Cantonese in Vancouver

 

Written by Randeep Purewall

Mandarin has overtaken Cantonese as the predominant non-English language spoken in Metro Vancouver homes.[1] That’s the latest report from Wanyee Lee in More Mandarin Than Cantonese Speakers, which featured recently in the Vancouver Metro.

The decline of Cantonese concerns many in Greater Vancouver. Fewer Cantonese speakers have been migrating to Vancouver in recent years. The Cantonese communities of Vancouver are aging and younger generations prefer to speak English.

Still, Cantonese is the third most spoken language in Metro Vancouver. And there are reasons to suspect why it won’t fade out just yet.

First, Cantonese is supported by an affluent community. This community represents a source of investment in the language. For instance, in 2015, the Watt brothers donated $2 million to the University of British Columbia, helping to create the first Cantonese language university program in Canada.

Second, Cantonese is a historically and culturally significant language in Vancouver. It is connected to the Chinese-Canadian heritage of Vancouver, including the community’s pioneers, Chinatown and generations of immigrants. Cantonese opera performances pack the M.J. Fox Theatre in Burnaby while local Cantonese television and radio command large audiences.[2]

Third, Cantonese forms an important part of the identity of Vancouver’s Hong Kong community. As Lee points out, most of Vancouver’s Chinese-Canadians from Hong Kong (or their descendants) live in East Vancouver. This gives Cantonese a geographic concentration in Vancouver and makes it a distinctive community.

Fourth, Cantonese will continue to have a role in an increasingly multilingual world. Many Chinese-Canadians in Vancouver in fact speak Mandarin and Cantonese. Cantonese is often spoken in one context while Mandarin and English are spoken in others contexts. Seen this way, Cantonese may end up co-existing with Mandarin in some instances.

The number of Mandarin speakers has increased in Vancouver, but Cantonese still has its speakers, its integrity and its heritage.

[1] According to the 2016 census, Mandarin has 138,680 speakers to 132,185 for Cantonese.

[2] Thank you to Dr. Jan Walls for your contribution here

India at 70

 

This year marks the 70^th year of India’s independence.

Since 1947, India has grown to become one of the world’s largest economies. It has become self-sufficient in food production, developed a space program and created a large skilled, middle-class. And, it has maintained its democratic political system.

In India Unbound (2002), Gurcharan Das envisioned an India bypassing the industrial revolution to become an IT superpower. Shashi Tharoor spoke of a soft-power superpower spreading Bollywood and its spirit of religious tolerance globally.

Both men are loath to admit, however, that, for all its achievements and potential, India remains a poor country. It is poor in terms of the absolute number of its poor and in terms of its per capita income. Its governments have failed to invest adequately in health and education and India ranks lower than Sri Lanka and Indonesia on the Human Development Index.

India has failed to become an IT superpower. While it has produced successful companies like Infosys and Wipro, its high-skilled labour force comprises no more than 2% of the country’s labour force. Industry employs less than 15% of Indian workers with most eking an existence off the land.

India’s secularism and its democratic political system are also being eroded. Under Narendra Modi and the Hindu-Nationalist BJP, the Indian Government has curtailed freedom of expression and dissent by authors, students, scholars and filmmakers. It has also stoked violence against India’s Muslims through its cow-protections laws.

Its worth reflecting on what India is today and where it is going. In Midnight to Millenium, Tharoor remarked that the BJP and Hindu Nationalists could not destroy India unless they destroyed India’s political culture of secularism and its acceptance of pluralism. With that culture now being undermined, can India be far behind?

Reinventing China: A Critique

Written by Randeep Purewall

In Reinventing China, Zhuqing Li looks at how Chinese nationals, educated and professionally employed in the United States, return to make their mark on their homeland. The five cases profiled by Zhuqing Li include environmentalist Liao Xiaoyi, sexologist, Li Yinhe and telecommunications CEO, Chen Datong.

Reinventing China is an illuminating look into a generation which began seizing opportunities after China’s opening up in 1978. It’s also a fascinating window on how this generation is changing China from the ground up.

Liao creates green neighbourhoods in Beijing. Li fights to legalize same-sex marriage in China. Chen Datong takes on Apple, Samsung and Motorola by making smart phones in China accessible and affordable. And three female business partners, Wang Yi, Luo Ming and Ning Aidong, find a library bringing a new kind of children’s literature to China.

As engrossing as it reads, Reinventing China tries to make China fit into a narrative palatable to the West: the West is changing China through the Chinese. But are all Western-educated returnees to China forces for change? Is all such change positive? And why do so many Chinese choose not to return to their home country (like the author herself)?

