The Hat Lady

It Ain’t Over Until Faye Leung

The Hat Lady Sings CHRIS BEST

Join us on a hillarious road trip to the millineum and beyond Foreword by Peter C. Newman

is is a story of the empowerment and dedication of a Chinese couple who supported the Chinese community living in Canada to grow amid the racist environment and succeed. e book mainly focuses on Faye (or the Hat Lady), a pioneer businesswoman who had a crucial role in women’s and ethnic minorities’ development since she resisted prejudice and fought for Asians’ rights. She also helped Asians nd a good position in business in Canadian society, thus enhancing their lifestyles. e couple’s achievements delivered the Chinese the bene ts that new generations of Chinese Canadians currently appreciate, changing their fate forever.

It could easily be adapted for a TV Series: Network, Cable, Limited Run / Mini-Series, or Streaming.

DRAW OF STORY

e story of a powerful, wise, and dedicated woman to her community instantly draws our attention, especially because she ghts for the Chinese’s rights at a time Canadian people were absolutely racist against immigrants.

HOOK

The hook is about the struggle of Chinese immigrants for a dignified life at a time when they suffered constant discrimination in Canadian society and were excluded from the possibility of good jobs and fair wages. The story goes far beyond Faye/Dean lives and tells the brutal story of Chinese immigration.

UNIQUEABOUT STORY

The story of this Chinese couple and their struggle for the Chinese community’s rights in Canada has not been widely explored, so it is an original story still to be discovered.

CHARACTERS STAND OUT

e characters are robust and well-developed, both protagonists and the antagonist are historical gures who have gained visibility in the media because of an important fact that was widely reported in the tabloids. And as the story is told by Faye herself, the content is quite precise, and the development of the characters turns out to be much more profound and assertive.

RARE GEM

e book itself is not a rare gem because it is just an interview that was arranged into this biography, but Faye’s life story is indeed a rare gem.



PUT THE BOOK DOWN

e story is undoubtedly awe-inspiring, but as it is an interview in which a reporter asks questions that Faye answers, sometimes those answers sound a little repetitive. However, the book is still very engaging.

Chris Best is the author of twenty books among them e Life & Times of the Legendary Mr. D, e Train To Haida Gwaii and My Greek Barber’s Diary. He lives in Vancouver.

It ain’t over until

Faye Leung the Hat Lady Sings!

e Faye & Dean Chun Kwong Leung Story

by Christopher Best

Great Wall of China, 1993

Copyright 2023 Christopher Best

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence fromAccess Copyright, www.accesscopywrite.ca, 1-800-893-5777

Warfleet Press

1038 east 63rdAvenue, Vancouver, B.C., V5X 2L1 www.warfleetpress.com

All photos from the collection of Christopher Best unless otherwise noted.

Front cover photos: Premier Vander Zalm, Grace McCarthy, Peter Lawford, Lillian Vander Zalm, David L Lam, Peter C. Newman, Dean, Dana and Faye, Jack Lemon, W.A.C. Bennett, Glenn Ford, Tan Yu, Tony Curtis, Li Kai Shing

Cover design by Christopher Best

Text design by Christopher Best

Edit (rough) by Robert E. Thompson, Godwin Books

Edit (main) Brian Pollard

Edit (special) Peter C. Newman, This is the last book that Mr. Newman worked on before his passing in September 2023.

Printed and bound in China

Library andArchives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Best, Christopher 1949



ItAin’t Over Til Faye Leung the Hat Lady Sings

The Faye and Dean Chun Kwong Leung Story

ISBN13: 978-0-9812574-0-2

DEDICATION:

When you write a book, you need to know who your audience is and I knew right from the start that the audience for this book was all the baby boomers everywhere who grew up in the ‘0s, ‘0s, ‘0s, ‘0s and ‘90s. You will remember most the times in which this story unfolds, the politics, the world situation and what was going on in Canada, the USA and China. And the glorious music, oh the music, the soundtrack of our lives that inspired generations. Feel through the lyrics of the songs what it was like to be a young boy going to Vietnam, “Well, it’s one, two, three, what are we ghting for,” and the shock we all experienced when we heard, “Four dead in Ohio,” for the rst time. So I dedicate this book to you: and I especially dedicate it to those of us who grew up in Vancouver in those years because you will remember the people and events in this book the most. is book is not for reading before you fall asleep at night, you need to be engaged and alert or most of it will y over your head. If you never lived in the moment and were not a hippie ghting for what you believed in, this may be your last chance before you croak, but I warn you, you might like it and wish you had started to live in the moment earlier. As well, this book is dedicated to all new Canadians who came to Canada a er 9. And to all future Canadians. You’re all here because of the book’s main character, Faye Leung, so join us as we re-visit those days when, “We were so much older then, we’re younger than that now.”

