Chung

I was recently asked where all of the archival material related to the Yip Family and the Wing Sang Company (later the Yip Sang Company) is kept. Because Yip Sang and his family were so prominent in the early days of Vancouver’s Chinese-Canadian community, they are now of great interest to researchers. It seems like a good time to highlight the various places where this archival material can be found:

The two main institutions with archives originating from the Yip family are here in the Chung Collection at UBC Library and also at the City of Vancouver Archives.  In the Chung Collection, we have a number of family photographs and other family documents, such as correspondence between the siblings, Christmas cards, wedding and party invitations; personal documents of some of the siblings and their various career and personal interests; and extensive business records of the Wing Sang/Yip Sang Company, including records of steamship ticket sales, and records related to their exporting and cannery businesses. We also have a number of artifacts from the Wing Sang building, mostly related to business, such as clipboards, a lantern and rubber stamps.

At the City of Vancouver Archives, there are similar documents, including family photographs and business records. What makes the material at the City of Vancouver really special are more than 600 undelivered letters sent to and from Chinese immigrants and Chinese family and friends in China. The Yip family acted as unofficial postmasters for the Chinese-Canadian community, because letters addressed with Chinese characters could not be delivered by the Canadian postal system. The undelivered letters in the fonds are written in older style Chinese, dating from ca. 1903 to 1919.  Through a joint digitization project between UBC Library and the City of Vancouver Archives, these letters are now digitized and available online.

Finally, there are over 300 artifacts related to the Yip family at the Museum of Vancouver. You can see some of their Chinatown artifacts online, and see some artifacts in person in their Gateway to the Pacific exhibition.

How did the archives of one family end up in two institutions? When the Wing Sang building renovations were started in the 1980’s, one family member offered some of the historical material to Dr. Chung, and another family member sent other material to the City of Vancouver Archives (you can read the really interesting story of their salvage operation in the Wing Sang building on their website). The good news is, both halves of the collection are now in public institutions, freely available to any researcher who wishes to view them! You can even search both the digitized material from Chung Collection and the undelivered Yip letters through our joint project The Chinese Experience in B.C. 1850-1950.

You can read more about the Yip family through the Chung Collection, and also browse all of the Yip family and company items in the collection; you can also access online a finding aid to the collection at the City of Vancouver Archives.

The helpful folks in our Systems department at UBC Library have made a significant upgrade to the search functionality of the Chung Collection website: you can now choose to search only for items which have an online version currently available. This is a great option for those who are using the collection from away and are unable to come and see the items in person (or who prefer to do research at home in their pyjamas).

From the Quick Search box on the home page, the Search page or the Advanced Search page just choose “Online” in the new “Availability” box. The database will then retrieve records for items with an online version when you perform your search. To see the online version, click on the thumbnail view which appears in the record for each item.

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!