sromkey

Congratulations to our colleagues at the University of Victoria Archives-  a gift of $26,000 from the Victoria Foundation has been announced to digitize and translate the archives of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association.  Since many of the documents in this archival collection are in traditional Chinese script, this funding will make the material more accesible to scholars and students who cannot read the script.

You can read more about the funding announcement here ; you can read more about the collection here.

Happy Chinese New Year! By way of celebration, we’re going to try to make our way through the Chinese zodiac using photographs from the Chung Collection. (Now updated to include ox and tiger!)

Since this is the year of the Rabbit, we’ll start there. This photograph is from an album of photos taken by a Chinese-American teenager between 1915 and 1918 named Jue Fong, or Frank Jue.  Aside from rabbits and other furry friends, this album is a wonderful source of images showing everyday life for Chinese-American teens in the early 20^th century.  Frank and his friends were very theatrical and humorous, which comes across in the photographs and their captions.

This dragon sculpture we believe was exhibited at the Chinese Cultural Centre in Vancouver in the 1970’s. If you know more about this sculpture, please tell us about it at chung.collection@ubc.ca !

An image of a snake charmer was found in an album from the world cruise on the C.P.R. steamer Empress of Britain in 1930. Ports of call on this cruise included Spain, Italy, Egypt, India, Singapore, Thailand, Bali, Hong Kong, China, and Hawaii. This snake charmer may have been in Singapore.

This horse and wagon scene is found in the Clandonald material in the Chung Collection.  While the Chung Collection is possibly best known for its Chinese Canadian content, we also hold a valuable archive of material related to a Scottish colony in Alberta called Clandonald, one of many settled by the C.P.R. colonization department.

Another world traveler brought us this sheep photograph. It was taken in New Zealand by Ken Seaton’s on a world cruise aboard the Empress of Britain ca. 1930.

This photograph of a monkey (or possibly a baboon?) being led on a leash was taken in Indonesia. Another world cruise album, this one was taken by Franklin and Jane Sykes between 1927 and 1928 on the Empress of Australia.

The closest that can be found in the Chung Collection to a rooster is a chicken. This image, titled “A chicken in one hand…” by the photographer depicts a Chinese woman in San Francisco’s Chinatown holding a chicken in one hand, and probably her grandson in the other.  This is one of many images we have in the Chung Collection showing San Francisco’s Chinatown, and dates from around 1900.

This stunning photo of a forest on Vancouver Island depicts a man with his dog and is from an album of photographs depicting the Victoria, Esquimalt and Saanich area. This album is a bit of a mystery- we have dated it to around 1910 but the photographer and original owner are both unknown.

The only pigs to be found in Chung Collection photographs unfortunately have met their end- this photograph of street vendors in Hong Kong with roast pigs is the front of a postcard, sold as souvenirs on the Canadian Pacific cruise ships.  

As for rats, we could not find any in the Chung Collection. Depending on your opinion of rats, this might be a good thing!

This photograph of oxen pushing a waterwheel in Mumbai is from an album of photographs from the Empress of Australia and Empress of Britain world tours, which we believe was assembled by a crew member who worked on these ships. Documents related to the experience of CPR crew members can bring an interesting perspective, different from that of travelers.

While we could not locate any photos of tigers per se, this photograph of traveler Kitty David was taken at Tiger Hill in Suzhou, still a popular tourist destination. You can see the Yunyan Pagoda in the background.  We have three photograph albums of Kitty David’s travels through China, this one from her 1932 tour through China . We do not know much about her, but she seems to have travelled with a partner or a guide since many of the photographs have her in them. Some of the photographs depict destruction from the Sino-Japanese War.

We hope you enjoyed this tour through the Chinese zodiac- it certainly shows how diverse material in the Chung Collection is. Gung hay fat choy!

The photographs used in this post can be found by searching for the following identifers:

Rabbit: CC-PH-00907

Dragon: CC-PH-00242

Snake: CC-PH-05131

Horse: CC-PH-02191

Sheep: CC-PH-02367

Monkey: CC-PH-04901

Rooster: CC-PH-02010

Dog: CC-PH-06418

Pig: CC-PH-03619

Ox: CC-PH-03529

Tiger: CC-PH-00544

A lot of people do not realize that the Chung Collection has a “sister-” Drs. Chung made a donation of maritime-related material to the Vancouver Maritime Museum in addition to the collection donated to UBC. The “other” Chung Collection consists of over 3800 books and periodicals, 1400 photographs and 600 posters, including technical drawings and posters on the subjects of tourism and immigration.

From Dec. 7 – till April 1 2011 the Vancouver Maritime Musuem is exhibiting items from their Chung Collection in an exhibition titled “The Golden Age of Steamship Travel: Voyages of Immigration that Changed Canada.”  Highlights include a 1929 model of the Empress of Japan (II) (like our Empress of Asia model, also restored by Dr. Chung), a biography of the Chungs, and descriptions of the Atlantic Steamship companies and ships and the evolution of the steamship industry.

Also, a few items have been borrowed from our Chung Collection, including a set of empress dishware, a head tax certificate and a poster depicting Amor de Cosmos “throwing out” a man of Chinese descent.

Check the Vancouver Maritime Museum website for hours and admission information!

The Chung Collection exhibition space will be closed for the same duration as UBC Library: from December 24 at 3 pm until 9 am on January 4th.  However, if you are on campus before we close down, please feel free to come and view not only the Chung Collection exhibition, but also a special holiday exhibition in the reading room of Rare Books and Special Collections. “‘Tis the Season” features historic children’s holiday books, a collection of West Coast holiday books, and holiday items from fine presses such as Heavenly Monkey, Charles Van Sandwyck and Robert Sabuda.  The Christmas labels from the Chung Collection,above, are also featured in a case dedicated to the jolly old elf himself.  The Chung Collection and Rare Books and Special Collections are located on the first floor of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.