Foreword 9

Prologue 13

Acknowledgements 19

Introduction 21

Part 1 - Background 26

Chapter 1 - The Empress Hotel of Chinatown 31

Chapter 2 - Freedom Road 53

Part 2 - A Warning of the Challenges Ahead 82

Chapter 3 - A Fine Romance 83

Part 3 - Our Struggles To Bring Our People Into e New World 122

Chapter 4 - Under The Bs For Bay Day 123

Chapter 5 - Daily Interest Versus Monthly Interest 155

CONTENTS

Chapter 6 - Opening Canada Up To All 181

Chapter 7 - Making Canada Multicultural 199

Chapter 8 - Vancouver’s Only Big Time Lady Developer 225

Part 4 - Laughing On e Outside, Crying On e Inside

Chapter 9 - CRASH! BOOM! BANG! 303

Chapter 10 - Opening Up China 319

Chapter 11 - Fantasy Faye 371

Part 5 - Epilogue

Chapter 12 - You Haven’t Changed A Bit! 423

Author’s Note 433

Index 439

AN INTERVIEW

This book is an interview between the writer and the main character. As the story progresses, the excitement in the main character’s voice increases and she runs her sentances together until the paragraphs become one long sentance, depicted in the text through comma splices. This is the way the main character talks in real life. Let yourself go and feel her sadness, joy and excitement and anger as she tells the writer her story from her heart as only she can do.

Foreword

by Peter C. Newman

Faye Leung is a force of nature, and anyone who meets her feels the power of her presence. She is the ultimate de nition of a successful entrepreneur. rough her works, she paved the way for advancement in most socio-economic aspects of Canadian-Chinese relations. Her legacy reaches far and wide.

Faye and I are kindred spirits. We both know a thing or two about being a minority in Canada, and about persecution, the politicians who feather their nests, and indeed a thing or two about how power corrupts. We know how lawsuits eat up your emotional reserve and leave you feeling eviscerated. We see the injustice meted out by those at the troughs as they chew their way through peoples’ honest and decent intentions.

We met in person in the late 90’s, when I made Vancouver my home. I had already been living in Victoria for several years a er leaving the helm of Maclean’s News Magazine. By then I had spent decades writing weekly columns about the nation’s business – social, political, and economic concerns. In BC, Premier Bill Vander Zalm headed the political pecking order; but he had ruled the roost with a recklessness which would see him charged with con ict of interest. e stories surrounding this erstwhile Premiership and his shenanigans had dominated the provincial news for decades. But he was about to be knocked o his perch. And Faye Leung, with her indomitable values of fairness, and transparency was swinging the axe. She would forever be known as the “little hat lady” who brought down a devil-may-care provincial Premier. is book will delineate the character values that possessed her and enabled her to take on a sitting provincial premier and his henchmen.

But there is much more to her story – very much more. And readers will be drawn along on the journey of how much can be accomplished by someone with the vision and the mission to make the cultural and economic life better for her people. I was so impressed with this brave dynamo that I told her in

Faye at SFUs Convocation Ceremonies with SFU President Andrew Petter, 2016

99, “If you ever write your life story, please contact me.” Her story is worth recording, and thirty years later I am proud to contribute to this long overdue saga.

By making the cultural and economic life better for her people she made life better for everyone in Canada. She and her husband Dean’s accomplishments contributed to the multi-cultural Canada we all enjoy today and were at the forefront of the economic boom Van-couver and Canada have enjoyed since the 90s. eir achievements play out through her relationship with her husband which is the stage upon which everything else is acted out. is book is for ordinary people, and it is crucial that they recognize and remember who was there to advocate for them throughout the years. But more importantly, it is a record of the times and not only illuminates the system-wide human rights abuses that Chinese Canadians su ered but the good times as well. It is the rst of three volumes of her incredible life. Her achievements are vast and impressive--so that one book cannot be all-encompassing. Although the Premier Vander Zalm asco is dealt with in detail in the next volume, it must be introduced and acknowledged here because it was an important historical issue that was pivotal.

is rst book is crucial for the reader to illuminate the in uence she wielded and how she contributed to so many aspects of cultural enlightenment for second generation Chinese Canadians and pioneers. It is a book Faye needed to write. Her undertaking was not to produce a vanity book--nor was it a public relations endeavor. Now at the focus of her career, she had nothing to prove and nothing to gain. Nothing that is, except to defend the truth.