The returnees in Reinventing China also come from some of the wealthier and more privileged social classes. They enjoy good connections. They include well known personalities like Li who is recognized internationally for her activism on GLBT issues and Liao who was named TIME “Hero of the Environment” in 2009. How representative are they for the rest of China’s returnees?

Zhuqing Li also positions her cases alongside a history of Chinese returnees including Sun Yat Sen. Sun was a political revolutionary set on changing the existing order. The individuals here are not interested in changing the order. And where they seek to effect social change, like Li on same-sex marriage legislation, they work with the Chinese Communist Party.

China will keep changing, no doubt. Zhuqing Li shows how China is changing at a micro-level even if it’s not being reinvented.

The Truth of Suffering

Written by Randeep Purewall

I had seen it months ago, but did nothing. It got lost in that sea of tweets, saber-rattling over North Korea and post-Brexit negotiations. It was forgotten in Canada when Trump questioned Canada’s behaviour under NAFTA. Nor was it remembered with the coverage of the French election.

It didn’t go anywhere, becoming worse everywhere. The images of children in South Sudan, souls in skeletons, a two year child weighing less than a two month old. He died by the time his story hit the air.

The famine in South Sudan is a crisis. It may not affect some of us like a United passenger being dragged off a plane by security. But it affects us. Amidst all the fake news, this is real.

https://support.unicef.org/donate/famine-crisis

https://www.oxfam.ca/

 

Hong Kong: 20 Years After

Written by Randeep Purewall

On April 26, 2017, the University of British Columbia’s Hong Kong Studies Initiative hosted “Hong Kong: 20 Years After,” a symposium on Hong Kong two decades after its handover to China. Convened over by Leo Shin of UBC, the symposium brought together Diana Lary and Josephine Chiu-Duke of UBC with Stephen Yiu-Wai Chu and Petula Sik-Ying Ho of Hong Kong University.

Hong Kong is not a democracy, but it is a pluralistic society with a liberal, rule-based culture. It served as a haven for artists, intellectuals and students in the Chinese speaking world in the 1960s says Chiu-Duke who, while living under the KMT in Taiwan, read newspapers like Ming Pao for their critical perspectives. Hong Kong’s residents also supported the Democracy Movement of 1989, and the city proved a creative force in film and popular culture.

That creative influence may be dying, however. As Chu points out, Hong Kong filmmakers are casting actors from the PRC in their lead roles and catering ever more to the audience of mainland China. The rights and freedoms of Hong Kong residents are also threatened says Ho whether in police pepper spraying student protesters in the Umbrella Movement or Beijing’s interference in the governance of Hong Kong University.

How broad is Hong Kong’s democracy movement in any case? One audience member pointed out that the Umbrella Movement was largely a youth movement while democratic reform is rarely debated in the Hong Kong legislature. Chiu-Duke noted, however, that liberal values and the rule of law in societies like Hong Kong may precede the development of democracy as they did in the U.K.

The question of Cantonese was also discussed. Chu pointed to the PRC’s introduction of Mandarin Chinese into Hong Kong schools at the expense of Cantonese. He told me after the symposium about China’s argument that learning Mandarin results in a purer form of written Chinese than Cantonese. Lary, however, argued that Hong Kong citizens will likely speak Cantonese, English and Mandarin as multilingual citizens in a globalized world.

When I visited Hong Kong in 2015, I felt that the city was as socially and culturally vibrant as any other. It was a society buzzing with life and energy. Those who predict its end in 2047 overlook its importance to China both as a source of investment for China and as a world financial centre. Their predictions also assume that the PRC will itself not change politically, including the possibility of evolving toward a more benign authoritarian regime.

It was clear from the start of the symposium: Hong Kong matters. Canadian citizens abound in Hong Kong and the legacy of Hong Kong’s immigrants is apparent in Canadian politics, business and culture. More broadly, as a liberal, post-colonial city and as a quintessentially modern Asian society, Hong Kong will continue to inspire interest.

Film Review: After The Storm (海よりもまだ深く)

Reviewed by Randeep Purewall

Cast: Hiroshi Abe (Ryoto Shinoda); Yoko Maki (Kyoko Shiraishi); Taiyo Yoshizawa (Shingo Shiraishi); Kirin Kiki (Yoshiko Shinoda).

Director: Hirokazu Koreeda

One of the characteristics of Japanese art and poetry is “mono no aware” (物の哀れ), a refined sensitivity to the sorrow and beauty of the transient world. The waning of the autumn moon, the fading of cherry blossoms and the vision of wild geese vanishing into the mountain mist – all these are mono no aware

In Hirokazu Koreeda’s, After The Storm (海よりもまだ深く), Ryota is a writer who has not published anything for years. He gambles away his meager earnings, falls behind in paying child support and watches by while a new beau moves in on his ex, Kyoko and son, Shingo.

