Imagine having the Vancouver Aquarium all to yourselves... Imagine having a nice quiet after-hours dinner at the Aquarium with only the company of beluga whales (known as "the canaries of the sea")... and your loved one.   more »

Gung Haggis paddlers win Gold medal with Concorde Pacific Flying Dragons in San Francisco. Race details and results...   more »

Many of our Gung Haggis paddlers were on vacation in San Francisco, Penticton, England, France and elsewhere... so we invited some paddler friends from Chilliwack to join us. But we had too many for one boat - so we went out in two!   more »

Heartbeat is the 4th and lastest "action-musical" from producer Dr. Dennis Law at the Centre in Vancouver For Performing Arts. The story is basically a drum and dance fantasy structured loosely on the premise that a young girl named Jade has a dream in which the god of dragons leads her through the history of drums in China.   more »

My friend Karen Lee-Morlang, pianist/singer is artist-in-residence for the Silk Purse Arts Centre in West Vancouver. For the month of August she lined up some great performers.   more »

Check out these special concerts at the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Chinese Classical Gardens in Vancouver's Historic Chinatown.

The Enchanted Evenings concert series was originally created by my friend Qiu Xia He of the Silk Road Music ensemble.  July 29th featured Qiu Xia's other group Joutou - which blends together music and style from Quebec, China, Ireland and South America.

And I can proudly say that my cousin, architect Joe Y. Wai was one of the main architects designing the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Gardens.  I absolutely love the gardens, and each year I take my dragon boat team there for a tour and tai chi lesson.

Check out these very special remaining concerts!

August 26 - Sawagi Taiko
Canada's first all-women, all Asian taiko drumming group strives to encourage cultural connections among different Asian Canadian communities and explores members’ ancestral legacies. The instrument originates in China but the artistic form comes from rural communities of Japan.

Sept. 2 - Silk Road
An award winning ensemble that takes Chinese music in daring new directions, incorporating jazz improvisation, Latin rhythms, French Canadian folk elements and Celtic strains. These world musicians are Qiu Xia He (pipa), Zhi Min Yu (ruan), Feng Jun Wang (vocals), Willy Miles (bass and vocals) and Andre Thibault (guitar, oud, percussion). They will present new works from a CD being compiled and due to be released soon.

We've moved our dragonboat practice to 12 noon for Sunday, August 21. This is to accomodate a Sunday afternoon bbq/picnic following practice as one of our paddlers Ashleigh is moving to Montreal for a year-long job placement.   more »

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Sex in Vancouver Part 3 - Intimate Secrets runs until this weekend, August 20,
8pm
Round House,
Vancouver, BC

Yesterday's Georgia Straight did a review of Sex in Vancouver, the serial play produced by Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre.

Here's the link
http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=12222

Check out the review in Rice Paper Magazine

Check out www.vact.org
Home page for Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre.

I have always had fun attending the VACT productions, especially the first two installments of Sex in Vancouver.  It's also a lot of fun spotting friends in the audience and the cast. Not completely professional yet - but no longer completely amateur either.  More importantly it both provides a platform for Asian Canadian actors to explore their craft, as well as providing roles beyond stereotypes and small supporting roles.

Two weeks ago the Vancouver Sun also published a preview about the show that included a short interview with one of the actors.  Of course it's the standard story - no roles for Asian actors.  Many many years ago Donna Yamamoto won a Jessie Award for excellence in acting... still no big roles for her since.  So much for colour blind casting in this town.  But do check out Sex in Vancouver... watch the cast and crew doing something that they love, something that they feel is important.  And maybe if they like you, they will invite you to the crew wrap party afterwards!

Here's a message from my friend George Sapounidis in Ottawa. If you're there... please check him out - very entertaining.... George is a Greek-Canadian who sings in Mandarin Chinese, and was featured in the CBC television performance special "Gung Haggis Fat Choy"   more »

Here's an article on the Chinese-Canadian pioneer community - the Lo Wah Kui. They were targets of the Immigration Act, also known as the Exclusion Act because the legislation prohibited Chinese immigration. No other ethnic groups were singled out. Sid Tan and other pioneer descendents are interviewed by Warren Mailey for Pacific Rim Magazine. Very interesting... My own ancestors came to Canada in 1888 and 1891 - just prior to the headtax - but later relatives still had to pay the racist tax only levied if you were Chinese, from anywhere in the world - before the outright ban in 1923.   more »

Good practice on Sunday, as we practiced starts and turns. We have a wonderful group of people. They commented on our last social outing to see the Vancouver Symphony at Deer Lake, they are thinking of which races they want to enter next year, and they each tell me, that if we can stick together next year, we should really improve.    more »

Bruce Springsteen in Vancouver... the last stop of his "summer extravaganza," as Bruce described it. The GM Place hockey rink was transformed into the Pontiac Theatre for this "intimate solo concert in a theatrical setting was extraordinary!    more »

I went to two different concerts this week: Alison Krauss and Union Station at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver on Tuesday Aug 9th, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at Deer Lake Park on Friday August 12th.   more »

I met Jeff at the Vancouver Public Library's Japanese Canadian Cultural Fair. He and his girlfriend are delightful. He is an animator. "What Are You Anyways?" tells the story of growing up with parents of different ethnicitis (Japanese & British) in a small Canadian town (Kelowna)    more »

Funny how things happen... discovering distant family members you never knew you had.  In 2000, we planned a family reunion for the descendents of Rev. Chan Yu Tan, my great-great-grandfather who came to Canada in 1896.  We discovered the descendents of his elder brother Rev. Chan Sing Kai who had arrived in 1888, and their younger sister Naomi - both whom had moved the United States.

