Vancouver's Chinatown: Past, Present, and Future

http://www.instrcc.ubc.ca http://chinesecanadian.ubc.ca
Vancouver's Chinatown: Past, Present, and Future uses the stories of Chinatown's buildings to chronicle the evolution of this important Vancouver community. The film follows Chinatown's history from its humble beginnings as a place and community for labouring Chinese men and their wooden shacks to its heyday where Chinese Canadians like Yip Sang, H.Y. Louie, Bick Lee, Mary Lee Chan, groups like the Chinese Student Soccer Team and associations like the Yue Shan Society strengthened the community and helped to extend it beyond Chinatown. However, today's Chinatown is losings its former vitality and is becoming more and more neglected. For a place that is so important to the history of Vancouver and Canada, if this decline is allowed to continue, what does the future hold in store for Vancouver's Chinatown?

This film was created for the Chinatown Gala Dinner held on May 14, 2009, by UBC History 483 students Alejandro Yoshizawa and Jennifer Yip. Funding was generously provided by the Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP), INSTRCC UBC, and UBC Library.

Many of the historical photographs used in this film and displayed at the Chinatown Gala Dinner were lent from the private collections of the many families who grew up in Chinatown during the 1930s to the 1970s. Copyright is retained by these families and the reproduction or use of the images for any other purposes is strictly prohibited.