Chinatown, Existing

Featuring Vancouver’s Chinatown as a living classroom, this collaborative field trip program showcases Chinese Canadian resilience in the face of discrimination.

Since early migration until now, Chinese Canadians have had and continue to have diverse and complex relationships with Canada. Racial discrimination against Chinese Canadians was prevalent during the creation of the nation, yet their individual voices and experiences are often left out of the historical narrative. In this three-part field trip consisting of a visit to the Chinese Canadian Museum, the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden, as well as a mini Chinatown walking tour, students will explore the endurance of Vancouver Chinatown and the resilience of the Chinese Canadian community through stories of food, community, and activism.

_{Chinese Cultural Centre, 1979}

_{Wing Hing Dry Goods, 1981}

_{Keefer Street, 1986}

Photos courtesy of Paul Yee in the City of Vancouver Archives

This field trip is hosted collaboratively in partnership by the Chinese Canadian Museum and Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden, and features research and content development by the UBC Initiative for Student Teaching and Research in Chinese Canadian Studies (UBC INSTRCC).

Curriculum Links

Social Studies Big Ideas:

• Disparities in power alter the relationships between individuals and between societies
• Collective identity is constructed and can change over time
• Historical and contemporary injustices challenge the narrative and identity of Canada as an inclusive, multicultural society

Curricular Competencies:

• Use Social Studies inquiry processes and skills to ask questions, analyze data, and present findings
• Assess the justification for competing accounts
• Assess cause and consequence of the actions of individuals or groups 
• Explain and infer different perspectives by considering prevailing norms
• Make reasoned ethical judgements and assess appropriate ways to remember and respond

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Target Audience: Grades 9-10 

Duration: 3 hrs

Rate: $24/student

Availability: Tuesdays and Wednesdays until March 31, 2023

Vancouver’s Chinatown exists on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, & səlilwətaɬ nations.

As a diverse and expansive community, Chinatown connects to those far beyond its formal boundaries on a map. Encompassing at once the century-old buildings on Pender Street, and youth delivering groceries to seniors during a pandemic, Chinatown is more than an open air museum. Powerfully tied to the present moment, be it protesting against the threat of displacement, or small things like the smell of sweet buns in the morning, it is community resilience- past, present, and future.

This is Chinatown, existing.

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