One night during a storm, Ryoto, Kyoko and Shingo find themselves stranded at Ryoto’s mother’s (Yoshiko). What follows that night are precious moments for father and son, Ryoto and Kyoko and between Ryoto and his mother …

After The Storm is a film about love, family and forgiveness. It’s a tale of Ryoto who searched for happiness everywhere except for in the present. It’s also Ryoto’s story of a life lived in search of himself. In the tradition of mono no aware, After The Storm, is poignant, poetic and sensitive, a story flowing in soul and dignity with the performances of Abe and Kiki at its heart.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MISbcZZvSPI

 

 

Punjabi Poetry: Ustad Daman

Written by Randeep Purewall

Ustad Daman (né Chiragh Din) was born in Lahore in 1911. As a boy, he worked at his father’s tailoring shop while also attending school. Daman learned classical Punjabi poetry at home and was educated in Urdu. He also learned Persian and English including Shakespeare, Keats and Hardy.

Having participated in school poetry recitals, Daman began attending musha’ara in the parks, fairs and bazaars of Lahore as a teenager during the 1920s. The movement for India’s independence had already begun. In 1929, the Indian National Congress made its Declaration of Independence from Lahore. The city was also home to Marxist groups like the Kirti Kisan and anti-colonial and revolutionary groups like the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.

Daman recited his own revolutionary and anti-colonial poetry at the musha’ara. While attending one such gathering, Jawaharlal Nehru referred to Daman as the “Poet of Freedom.”

‘In China the Chinese are grand,
In Russia they do as they have planned.
In Japan its people rule over its strand.
The British rule the land of England,
The French hold the land of France,
In Tehran the Persians make their stand.
The Afghans hold on to their highland,
Turkmenistan’s freedom bears the Turkmen’s brand,
How very strange is indeed this fact,
That freedom in India is a contraband’
(Trans. F. Sharma).

Daman remained in Lahore upon the creation of Pakistan in 1947. The riots of the Partition had consumed his shop and library and he lost his wife and son to illness. His first act of political defiance came in 1958 when he made fun of Pakistan’s first military coup under Ayub Khan. Daman’s arrest however did little to temper his criticism of Pakistan’s military dictatorships and the corruption of its civilian governments in his poetry.

Daman wrote in Punjabi and the form, rhythm and metaphor of his poetry bears the influence of the classical and folk Punjabi tradition. If he could be sober and thoughtful in writing on the Partition, he could also adopt a more comic and satirical note in criticizing General Zia. He maintained a friendship with poets like Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib, but lived unassumingly in an old apartment in the precinct of the Badshahi Mosque.

Daman died in 1984. His poetry was published after his death by his friends and followers. The room he lived in near the Badshahi Mosque has since become an academy in his name.

Selected Poems (Trans. F. Sharma)

We may not say it but know it well
You lost your way. We too.
Partition has destroyed us friends.
You too, and us.
The wakeful have quite plundered us.
You slept the while, and we.
Into the jaws of death alive
You were flung. We too.
Life still may stir in us again:
You are stunned yet, and we.
The redness of the eyes betrays
You too have wept, and we.

–

What a house, this Pakistan!
Above live saints, down thieves have their run
A new order has come into force
Up above twenty families, below the hundred million.
Other people conquered mountains,
We live under the divisions heavy ton.
Other people may have conquered the moon.
But in a yawning precipice a place we’ve won.
I ran and ran and was aching all over,
I looked back and saw the donkey resting under the banyan.

–

Two gods hold my country in their sway
Martial law and La Illaha have here their heyday.
That one rules there over in the heavens
Down here this one’s writ runs.
His name is Allah Esquire.
This one is called Zia, the light of truth in full array.
Hurrah, General Zia, hip hip hooray,
Whoever can make you go away.

Ecstacy does my land surround
All around the Army is to be found.
Hundreds of thousands were surrendered as POWs.
Half of the land was bartered away in the fray.
Hurrah, General Zia, hip hip hooray,
Whoever can make you go away.

On TV you give recitations from Quran
With fables and traditions you go on and on.
Here we are engulfed in a brouhaha
While up there you are still there, my Allah
A pretender has staked his claim today
Hurrah, General Zia, hip hip hooray,
Whoever can make you go away.

–

Thankful are some if they can chop wood
The others, on them, their orders bestow.
Why have the people lost their mind?
For every one the Almighty has a loving glow.
People are the real masters of this world
Orders do not from the handle of a sword flow.
The ones, Daman, who have forsaken God,
Those Nimruds are laid low at the very first blow.