TRANSCRIPT
OLIVIA: The Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program would like to acknowledge that this podcast was recorded on the traditional, unceded, ancestral homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. We hope that as we continue to facilitate these conversations about Asian diasporic communities, we also engage in critical dialogue about what it means to be uninvited guests and settlers on these lands. As this podcast discusses the community engagement work of the Pacific Canada Heritage Centre – Museum of Migration, the Centre would like to honour the history of Asian and Indigenous relations in Pacific Canada and the questions of land, migration, settler colonialism, and more are central to their work on these lands.
Welcome to the first mini episode of the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration studies podcast — a series of short interviews where we sit down with members of the ACAM community and learn about the community initiatives and projects they have been working on. My name is Olivia Lim, I’m the Marketing and Communications Coordinator at ACAM and I’ll be your host for this episode. We hope that this interview series can be a way to continue building connection between ACAM students, staff, faculty and community partners, while also providing our community members with a platform to share similar work they’ve been doing in their community during this time.
My guest for this episode is Winnie Cheung, the executive director at PCHC, the Pacific Canada Heritage Centre Museum of Migration. I had a chance to chat with Winnie and learn more about her migration story, how she became involved in Asian Canadian community work, and hear about “From Far and Wide: Pacific Canada Stories”, PCHC’s virtual storytelling project that gathers and shares stories of migration in Pacific Canada and beyond. If you’re interested in participating in their collective storytelling project, you can submit a video or audio recording of your own migration story. Or interview a friend or family member about theirs. To learn more, visit the PCHC website at www.pchc-mom.ca. I hope you enjoy this episode.
As the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies program, we’re always interested in hearing about people’s own experiences of migration. Could you tell us a bit about your and your family’s migration story?
WINNIE: Your question started me on a journey to look back. And when I look at migration, it’s very much part of what human history is about. I was born in Hong Kong, growing up in the predominant culture is Cantonese and because my mother is Cantonese, of course I am a Cantonese person. Our father came from Fujian Province, 福建 (fuk gin) in Cantonese. We never thought about migration, but when we were little, we heard about how our parents came to Hong Kong. So, on my mother’s side, because of the Japanese invasion in China, the family had to flee. On my father’s side, it’s more interesting. We knew that it’s because of the civil war and so as a young man, he and his cousins came out to Hong Kong to escape from being drafted into an army when they were not sure why they were fighting themselves.
In our generation, we’re luckier. My first big journey was when I was an international student. I got a scholarship to go to a commonwealth country and I chose New Zealand. Eventually, 1986, I married a Canadian. He grew up in Saskatchewan, and I didn’t know about the rich stories of Chinese Canadians until I settled here and got to know his parents. I never met his grandfather, but I was so moved at the story. And so, the seed was planted in me, why I was interested in migration almost 20, 30 years later, after I have settled in Canada. And it made a lot of sense for me to pursue it a little bit better, to understand that it’s not just about my family and my story, it’s about the human conditions. Why would people want to move around? And in some cases, suffer a great deal when they did that.
OLIVIA: I like the point you raise about how learning more about your own family’s history can open up new questions about identity and belonging. That’s such a great illustration of how our own migration stories can inform our community work. How did you become involved in Asian Canadian community work?
WINNIE: I wasn’t particularly involved in Asian things because of my background. My academic discipline, you wouldn’t believe it, was English Literature. So, my second degree was focused on English Literature. I was going to be an academic, but I got seduced into university administration, so I gave up. I had no time to get involved in my early days because in my job. Well, I was appointed as the Director of International Student Centre, which later was expanded, my mandate was expanded and became International Student Services. My background is really dealing with the whole world. You know my background really wasn’t about Asian Studies or Asian Canadians. After I took early retirement, hey, I can do whatever I want.
When a group of people across Western Canada came up with the idea of the fact that we should have a hub here, like a migration museum here. Henry [Yu] invited me to their very first meeting in Vancouver when a couple of them came from other provinces. So that’s how I started to get involved in this. By working as a volunteer, and by bringing all the skills and experience I learned from my career here, I’m saying thank you to Canada. I was lucky, a new immigrant being able to get right back into my field. I’m in the position of, not power, but some influence because I was with people, I could bring about change in a very legitimate way within my mandate.
Now that I’m working in the community, I realize I was so spoiled throughout my career. I always had a team of people, paid staff and others, with a lot of skills supporting the work I was asked to do. Now, I had to learn how to do my typing, how to organize my files, how to handle Zoom and coordinate screen sharing. So, I said, this is great, I’m forcing myself to learn things I never had the aptitude. I am very grateful. When you are engaged in community work, that is the blessing. Now, I am more efficient and sufficient. So, thank you. This is a pitch for people who want to continue learning. You are never too old to learn.
OLIVIA: It’s so interesting to hear about the history and stories behind organizations like PCHC and the people who’ve put in the time and effort to make community projects like this happen. Shifting gears a bit, during this time of COVID, our new reality has forced a lot of us to really think about our approaches to community work and our ways of being in community together. How has COVID changed or impacted community work that you do with PCHC.
