Chung

Happy birthday Vancouver! Today, April 6 2011, marks the 125^th anniversary of the incorporation of the City of Vancouver.

Another birthday celebration in Vancouver’s past was the Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1936.  The local Chinese Canadian community was very spirited, creating a “Chinese village” with a big, beautifully constructed bamboo arch, located at the corner of Pender and Carrell.  The Chinese village was accompanied by a souvenir pamphlet produced by Quene Yip (son of the “unofficial mayor” of Chinatown Yip Sang) called “Vancouver Chinatown.” These were concerted efforts on the part of Chinese Canadians to “open up” their community to the rest of the city and to tourists, trying to break down the barriers of fear and misunderstanding that existed in the early years of Vancouver.  A letter from his sister Susan Yip praised Quene’s efforts:

“It was an excellent idea to have composed such a booklet, giving the foreign visitors an insight into “Vancouver Chinatown”… for the right kind of publicity is very necessary for the Chinese and China nowadays in this world of international relationship!”

Search the Chung Collection for the keywords “Golden Jubilee” or “Chinese Village” for records of these events.

Vancouver 125 links:

Our friends at the City of Vancouver Archives have summarized the activities of the Golden Jubilee Society in 1936.

The Vancouver Sun has excellent coverage today of Vancouver 125 events.

Don’t forget to vote for the places in Vancouver that matter to you with the Vancouver Heritage Foundation (voting closes at midnight tonight!).

And of course, check out the City of Vancouver anniversary site for complete listings of events and activities.

“Road to Justice” is a new web resource outlining the early legal history of Chinese Canadians. Presented by the Metro Toronto Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic with funding from the Community Historical Recognition Program, the website gives background on all aspects of Chinese Canadian legal history including laws and legislation, key court cases, the first Chinese Canadian lawyers and the redress campaign.  The site includes text, case study documents, video interviews, and a graphical timeline which is a great teaching resource.

Related material in the Chung Collection includes material related to Dock Yip, the first Chinese Canadian lawyer called to the bar. Also try searching under subject headings such as Chinese–capture and imprisonment, Law & legal affairs, and Emigration & Immigration.  Researchers of this topic should also be sure to consult the finding aid for the John Keenlyside Legal Research Collection, which like the Chung Collection, is held in the Rare Books and Special Collections division of the UBC Library.

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.