Written by Yuen

Edited by the Taiwan Gazette

Yuen is a recent graduate from the University of Toronto, where she earned a double major in Urban Studies and Sociology, alongside a minor in Diaspora and Transnational Studies. Her academic interests include civic engagement, public participation, and diaspora communities. As she embarks on post-graduate studies in Public Policy and Management at the University of Glasgow, Yuen aims to further explore how policy can foster community development and participation. With a commitment to promoting inclusive and sustainable urban spaces, she looks forward to contributing to initiatives that strengthen communities both professionally and personally.

Introduction

Humans, as we live and breathe, have always taken up space. This is the way we exist, the way we etch our lives into the physical environment of the world–it is how our stories are told. No matter how insignificant each action may be to us, there is always a mark that is left behind, a reflection that echoes through time. Behind every crevice of a street and corner of a home, there once was a life lived. As long as we learn to look and listen, we can discover the histories that have been left behind in the lay of the land.

Hence, in a time when space is denied to your community, one’s presence–the act of taking up space–is resistance itself. You have carved out a way to live in spite of prevailing pressures, and when you learn to create a home in a space that you are excluded from, you wave a banner in everyone’s faces, broadcasting your presence for all to see. Consider: a neighbourhood, a literary piece, or even a social media post that takes up several millibytes on the internet–much as they may be a fleeting presence in one’s life, it is a form of resilience. It is a survivor!

Toronto, as a city that has seen communities of people building over one another over and over again, has many of these stories to tell. Its Chinatown, notably, is one of the crucial spaces that serve as a physical reminder of its Chinese members’ resilient presence in the city.

Reimagining ChinatOwn

Linda Zhang’s Reimagining ChinatOwn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction is a short story anthology written in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, where local authors gathered in a community writing session to write speculative fiction about Chinatown in the future (more specifically, in the year 2050). As such, this collection of stories acted as a response to the wave of Anti-Asian sentiments in Toronto then, a direct challenge to condescending views on how Asian Canadians should respond to ongoing racism, along with a new approach to preserving Chinatown's architecture, which has similarly faced restrictive behavioural norms.

In doing so, the authors of the short story anthology were looking at their present realities in Toronto’s Chinatown and extrapolating from its past in order to imagine its future. The common elements of Chinatown’s past, present and future as imagined by these authors would then be distilling the core elements of Chinatown and its community–things that have, and would be, true for all time. To explore these elements in this work, I will be focusing on the following stories: “Accept” by Eva Chu, “Chinatown Island” by Amy Yan, and “Interval” by Eveline Lam.

Overview of Stories

Accept by Eva Chu is about a narrator who is grappling with the way Chinatown has changed, where she tends to avoid the space in order to avoid her own feelings of grief and loss. The story looks at the place and sentiments attached to Chinatown, where it acts as an anchor of memories even as times have changed.

Chinatown Island by Amy Yan is about how Chinatown has been moved to Toronto Islands to become “Chinatown Island,” where the Chinese culture is heavily exaggerated and commodified to meet outsiders’ tastes. On a field trip there, the protagonist finds a store, Leung’s BBQ, which staunchly refuses to change the way it is presented to be more literally and figuratively “palatable” to the general Canadian public.

Interval by Eveline Lam revolves around the character “Auntie,” who brings the character to an underground, community-led Chinese market that is heavily in touch with its cultural roots and traditions, which stands in juxtaposition to a heavily sanitized and futuristic Toronto.

Displacement

The story of Chinatown has always gone hand in hand with the tale of displacement since its very first conception, especially in Toronto. Zhang notes this in her introduction, where she mentions the first Chinese neighbourhood that was located on York Street and destroyed by the Great Fire of Toronto in 1904, which led to the Chinese community moving their neighbourhood (notably, without support from the city) to Elizabeth Street, where it is better known today as Old Chinatown.[1]

**Fig. 2** Photograph and its caption sent out to architectural firms for the Toronto City Hall competition
Land expropriated for the new City Hall and public square - Photo courtesy of the City of Toronto archives/RG1 Reports, Box 9, Hall and Square Conditions of Competitions, 1959-1967)

Arlene Chan also makes note of this in her work The Chinese Community in Toronto, where she talks about the first Chinatowns that were in Toronto. However, this did not remain for long, when Old Chinatown was expropriated to make way for Toronto’s new City Hall.[2] As pictured in Fig. 2, the starting point of the Toronto City Hall competition is depicted through a uniform grey texture that is applied to a photograph. What goes unmentioned is the purposeful erasure of Chinatown, where its tenants, workers, and business and property owners owned most of this “available site.”[3] Even though the grey void, as pictured to be replaced by the new City Hall, only covered two-thirds of Chinatown, history has shown that the forces of urban renewal swiftly enveloped the remaining part of it.[4]

We see this in the stories as well. In Accept, Chinatown has become “blue and grey,” as opposed to the vibrant colours that it used to hold. In Interval, “the only Asian faces were behind the storefronts,” and the stores that remain in Chinatown are carefully curated, where the old shops and streets were “cleaned up.”

