Influx of Immigrants Ignites Clash of Cultures

From afar, it looks like a quintessential North American shopping mall, hardly a symbol of racial and cultural division.

But step inside the Aberdeen Center in this fast-changing, uneasy suburb of Vancouver. The signs are in Chinese, the wares are Chinese. So are the shoppers and merchants. The trophies displayed at Top Gun Lanes were won by the British Columbia Chinese Bowling Club.

Because of a distant event--the impending transfer of Hong Kong to Chinese Communist control--Richmond is a town turned upside-down. It has been inundated over the last 10 years by Hong Kong immigrants, most of them affluent, who now make up about a third of the 147,000 population.

There have been some heartwarming consequences--whites studying Cantonese, newly arrived children learning ice hockey, schoolteachers rising to the challenge of predominantly Chinese classes.

But there have been troubling consequences too. Many longtime residents have moved to more distant suburbs, including one nicknamed “Little Rhodesia” because of its image as a white enclave. Many whites who remain are troubled by the huge influx of Chinese students in the public schools and by the complex of five shopping malls--called Asiawest--that make little effort to cater to non-Asian customers.

The Richmond Review, a local weekly, was flooded with heated letters in February after a reader complained that her daughter had been denied a job because she couldn’t speak Cantonese. White and Chinese readers accused each other of racism.

At City Hall, Richmond’s elected officials struggle to make the newcomers feel welcome while reassuring longtime residents. The attitude of most whites is, “Too fast, too many, too soon,” said Hilda Ward, in charge of communications and research at the mayor’s office.

“The problem is not the fact that they’re coming, but the fact that it happened so fast,” she said. “We haven’t had a chance to adjust to each other.”

Trying to ease that adjustment is one of the challenges tackled by Ming Pao, a Chinese daily published in Richmond since 1993 and distributed throughout the Vancouver area. Owned by a top Hong Kong newspaper, Ming Pao encourages immigrants to assimilate.

“We’re here to stay,” said the assistant editor, Eric Wong. “Let’s be a part of our new society.”

Wong, 36, was reared in Hong Kong and moved to Canada five years ago. In an interview at Ming Pao’s sleek headquarters in a new office park, he said many of his fellow immigrants are timid about venturing out of their own culture and society.

“In Richmond, it’s even more Hong Kong than Hong Kong itself,” he said. “The farther away you are from the Chinese mainland, the more Chinese you become.”

He said many immigrants spend hours each day at the Asiawest malls. “To me, it’s boring. But that’s what they like,” he said. “It gives them a false sense of security.”

Aberdeen Center, one of Asiawest’s showcases, was bustling on a Sunday--a prime shopping day for the Chinese. Only a few whites could be seen among the throngs browsing at a herbal medicine shop, downing Chinese fast-food or buying tickets for a Chinese action film, “Young and Dangerous.”

On the upstairs level was a firm offering discounted phone calls to China and the offices of Fortune Teller & Associates.

The Chinese immigrants also shop freely at non-Asian stores, but few whites patronize the Chinese malls.

Mayor Greg Halsey-Brandt said he has been meeting with the Chinese mall owners, urging them to consider ways of attracting more white customers. But he said white shoppers should go with a sense of cosmopolitan adventure.

“If you think it’s Sears, you’re in the wrong place,” he said.

More so than malls, the schools have been the main arena for uneasiness and challenges during Richmond’s transformation.

About 1% of the enrollment in 1986 needed extra help with English; now the figure is 41%--9,600 out of 23,500 pupils.

At some primary schools, 80% of the children are Chinese, and almost none of the teachers speak Cantonese or Mandarin. Immigrant children continue to arrive at a rate of 100 a month, and Richmond has been forced to build new schools steadily to cope with the demand.

At Talmey primary school, built in a new subdivision of $300,000 homes, more than 60% of the 250 students are from Hong Kong families.

The principal, Al Sakai, is a longtime Richmond resident of Japanese descent. He said the school offers a standard Canadian curriculum but adds a Chinese accent: At a sports festival celebrating Chinese New Year, teams were given names from the Chinese Zodiac.

Some white parents complain that their children feel left out when the dominant playground chatter is Cantonese. But Sakai said most of the immigrant parents are intent on having their children learn English as rapidly as possible.

“Some are pulling their kids out because they say there are too many other kids speaking Cantonese,” he said.

To some white families, the Asian students seem too competitive academically, or too rich. Some Chinese teenagers live on their own in expensive homes while their parents remain in Hong Kong.

“I’m amazed that we haven’t had any explosive situation where things came unglued,” said Bruce Beairsto, assistant superintendent for learning services. “There’s all kinds of potential for that.”

Wong said many Chinese families, aware of white resentment, would be willing to pay extra fees to cover the cost of remedial English instruction at the public schools.

But Sylvia Gwozd, who chairs the school board, said this would go against Canadian tradition. “What are we supposed to do?” she asked. “They’re here legally. They have a right to an education. And their not speaking English is a major problem we need to deal with.”

Richmond officials have no control over the influx from Hong Kong. Immigration policy is set by the federal government, which has backed away somewhat from a virtual open-door policy of the past, but still welcomes the type of affluent, entrepreneurial immigrants that tend to come from Hong Kong.

“If we expect immigrants to become Canadian, there’s got to be a threshold,” Halsey-Brandt said. “If too many come too quickly, it could be generations before they assimilate.”

But the mayor has worked closely with the new immigrants, even at the risk of alienating some white long-timers.

“Some people criticize me for being too tied to the Asian community,” he said. “I’ve tried to reach out to them, get to know them. I’ve probably spent more time in the past three to four years with them than with other groups.”

City officials are uncertain whether immigration from Hong Kong will increase or decrease--they say it depends on how the 1997 changeover goes.

Housing prices have doubled or tripled since the influx began. Many of the immigrants owned cramped condominiums in Hong Kong worth far more than the big houses they are buying in Richmond.

“Four hundred thousand dollars is nothing to them,” said Mike Kirk, the town’s manager of social planning.

According to Wong, Canada is viewed in Hong Kong as more openhearted and less racist than some other prospective destinations, including the U.S.

“Canada is viewed as an immigrant society,” he said. “There is a cultural clash here, but it’s not racism.”

But some of Richmond’s Chinese feel that Canada’s traditional hospitality is eroding and sense that whites envy their wealth.

“Some people are so scared of these new immigrants that they have revealed their true selves behind their smiling faces,” Steven So wrote to Ming Pao. “Some are barking irrationally like mad dogs.”