Post date: Sep 17, 2016 4:17:59 AM
Friendliness replaced by resentment
My recent stay in Vancouver, Canada, was the least pleasant of all previous visits not because the restaurants weren’t as good as ours in Hong Kong or the rented townhouse not up to par.
I remember as a poor student in my last year of high school in Oshawa, a quaint working-class hub approximately 40 miles east of Toronto, foreign students were respected, looked up to, or even revered by the locals. All 25 of us from Hong Kong lived on a small campus with 300 other students in a town with a population of about 100,000.
Local Canadians were tolerant and sympathetic towards young people who spoke little English but were courageous enough to leave home for an education and a better life.
This was in 1967. Almost all of us held down part-time jobs provided by the Seventh-Day Adventist School – a woodwork shop making simple children’s furniture appropriately named College Woodwork, and a textbook recondition facility called College Bindery.
Life was hard. However, folks in the small church community were exceedingly warm and friendly, their demeanour and gestures genuine. For example, total strangers driving old vehicles would pull up offering us rides while we waited at the school bus stop during winter, at brutal minus-zero temperatures. My recollection is still strong of the kind of conversations we had in the old clunkers, as we veered through snow piles to get to a corner store where they would wait patiently outside to drive us back.
Almost 50 years have gone by since that nice couple offered us rides and subsequently opened up their home for three of us to stay for free for one year.
Since then China has emerged from extreme poverty to becoming the second most powerful economy in the world.
Therefore one would expect it should be high time now for Chinese nationals to get recognition and respect from the West for who we are today. But is this what happens? Flaunting wealth by parading expensive cars or gobbling up multi-million-dollar homes in the most desirable part of Vancouver has left locals incensed.
The days of forbearance regarding poor Asians are gone forever. Instead, indiscreet wealth puts us on a path of shame and disgrace. A small group of individuals has ruined the coming out party for China, and that is so unfortunate.
Philip S. K. Leung, Pok Fu Lam
http://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/1993283/letters-editor-july-22-2016