In 2008 - a few months after I return from living in China for years - I begin producing the program Chinese Feed on Kootenay Co-op Radio (KCR). Experiences, observations, reflections. Reliving memories while adjusting to being back. Still feeling very much at home there - not so much here yet.
Only towards the end of this cycle of 32 weekly chapters do I find out that the building from which the radio-station broadcasts used to be a Chinese laundry and that it is located in what until fairly recently is Nelson's Chinatown.
This builds a bridge - finally gives me more a feeling of belonging!
The stereotypical incorrectness of the former - nobody is referring to the Italian drycleaner - and in all my time with the program but nobody having brought-up a Chinese connection: rattle me. How can they - rather: why won't they!
Getting info about the Chinese part in Nelson's history from the Chamber of Commerce (NDCC) Visitor Info Centre just down the street from the station - Hall/Lake - seems a simple step. But the person with whom I speak there knows nothing about Chinese in earlier Nelson nor has recorded info on them. This - ironically - while the NDCC is located in the middle of what used to be - Chinatown!
Checking their History webpage: not a single Chinese! With the NDCC version of Nelson's history ending in 1897 - when Nelson officially becomes Nelson. At the bottom of the page promising its history is To be continued. Waiting for the past.
One can only hope - because in the following year - 1898 - it becomes clear how the only real Colonials - WASPS - then truly feel about Chinese in their midst.
While physical colonial manifestations of today's single-focus Nelson Heritage then are possible only by the back-breaking, poorly paid labor of have-nots. Who neither bring heritage nor are part of heritage here today. General silence on that!
Questions about unawareness at best and rejection at worst and why and how bring me to my next radio-program
The Chinese Community of Nelson-As-Was
and
How Did It Get Here?
and the following:
Nelson Tribune - May 28, 1898
Editorial:
With the growing sense of permanence came a need for respectability and the concomitant necessity of removing the Chinese community from the Vernon St. lots they leased from the CPR to blocks 61 and 71 of the less desirable Lake St. area.
These CPR Flats become Chinatown: the only place where local Chinese then are allowed to live, together with all other undesirables. Cleansing Nelson.
Chinese literally driven out of home and business to start over again in an area close to the lake - Lowerhill - parts of which regularly flood with a mix of lake and Upperhill sewage. Permission to then be allowed to move usually not granted by the CPR.
Eventually Chinatown becomes a hub for all Chinese working in the area - coming to shop and socialize - and others passing through to find work. Socially shunned by Colonials - here they can be with their own for company/comfort and news from home.
In numbers ever fluctuating - sometimes the local+area+transient population amounts to close to 1000 of a total Nelson population of about 4000.
So whites - scared of Chinese in those numbers - instead of attempting to connect - go into all-out defensive-offensive mode. The following Editorial blatantly gets down to Colonialism at its most disturbing:
Nelson Weekly Miner - Feb, 1902
Editorial:
If the Laurier government wished to act in accordance with the views of almost the entire population of British Columbia, it will prohibit absolutely the immigration of Chinese and arrange to kill off - if any legal way can be divined to accomplish that act - every mother's son of the almond-eyed pigtail wearer, living at present in any country inhabited by white men. He is a filthy, immoral piece of human machinery - not a man in the sense in which the word is used by civilized peoples. He lives like a dog, contributes nothing towards the up-building of the country and poisons every community in which he locates himself.
This while Chinese fetch/clean/cook for Upperhill Colonials; feed miners in their restaurants and wash clothes in their laundries - neither of which real men will do; work in mines and lumber. And keep Nelson healthy with cheap, fresh produce grown in a belt around it: from Cottonwood Creek up to eventually the Burlington Northern Railway, across and down into Bogustown - now Fairview - to the Safeway area. This land - old-growth and thus far only touched by an area-fire - leased from land-speculators, then cultivated primarily by hand and with each other's help. Often started with seeds brought from home: their riches, their future. And once the land has appreciated in value because of its cultivated state: it frequently is sold just like that - with those who had done the cultivating unceremoniously told to leave.
This also is Nelson Heritage.
Over 50% of the workers on the Columbia-Kootenay Railway are Chinese: most brought in because of their railroading-skills, acquired under most dreadful conditions/treatment on/by the transcontinental CP Railroad farther north; because of their work-ethic - work means life - and only having to be paid half of what white workers receive for their attitude. With Chinese by now the poor joke everywhere: Twice the work for half the pay!
And so it goes. With such Chinese-specific discoveries literally all over the place: I find myself increasingly incredulous and soon rather civic-activist in a broader sense. From high-energy colonial callousness then to low-voltage civic superficiality now! Having developed a strong Nelson-connect: I often find off-point civic niceties trying. Hence this blog!
The radio program. Its 16 chapters are archived at Touchstones Nelson, the Rossland Museum and the Selkirk College/Castlegar Reference Library.
The blog. It has almost 200 posts: about two thirds on how Nelson can easily be a much more interesting, all-around well-functioning place with just a bit more reasonable effort and altruistic concern for the Whole.
The Commemorative Chinatown Rock - Hall/Vernon entrance to Chinatown, just up the street from the Laundry of Infinite Achievement - is a monument to those local Chinese. Incidentally - since its dedication in 2011 - not once have I been asked what its short, deliberately not translated Chinese inscription means. 5 years!
Hard is the journey,
Hard is the journey;
So many turns -
Now where am I?
Indeed! From an ancient poem by Li Bai - who named the mountains where I now live in China for some time every year - Jiu Hua Shan.
This Rock is the centerpiece of Nelson's first Chinatown Week, in which 500 red paper-lanterns are hung all over downtown.
Currently a traditional Chinese-style gazebo is being designed as shelter for the Rock in its new, more rightfully prominent location on Vernon/Hall.
In earlier days of the NDCC's plans for moving into the old CPR Station - ideas are floated on how best to use the much larger space there. One idea is to connect the Visitor Info Centre with a space for historio-cultural exhibits.
Over time - Chinese here have had much history with the CPR - aside from that on the transcontinental: the strong connection with the railroad for which the Station is built, market-gardens close-by on CPR land and Chinatown.
Thus far the historio-cultural concept has not resurfaced in the NDCC Station. With restoration to a great extent funded with tax-dollars: now giving back to the community as such would be appropriate. Would be good.
This is the appropriate place for acknowledging the location's Chinese significance within the far-reaching Chinese contribution to early Nelson as a whole.
Out of 77 places nominated to Heritage BC for recognition of being representative of heritage-values of the Chinese-Canadian community of BC: 19 have now been shortlisted to be recommended to Steve Thomson, Minister of Heritage, for formal recognition.
On the shortlist - organized by level of significance - the Nelson presentation
Nelson Chinatown, Sing Chong Laundry
ranks 4th.
On February 8, Chinese celebrate the Lunar New Year - the beginning of the Year of the Monkey - most important of all their holidays, with the week-long Spring Festival also introducing the beginning of spring. Double-happiness, indeed!
Xin Nian Kuai Le!
Addendum - Mon. 1 Feb, 2016
In tonight's Regular Council Meeting a letter from Richard Linzey, Director - Heritage Branch, Heritage BC - to the City of Nelson advises that Nelson's Chinatown indeed has been formally recognized for promoting the heritage values of historic places that demonstrate the contribution of Chinese-Canadians to the development of British Columbia.
Its formal recognition will be included on the B.C. Register of Historic Places and put forward for inclusion on the Canadian Register of Historic Places.
Tao Dance Theatre, Beijing
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