Janice Wong introduced herself on e-mail to me last month, as the niece of my grandmother's cousin in Victoria.  She is a visual artist and shares with me a deep interest in Chinese Canadian history. And... she has written a cook book based on family stories and recipies.  I can hardly wait to see the book... and to meet her too... of course!

Book launch will be October 12th at Sylvia Hotel, Vancouver BC.
For book details contact www.fireflybooks.com
or try the publisher Whitecap Books
Here's a link to find the book distributed in UK, USA, France, Germany or Canada

A cookbook and a fascinating glimpse into Canadian history. Born a two-pound preemie in 1917, Dennis Wong may have begun his love of food after spending the first months of his life keeping warm in his mother's cooking oven. Miraculously surviving his tenuous beginning, Dennis went on to pursue an ambitious culinary career, opening two Chinese-Canadian cafés in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, to introduce countless adventurous Canadian diners to Chinese food. In Chow, Dennis's daughter Janice Wong tells her father's tale through heart-rending stories and traditional Chinese village recipes. A collection of more than 50 simple family fare dishes, Chow contains early photographs, immigration documents, 1940s restaurant menus, and handwritten recipes that trace the history of some of Canada's first ethnic restaurants. Written with refreshing sincerity, Chow is both a terrific cookbook and a detailed record of an intriguing chapter in Canadian history. It includes recipes for: Dungeness Crab with Black Bean Sauce Steamed Chicken with Rice, Sausage and Mushrooms Asparagus, Mushrooms and Pork Chinese Barbecue Duck Peking Doilies Wong's Chocolate Chip Cookies.
About The Author:
Janice Wong is a visual artist whose work has received numerous awards. The daughter of a restaurateur, she was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. She now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Vancouver is one of North America's centres for Chinese Canadian culture.  Despite Chinese being in Canada since the mid 1800's, Andy Yan's demographic study shows that our recent Chinese immigrants greatly outnumber our Canadian born chinese. 

How does this impact Chinese Canadian culture?  Does it support it's Canadian-ness as more immigrants seek to integrate and assimilate?  Or is the opposite true, as more and more new immigrants try to hold onto their Chinese-ness?

This weekend saw the opening of the 6th annual Chinatown Festival. featuring an opening performance from Heartbeat, many multicultural performances, folk art demonstrations, a youth talent show, a BMX demonstration.  Vancouver's historic Chinatown has struggled commercially and developmentally with competition commercial Chinese development in Richmond, Burnaby and more recently Port Coquitlam.  But Vancouver Chinatown has always been innovative starting up the first night markets, and also the Chinatown Festival which will feature many attractions for tourists and Vancouverites alike.

Dennis Law, a Chinese-American from Denver - but born in Hong Kong... brings his 4th action-musical to Vancouver.  Heartbeat follows this year's Senses, last year's Terracotta Warriors, and the previous Heaven and Earth.  These are exciting shows that combine Chinese acrobatics, dance, music and martial arts with a kind of Cirque du Soleil magic and sensibility.  I have enjoyed each of the shows so far and am amazed at what I continue to learn about Chinese culture - old and new.  Definitely looking forward to seeing Heartbeat after its original opening was delayed due to the trucker strike in Vancouver.

When I grew up in Vancouver during the 1960's and 1970's, Chinese immigration was still restricted to family sponsorship, after being almost completely banned from 1922 to 1947 during the implementation of the Chinese "Exclusion" Act.  It was still a time when my parents and all our contemporaries still sought to assimilate into Canadian culture - often at the expense of forsaking anything Chinese that was a reminder of being treated
as a second class citizen due to the racial discrimination that many Chinese continued to suffer in Canada.

Today, being Chinese in Canada benefits from the many multicultural festivals, and the fact that many of the new immigrants never knew the negative identity that many Chinese Canadians had to face.  Chinese Canadian history and community leaders are being accepted as Canadian history and as Canadian leaders, who just happen to be of Chinese ancestry.

Joy Kogawa was a featured reader at the Japanese Canadian cultural fair at the Vancouver Public Library on Saturday, August 6th - which also marked the 60th Anniversary of Hiroshima.    more »

Good practice on Sunday afternoon with the Taiwanese Dragon Boat. We had special guests Andrew Yan and Linda Chiu, race organizers for the San Francisco Dragon Boat Races, who were in town for a wedding and were interested in taking a look at these ornately carved dragon boats - especially built for flag-grabbing finishes.   more »

Imagine my surprise when I was watching CBC TV's The National, and there was a familiar face from Kilts Night socials at Doolin's Irish Pub. Vince Hemingson - tatoo maven and connesieur expert, was being interviewed for The National.   more »

Here is a message from my friend Eric Neighbour - wood carving artist extraordinaire.  It is through Eric's Vision that Bob Brinson and myself created the Gung Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat head and tail wood carvings.

 

Check out the Japanese Canadian Cultural Fair in the Vancouver Public Library's Central Branch promenade on Saturday. 350 West Georgia Street.   more »