WINNIE: So, we just started with a new board and then I took time off to visit my mother in Hong Kong in February. So, we had a retreat in January and so the basis was there, and my colleagues were very good. They were going to have their own board meeting while I was away. When I came back, I was going to pick up and see where things are, and of course when I came back in early March, I came from one long staycation in Hong Kong and back into another one in Canada. We had our first board meeting that I attended with the new board. We just appointed a new honourary advisor and so I invited her to attend our board meeting in March. And it was something that she said as she was introducing herself that triggered something, and Henry picked it up (Henry Yu, Professor Yu) and said hey, yeah, so what about this…. So, we started brainstorming and that was the beginning of a new programming idea.
Now in the past, we would have maybe six to eight or ten meetings a year for the board. But now because of Zoom… well, we still miss having a chance to interact face-to-face and situated in the same room where we can have human interaction, but the good thing is, people are more available in a way– no excuse, no commuting time involved. Now, on Zoom, it’s so much easier to find a time to meet. Apart from the monthly board meeting, we have a working group with directors and others who are willing to focus on developing that program. There’s no one forcing us to work according to their schedule, reset their timetable. So, let us do it at the pace that will work best. Oh, the board and people in the working group really took the time and really wrestled with the notions and the layers of meaning and the connotation of words. That was such an energizing process. I still talk about it. But this time everybody at the table had the chance to contribute. So back in June, we had a webinar to show people how you all have family migration stories, even if you think you were born here, you do have migration stories. So, we want to get that message out, we also want to say it’s easy. You can do it with your phone, you can do it in spite of social distancing. You can interview your grandparents over Zoom or whatever that you want to use.
OLIVIA: I really love what you were saying about having to think of alternative ways of being together and how in a way COVID-19 has also fostered the building of community across distance. People who are not in the same geographical space, can all of the sudden also be part of the conversation. I know you briefly touched on the new project PCHC is working on, “From Far and Wide: Pacific Canada Stories” and it’s a virtual story gathering project. I was wondering if you could speak to what inspired you to create this particular project and then also why you think it might be important to continue collecting and sharing stories of migration during this time of COVID-19, but also during a time when we’ve seen some rising anti-Asian racism in BC as well.
WINNIE: So, I already told you how back in March when we had that first Zoom board meeting that we got this idea, because something that our honourary advisor said triggered something and then we said, let’s try this out. So that’s how the working group was formed and started to focus on pursuing this idea. But meanwhile, something had actually happened that gave us a big push and that is our annual trans-pacific Cantonese opera project that we started in 2017, MVOH is the acronym. So, MVOH, when we started in 2017, connected people and artists and community in Hong Kong, Toronto, Vancouver, focusing on Cantonese opera, this heritage art form. We, PCHC, was invited to be the Canadian [illegible] centre. The reason why I thought this is actually very good for PCHC even though it seems to be about one particular ethnic group, but it’s really not. And when I learned about the history, the migration of the Chinese from Southern China to North America and around the world. I also learned that Cantonese opera came with the people, that is the only Chinese opera, regional opera, that acquired that international, transnational dimension.
So, we were going to have a concert in Michael J. Fox in September 2020. Well, in April, we figured that this was not going to happen even though we’ve been training for it. So, after a bit of brainstorming, my team in Hong Kong said, well you know, Sam Hui and some of the western rock musicians– they had already given concerts which are live stream, but nothing in Cantonese opera. What are we telling our elders? That they’re forgotten? So, we should do something for them. They immediately rounded up a beautiful slate of stars to participate. We had less than six weeks to put it together. I said wow, this is such a big thing, and this is historic. First one in the world. So, we should reach out to the diaspora, not just in Canada. But we don’t have enough time, so I said, let me try to do the best I can through PCHC and with our own connection in North America. After the two days of live streaming, even the people who handled the technical side, these are professional live streaming company, they said this is amazing. You have never done anything like that, you got 200,000 viewers. We thought, this was amazing, over 28 countries cutting across many time zones and afterwards, people were still visiting and viewing. So, because of the results from that program, the virtual story working group got inspired and encouraged. That gave us the hope that of course, we should be able to utilize the technology and reach out to people we never thought we could reach. We just have to tap into good ideas and good people.
I’m an optimistic person. In spite of some of the bad things happening, all the difficult and rearing ugly head of racism, there are always good in people, when they know you are doing something good. The migration stories we try to share is not just people wanting to tell about their own stories, it’s also our way of fighting racism. We don’t always highlight it, but now, our board is coming around to say, this is the time to highlight that maybe in the virtual storytelling series, one of the themes would be anti-racism. When people know of the real history, that our history is not edited out or erased or neglected. Then the general public would have a better understanding of who we are. We have been here for a long time. We are Canadian. Our stories need to be told.
I’m very fortunate I can afford to give my time because I already have a roof over my head. I live very simply, I’m not rich. My message is you don’t have to be rich to give. Everybody can give.
OLIVIA: Thank you for listening to this episode. Again, to learn more about the Pacific Canada Heritage Centre’s virtual storytelling project, “From Far and Wide: Pacific Canada Stories”, please visit their website, www.pchc-mom.ca. If you have an idea for a mini episode of the ACAM podcast, we’d love to hear from you. Send us your ideas by emailing us at acam.program@ubc.ca. We hope these mini episodes can provide a way to stay connected with the ACAM community while learning more about the community engagement and advocacy projects our community members and partner organizations are involved in. To be notified when the next podcast episode is released and to stay up to date on all things ACAM, please follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @UBCACAM and like us on Facebook at Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies UBC.