well… we almost did it… finish our dragon boat head and tail.
Our beautifully conceived and designed contemporary and multicultural
dragon boat head and tail is amongst the first contemporary designed
heads and tails that we know of in the world.  Usually only
traditional heads and tails are used for the teak boats, the Taiwanese
style boats, the 6-16 boats, the Gemini or BuK boats… (I won't even
mention the puppet-like satin heads and tails and foamy heads for those
“other” boats.)

Our tail looks absolutely gorgeous.  The red tail sinuously curves
above the simulated curving water of the design.  (picture to
appear soon.)  Curves are definitely sexy.  And we worked
more curves into the head too!  Curves on the tongue, on the
snout, along the back.

This dragon boat head carving has certainly been a challenge. 
Master carver and instructor Eric Neighbor said this weekend, “Remember
when we first started the project at the Roundhouse Community Centre, I
said this project would challenge you in ways you didn't think
possible… I mean it… But you and Bob have certainly risen to each
challenge, and constantly surprise me.”

There were definitely times when our slow progress would worry
Eric.  It had only been this past Monday, 3 days before we were
supposed to deliver the partially completed carvings on site, that I
had taken the chain saw to our dragon boat head for a drastic
reshaping.  It definitely needed it.  That moved the energy
forward.  Carving a dragon boat is a lot like living through Life
– you can't always see the shape to be revealed “under the wood.” 
Things happen… nicks happen… reshaping and new inspiried ideas
happen.  While I was working with an electric grinder, I suddenly
was inspired to give the dragons indentations in the snout for
nostrils, very cool!  And while shaping the tongue, I was suddenly
inspired to make the tongue concave on the top with a  very sexy
curl.  Double cool!

The public continued to watch us carve, and ask questions.  Again,
many people asked about dragon boat racing, and also to ask why we
weren't selling or giving away haggis.

The final pieces to add to our head were the “bagpipe” horns and
“hockey stick” inspired neck plates.  This completed the
multicultural montage of Chinese, Scottish and Canadian
influence.  After aborting using real hockey stick blades, I
carved small models from cedal shingles.  This were painted black
and mounted on the back of the neck.  Similarly, the horns were
modeled on the “pipes” of bagpipes.  They were also painted black
and mounted on the top of the head.  A little tam hat, made of
tartan cloth covers the head.

At the end of the day – we all shook hands and hugged each of our
fellow carvers.  Mike Dangeli was the most gracious, giving each
carver a copy of his latest serigraph (silk screen) print titled
“Premonitions.”  It is a beautiful work.  I look forward to
seeing Mike, Eric and Mari soon.  Bob… I see him twice a week
anyways on the dragon boats!.

pictures to follow!