It is essential that she tell her story because she is the voice of Chinese people in Canada and was there at the forefront of their struggles. rough her reminiscences, Faye has recorded her trials and tribulations for the common folk. She did not set out to write an academic level ethnography, but she succeeded in doing so by documenting what racial discrimination looks and feels like in Canada for much of the past 90 years and how one individual can make a difference.

Faye Leung has not received the recognition she richly deserves. e Order of Canada motto “Desiderantes Meliorem Patriam” translates as “ ey desire



a better country.” Many desire such a transition, of course, but the majority does not dedicate their entire lives to making Canada a better country. Faye Leung did, and now her passionate quest is down in words and feelings for all to see and read --- and to savour.

Peter C. Newman Victoria, British Columbia

09

Prologue

Suddenly on June , 99, Vander Zalm resurfaced into B.C. politics at a political meeting in Prince George. He beat Mr. Hani who was the leader of the B.C Reform Party to become its new leader. e B.C. Reform Party represented what was le of the Social Credit Party a er Social Credit lost the election to the New Democratic Party in 99. It was billed as a ‘Bill Vander Zalm Political Comeback.’ e Vander Zalm Show was on again!

Vander Zalm began showing up again at various functions. Two memorials he turned up at were for Emery Barnes and Jack Webster. I am sure they were two he had wished he hadn’t attended because Faye showed up as well and she wasn’t averse to letting him know what she thought of him in public.

“I thought the pews would expose them if they all sat together,” Senator Ray Perrault said to Faye. e memorial service for the Honorable Emery Barnes was held at the Christ Baptist Church on Burrard on July 0, 99. Faye sat a few pews behind where Lt. Gov. Gardom and his aide sat. In the second pew sat Gordon Campbell, opposition leader and the Premier and Mrs. Glen Clark and Mayor Philips. In the third pew sat former Premier Barrett, Vander Zalm and Lillian and other politicians.

“We date back a long time,” she said when she greeted Senator Perrault with Gordon Dowding. “You listened to me and we made it happen because you liked my work and we brought in billions to Canada. e Honorable Lloyd Axworthy still thanks me because he used my papers to sell the provinces on the new Entrepreneurs and Investors Program. In 9, Jack recalled in my o ce we started Van Centre Politics and then in 9 we did the new no blood relative immigrants program. It succeeded in 9 when the Red Army marched into Hong Kong ooding a new wave of immigrants to Canada.”

“You were the motivator,” Senator Perrault said. “You should get the Order of Canada for what you’ve done.”



Faye with Jason Kenney, 2006

“If Vander Zalm is at the Hall I will go a er him for my money,” she told Gordon Dowding, as she walked with him a erwards over to the Pender Hall for a reception.

“It’s your money,” Gordon said. He never paid her the commission on Fantasy Gardens. As they got their co ee Premier Glen Clark stood by. Faye gave him a greeting,

“Give the Americans hell. Congratulations to Washington D.C.” She told him of her interest still in pulp and paper to help the BC economy. He invited her to help the BC economy if she could. Faye told him she would do her best. “I will talk to Houlan Waddell,” she said, who Premier Clark told her was at this memorial. She told Premier Clark she was going over to give Vander Zalm the devil for her money as Clark grinned and the dispute ensued.

“You with the Buddha smile. Now that you are coming back into politics when are you going to pay me the money you owe me and the money you owe my family and the money we lent you for all your expenses and costs and to the IAA Brigadier General Chang the money you are holding In Trust as a trustee only and that you have not paid and are spending on your political comeback?” Standing rm, she moved around to brandish her will in the face of the grinning toothed Vander Zalm. Shouldered together, both Lillian and Bill, in spite of Faye’s personal appearance, acidulously pushed her pulled at her to throw Faye o and said,

“Get out of the way. You are blocking the people here,” spilling her co ee all over her. Faye regained her composure and said,

“I am not blocking anyone. I’m asking you for our money!” Vander Zalm turned his back to Faye,

“Turning your back to me doesn’t solve the matter,” she said. Vander Zalm turned back around and said,

“Shut up! Let me say something.”

“I will not shut up,” she said. “I’ve shut up long enough, I will now have to speak up and you know that what I say is the truth. But, I’ll listen to what you have to say.”