Chinatown Island perhaps showcases the most clearly, where Chinatown has been physically moved to Toronto Islands, and thereby transformed into a cultural amusement park for visitors to enjoy. It is supposed to be “new, awesome-er” with “cooler things in it like a giant lucky-cat hotel (that has a moving arm!) and a whole new bunch of cool carnival rides so that people can go there whenever they want and enjoy the China theme park and drink bubble tea and eat Chinese food and also see a super big Chinatown Gate replica.” Chinese culture is exaggerated and heavily commodified, distilled to bare elements such as paper-cutting or fortune cats. Meanwhile, the original site of Chinatown East near the corner of Boulton Avenue and Gerrard Street has been transformed into a gentrified street of vintage record stores, chain stores like Urban Outfitters, and vaping stores. This initial introduction into the world that Yan depicts in the future with her story seems like a desolate tale of displacement of Chinatown, where there is no true space for it–the original area that it took up is no longer available for Chinatown’s inhabitants, and Chinatown is forced and shaped to be something that is merely a shell of itself in its new space. Chinatown, in its full, authentic self, is nowhere to be found–truly displaced.

The Markets and Storefronts of Chinatown

Love it or not; Familiar it is to you or not-The different sense-scrapes that make up Chinatown are an instrumental part of its community. The languages that you hear, the kinds of produce that are being sold, and the people who exist within space all come together as an identity marker of the Chinese diaspora in Toronto no matter in the past, present, or future. As part of these landscapes, Chinese marketplaces, stores and restaurant storefronts are instrumental. This seems to hold true in the writers’ short stories as well.

““The smell. It’s familiar yet unidentifiable, and certainly empowering. Oh God, even after all the regulations, even without a root, a stem or even traces of powder in sight, the smell of the herbs lingers in the air. Hits me the moment I wait into the waiting room,

It’s disorienting.””

— "Accept", Eva Chu

In Accept, the Chinese herbal medicinal store has been modernised and sanitised, becoming a pristine space with just “vinyl-green pads and a glass partition.” Nonetheless, the narrator is transported back in time (a time that she barely knows and yet remembers so intimately, notably) when traditional Chinese medicine stores are filled with messy drawers, glass jars, and rubber acupuncture models just through the scent of Chinese herbs. Memories cling to the senses and arise upon the narrator’s interactions with them.

In Chinatown Island, the storefront of Leung’s BBQ is a firm and accurate representation of Chinatown as it is now, where there are roasted ducks, 叉烧, and roasted pigs hanging on display. It is something that seems to be made othered and “weird” by the narrator’s classmates who do not understand the culinary tradition. Nonetheless, it is due to this deliberate move by the store owner that the narrator is drawn in and ultimately gets a chance to reconnect with her Chinese roots. Aptly, the storefront makes the narrator “felt as though [she] was on display” –Leung’s BBQ’s storefront acts as a physical manifestation of her cultural identity.

In Interval, the Chinese grocery is where the character “Auntie” first gets the narrator’s attention, and the narrator describes her act of buying groceries as a “pantomime of a time long past.” The Chinese market plays a huge role in the identity of Chinatown in the construction of memory, where the narrator’s mother reminisces about “old Chinatown” by referring to the open-air markets there, where should be “caught between aunties in wide-brimmed hats and can of straw mushrooms.” The story ultimately ends at an underground but thriving Chinese market, where there are Chinese dialects that “wove in and out of each other, sometimes three different languages making up a single sentence;” where “the air felt like the breath of a mythical beast, a pulsing source of heat and singed meat” as result of the various food vendors around. Beyond the literal portrayal of the Chinese community basking comfortably in the company of one another, the author’s choice of wording of “wove” and “mythical beast” depicts a charged and lively environment, showcasing an authentic Chinese community that is free to partake in its culture freely, and even wildly.

**Fig. 3** Photos of Restaurants and Chinese markets along Spadina Avenue that I have taken

I think back to my own experiences of Chinatown as a newcomer a few years back–as you can see above, these were amongst the first pictures I snapped in Chinatown. Instinctively, there was an urge to capture these stores. Thinking more deeply about it, perhaps these venues are where I felt most at ease, where I could somehow be more in touch with myself. When I think about these stores specifically, I remember the joy I felt, buying one kilogram of 烧肉 and 烧鸭 for the very first Lunar New Year that I spent here in Toronto. I remember the startling sense of relief that sank into my bones when I could converse with someone in Mandarin in the Chinese markets, grateful that I have not (yet?) lost my mastery over my mother tongue, grateful that someone else could see me as someone of their “own,” even if we are not blood-tied relatives, not really. Beyond the goods that these stores and markets provide, these sentiments were what moved me to use my camera to take these snapshots.

