Vancouver’s Chinatown deserves a more space for its own so many are the little-known sights, including well-hidden former opium rooms and a surviving underground passage that once housed bathing facilities and barber chairs.
But when I mention to a Chinese historian that I’m planning to recommend an amble down the lane behind Keefer Street to see the (since relocated) Keefer Laundry he warns me that I’m putting visitors unaware of the downtown drug scene at risk. So stick to the main streets and they are safe, even at night, in my view.
Chinatown is roughly bounded by Gore, Georgia, Abbott, and Pender streets; East Pender and Keefer are the liveliest. The powers that be suggest you enter Chinatown from the west, along West then East Pender Street, where a grand gate on the San Franciscan model has recently been erected at Taylor Street.
Eastward on Pender, particularly between Carrall and Main streets, you’ll find decorative, neo-Colonial buildings. Some have porches suggestive of steamy South China, from which most early immigrants came. This area is also home to the Chinese Cultural Centre (50 East Pender Street, 604-658-8865) and the adjacent Museum and Archives (around the corner at 555 Columbia Street, 604-658-888o). Both mount exhibits; the museum has several galleries hosting often-excellent exhibits of Chinese culture and politics that tour the world.
East Pender Street is also the place for Chinese imports, from cheap baskets to expensive furniture, jade, and Oriental art. Cross Main Street, and you enter the produce, meat and fish, and restaurant district — the sidewalks are crowded and the buzz genuinely Asian. These are reserved people, who may frown or turn away ifyou try to take photos. The food merchants will handle your purchase with utter indifference, even a chill: I put it down to fear or discomfort. But look beneath the cool service and you’ll see a warm, smart, industrious community making the best of a far-from-easy immigrant life.
For a look back in time, quietly climb the interior stairs of the Chung Ching Taoist Church (on the north side of Keefer, just east of Main). In a third-story temple, where the air is thick with incense, you will see an elaborate gilded altar filled with spiritual figures and ceremonial objects. Possibly, a couple of elderly people will be there, backs bent over a newspaper.
Chinatown is justly proud of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden (behind the cultural center at 578 Carrall Street, 604-662-3207). Though no secret, this was the first formal scholar’s garden
built outside China by skilled craftsmen and is worth a visit.
But for the best Chinatown experience, just walk the streets with the knowledge that this is a community that has been through a huge struggle — from the early days, when Chinese were largely excluded from white society, to ongoing battles to compete with suburban malls that serve the huge Chinese diaspora, and with the crime and drug-driven behavior that trickles down from East Hastings Street.
On summer weekends, a Chinatown Night Market runs on Pender and Keefer, east of Main. The Chinese New Year parade, usually held in February, has evolved into a spectacular affair.
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