“You talk so much. You caused a lot of people grief,” Vander Zalm said with his hand half cupped over his mouth. Faye replied,



“You are the one that caused so much grief to everybody. You caused Dean’s loss of life. You caused the loss of our home and now I am homeless. You caused the loss of our family. You caused our nancial di culties.” Vander Zalm did not have his usual politically quick grip to lash out at Faye as he surely would have attacked her with verbal brutality, because here clearly he was not so reproachable. Vander Zalm tried to look innocent and reached over for a piece of fruit. Both clamored to appear oblivious while recoiled over their own suppressed behavior.

“Who was it who called Dean and begged him to go to Taiwan as many as six times with me to close the Fantasy Gardens deal for you with the IAA Group and whose money you are holding in trust as ‘Trustee’ and have not paid back?” Faye asked Vander Zalm. Surely, Bill and Lillian now knew and felt guilt over owing the money to Faye looming under their curtained smiles, daring not to lash out at her face to face. Where was his political will now for him to hide behind where in past days he had sought defense through the eyes of the media. Faye realized when Vander Zalm is face to face with the truth it is a di erent matter. is is the man that is in the media, this is the man who she dealt with and she is still dealing with in this matter. She attacked him with more words.

“Who put US $ million in your pocket and also put $ million more in your pocket because of the 0% US exchange which allowed you to buy a twenty- ve acre estate home which made it possible for you to have the life you have today? Who got you out of your six hundred square foot dinky apartment on the second oor of Fantasy Gardens?” Vander Zalm with his phony smile and grin turned. Faye turned towards Vander Zalm’s side.

“Here’s Gordon H. Dowding who is a witness. He came to your home to collect our expenses and the IAA money. e Honorable Emery Barnes’ spirit is up there towering, shining on me, Faye Leung as he believed in fairness and equality over discrimination which he fought for and believed in and this is my strength now to ght for what is mine to collect.”

Vander Zalm was still thick faced, never embarrassed. Lillian and Bill were now confused, cornered with guilt and praying there was no media hanging over them. He was shocked and surprised at Faye that she would go a er him

at such a timely event. He was uncomfortable and not able to defend himself because he had no defense. Vander Zalm turned to greet someone and tried to ignore her. Faye poked at his arm.

“Your owery talk to others will not hide you or change things and ignoring your debt and the money you owe me and the IAA and my family, this will not stop me from talking and trying to collect. You know you are guilty and owe the money.” Lillian would have called Faye names and scratched her eyes out with cat calls but riddled with guilt she did not say a word or a peep or a boo as she too was stunned with guilt.

“I didn’t want to come too close because I was afraid I had put you up to it,” Gordon later told Faye.

“Be ready to embarrass Vander Zalm in the fall when he runs for leadership of the BC Reform Party,” he said. A lawyer came over and said he was in court and appreciated enjoying Faye’s blitz with Judge Bolton.

“Good to see you Mrs. Leung now that Vander Zalm is back in politics,” he continued. What Faye said to Judge Bolton was,

“Will you help me collect my money from Vander Zalm so I won’t be in such a position?” Judge Bolton said,

“Yes, you bring a lawsuit on!” Mary Lamb said,

“I have admired you for years. I’m a Vancouverite like you. We need more people like you.” Many repeated the same that they admired Faye.

“You are famous,” they said.

Acknowledgements

Foremost, I would like to thank Yosef Wosk for asking me to write Faye Leung’s biography. Yosef is a great supporter of books on minorities and their struggle to get their stories heard. Writing this book has been a little like taking o in an airplane, call it Wosk Air if you like, without enough fuel to reach our nal destination. Unfortunately, there were no re-fueling stops along the way, which I didn’t know, so it was a one up, one down ight, making for a rough landing in the end. Even worse was the turbulence on board that needed to be dealt with before the plane could land safely. Anyway, thanks to changing world climate conditions and a few updra s and downdra s near the end, we landed safely, and the book got written. Next time though, I will book a ight on one of the big airlines such as Air Canada or KLM or at least be sure the ight plan has some scheduled fueling stops, in case the journey takes longer than anticipated. I don’t want to have to deal personally with in-cabin turbulence, lack of fuel and updra s and downdra s again, but I wouldn’t have missed this experience for the world! anks, Yosef! IwouldalsoliketothankFayeforthewonderfultwoyearsIspentwithher,hearing all her stories and both the ups and downs in her life. I already miss the chocolate eclairs and the tea party at the end of each weekly six-hour session. Spending two years with Faye was like being enrolled in a master class on China/Canada relations, past, present and future. I will be forever great-full to her for her insight and knowledge, which she graciously shared with me. I would suggest, if she decides to go on any more airline ights in the future, she stays seated with her seat belt on for the entire ight. Her mere presence on board is enough to cause a lot of turbulence and might even result in the plane not reaching its nal destination.

irdly,IwouldliketothankPeterC.NewmanforagreeingtowritetheForeword to Faye’s biography. Mr. Newman was probably the rst to realize the scope of the Leungsaccomplishments. atwaswaybackinthelate90swhenthey rstmet. Luckily,hewasstillinterestedinwritingtheForeword;bythetimeIcaughtuptohim.