**Fig. 4** Photos of Restaurants and Chinese markets. Courtesy of the City of Toronto Digital Archives, dated between 1980 to 2000

From these photographs taken in the 1930s, it seems that there is something about these storefronts and markets that photographers at that time would like to capture as well. In fact, if you were to search the keyword “Chinatown” from the City of Toronto’s digital archives, the most common titles of photos are “storefronts” or “markets”–there seems to be something about these storefronts and how they seem to be such an identifiable part of Chinatown. Perhaps the answer lies in how the Chinese community congregate in these settings, or perhaps it lies in the unaffected airs that surround them in these pictures. Throughout decades, time and time again, these places are where Chinese community members can find an authentic part of themselves.

Community Resilience and Resistance

We cannot talk about Chinatown without mentioning its resilience and resistance. Just as Chinatown Island suggests, the act of taking up space is a form of resilience and resistance itself. Even with the constant acts of displacement and erasure, Chinatown persists. As the narrator puts it aptly in Accept, “My place in this world may be constantly shifting, but the communities I find will always be unidentifiably familiar. The communities I make.”

In Chinatown Island, this sense of hope shines through as well. Even if the physical spaces of Chinatown are made to change into a façade or made “superficial,” the story emphasizes that the essence of Chinatown remains with its community members. “They all remembered what Chinatown was supposed to be, and as long as that stays the same, we can still find community in each other.”

In Interval, even as the Chinese community has been displaced and literally been moved underground, it still exists and in its own way, thrives. Even though it is a way of life that goes unnoticed by the rest of the city, the way the Chinese community persists in retaining its culture and a space for community members to spend together speaks to its resilience.

**Fig. 5** (left) Picture taken by me in the Kensington-Chinatown area ; (right) Photo from the City of Toronto Digital Archives depicting Chinese community members spending time together at the park

When we look around the city, there are visual signs of it too. Fig. 6 shows a sign that I came across in my walk around the Chinatown and Kensington Market area, where it proclaims the protection of the area by the local community. Importantly, a Chinese character “黄” is present right underneath it. Given that the character can stand for a common Chinese family name, I find the combination of signs to be extremely meaningful, where the community–perhaps connected to the Chinese family and its family association–is protected by their members and their solidarity together. The space of Chinatown is preserved through the presence of these community members.

Similarly, this is present in the picture taken in the past. Given that this was a picture that was taken in the early 1900s, this was a time when the Chinese community members had yet to be widely accepted in the wider landscape of Toronto. Nonetheless, they are here, captured by the camera. Just by being themselves, even just by enjoying a recreational game, is enough to be a form of resistance by itself–stubbornly taking up space in the photographer’s eye and the city.

Overall Thoughts and Reflection

““Everyone takes his own walk along Spadina. It’s that kind of street. People feel affectionate, or intense, or nostalgic. It evokes a reaction, something personal, a relationship. The relationship differs for each person, each generation, each ethnic community. That’s the kind of street it is.””

— "Spadina Avenue", Rosemary Donegan

When I came across this line written by Donegan, in her published collection of photographs and writings about Spadina Avenue, I could not help to think about the Chinatown on Spadina that I personally know. To me, it is a place that allows me to regain a sense of familiarity as an individual who belongs to the Chinese ethnic group. To many others, the space could easily morph into something else–a bed of nostalgia, a specific symbol of remembrance, or perhaps even a sense of isolation and grief.

Nonetheless, through the various photographs and the collection of works from Reimagining ChinatOwn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction, it seems that are elements that never change, withstanding the tides of time and imagination. Chinatown, with its various markets and vibrant storefronts, has been resilient against the forces of displacement and time. This steadfastness, as told through the stories, seems to stem from its community members. If we were to follow the saying, “home is where the heart is,” it would then follow that the heart of Chinatown belongs to its community members, while it will always act as home for the Chinese diaspora in Toronto. This deep-rooted connection makes Chinatown a timeless sanctuary for the community it hoses, where their past, present, and future can converge in resilience and hope.

[1] Linda Zhang, ed., Reimagining ChinaTOwn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction (Mawenzi House Publishers, 2023)

[2] Arlene Chan, The Chinese Community in Toronto (Dundurn, 2013).

[3] Peter Sealy and Linda Zhang, “Faithful Infidelities,” Journal of Architectural Education 78, no. 1 (January 2, 2024): 237–54, https://doi.org/10.1080/10464883.2024.2303941.

[4] Ibid.