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Thousands of attendees filled the streets for the festival organized by Chinatown business professionals to help attract visitors to the neighbourhood.
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Ronnie Tang knelt down to point out to his mother a yellow dragon costume onstage at Vancouver’s 21st Chinatown Festival Saturday morning.
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His 95-year-old mother, Yue, took in the sight from her wheelchair. The pair planned to go for dim sum until they came upon Columbia and Keefer streets, which were blocked off and teeming with the familiar smell of fresh dumplings.
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“She grew up as a farm girl and moved here in 1889,” Tang said of his mother, who was among the first Chinese-born settlers to live near Carrall and East Pender streets, now known as Chinatown.
The pair joined thousands of attendees who filled the streets for the annual festival, which was organized by the Chinatown Business Improvement Association and featured free live entertainment, activities, food trucks and wares from local artisans.
Despite the inevitable gentrification in changing cities such as Vancouver, Tang said he’s grateful that his mother has been able to live out her older years in the historical neighbourhood.
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“Although she doesn’t speak English, my mom has managed to walk around the same few blocks, to the same grocery store and back, for the last 30 years.”
The celebration comes with renewed optimism for Vancouver’s Chinatown, which has in the past five years been plagued with rising theft, vandalism and anti-Asian hate crimes, impacting local residents and longtime businesses.
“Thanks to Mayor Ken Sim and councillors, just look at Chinatown now,” Cyrus Lee, co-chair of the Saturday festival, said at the opening ceremony. “Last year it was dirty and not safe but this year look how clean it is.”
Lee thanked Vancouver police “for making us feel safe again.”
Business association president Jordan Eng lauded governments’ ongoing efforts to revitalize the heritage district, which is home to the third-largest concentration of Chinese descendants outside of Asia.
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“We thank all three levels of government for their support,” Eng said.
In May, the federal government chipped in about $2.2 million to restore the Chinatown storefronts, historic neon signs, and lights for businesses, as well updating the infrastructure at the Chinese Cultural Centre.
“Vancouver would not have been Vancouver without the Chinese community helping to make it happen,” said Vancouver Centre MP Hedy Fry.
“It was a logging town, a dirt road but the Chinese came and endured all of the discrimination to help to build this beautiful city.”
Two new cultural facilities — the Chinatown Storytelling Centre and the new Chinese-Canadian Museum, in which the province invested $48.5 million — have also recently opened, showcasing the significance of the neighbourhood.
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Sim says he feels Chinatown has begun to bounce back with city council’s “unwavering commitment to this community.”
“Be it with our hiring of 100 additional police officers and 100 mental health workers to deal with the safety and health challenges in surrounding communities, or opening up a city office here,” added the mayor.
sgrochowski@postmedia.com
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