I would also like to thank Brian Pollard, who proof-read the book for me in the end. Brian was a college English instructor, so he added a sane approach to



Faye at SFU with Yosef Wosk, 2016

my sometimes over the top prose. I appreciate his keeping the book grounded on more than one occasion. anks, Brian!

I would also like to thank my editor Robert omson who I blindsided at the beginning of this project when I gave him a ton of Faye’s manuscripts to edit. Being the trooper and professional he is, not to mention a Yale grad, he approached the task with his usual grumbling but the job got done and I didn’t have to do the initial editing phase myself. His contribution allowed me more time to work with Faye on getting her stories down for posterity. anks, Robert!

Introduction

I never had a vision that I would write this book, although I did pass by Fantasy Gardens a few weeks before being asked to write Faye Leung’s biography. When asked, I assumed right away that it was to be a story about Fantasy Gardens because that’s what everyone would remember, and there were probably people out there waiting to hear her side of the story. ese people weren’t interested in learning anything new about Faye Leung; they were interested in seeing if her version supported their vision; who the villain was in the story? e public; was divided on this question. e establishment had long since made up their minds as to who was guilty. But they liked hearing the sordid details over and over again about the brown paper bag, the hundred dollar bills, the elusive Taiwanese billionaire and the larger than life Chinese realtor who found herself on the front page of every newspaper in town for months. ese Shaughnessy landlords with their mega-acreage homes with gazebos and luxury cars. Many owned hotels on Hastings Street in disrepair. en there were the little guys, the common man on the street who supported her through thick and thin. Vander Zalm is no more, political parties come and go, but the little guys will always be there rooting for the underdog no matter who the next one happens to be. It’s just the way things are and the way; things are done. People all bought newspapers in the day and kept up with the stories; it was the thing to do. For those with a more wholesome view of life, Faye was the culprit. For those with a more cynical view of government and politicians, Vander Zalm was the culprit. ey would all get together over drinks and make rude remarks about the whole thing. It wouldn’t matter which group I wrote the book for, they would all have their point of view and their minds already made up. Even the wealthy have good guys and bad guys, as do the lower classes. So I gured if I wrote a story that gently pokes fun at it all, then both sides might not take themselves too seriously.

Faye in her o ce in the early seventies

So I wrote a story about a kid growing up in Chinatown and all her adventures. She meets her one true love, and they get married. He was a great guy; they both seem like story-book characters when I get through. ey go into business together in Chinatown; everyone loves them. Great! It was the usual; boy meets girl; they fall in love and live a long accomplished life together story. I knew though I had another story, the real story of Faye and Dean Leung but it took me a while to gure out how to write it. I had all these colorful characters with zany tales to tell living through a crazy time, sitting in a happily forever a er story, then it dawned on me. I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t write the story for others. I had to be creative and write the story as I saw it. e majority of the establishment and the majority of the little guy on the street probably will nd it uncharacteristic, over the top, even demeaning, vulgar or ridiculous. It was the only way for me, inspirational and creative. It still took me a long time to write the story I wanted. I had a lot of trouble getting Faye’s words out of my head and nding my voice. e book was supposed to take a year because that was all that was budgeted. I remember what she said at my rst meeting in a board room at SFU in downtown Vancouver.

“It’ll take more than a year to write my biography,” she tossed that out into; le eld for all to hear, I guessed, to see if it would stick. I would soon discover she was a good pitcher and o en threw things out into; le eld or any eld to see if it would stick. e others agreed, one added, to console her,

“ ere can be other books, Faye. is book is to get you started. It doesn’t have to be your whole story in this one book.” She murmured something like, “ at’s for sure, not even half my story.” She wasn’t happy, I could tell. I didn’t think much about it and gured we would work it out when the time came. Boy, was I ever wrong! It turned out to be a big problem. My rst impression of Faye was that I felt she could be her own worst enemy. I was right.

So, I started by reading through all of her crazy weird manuscripts spread all over her apartment because she could remember where each was when she needed them. e problem was she o en couldn’t remember where she had put them.

But then I got talking to Faye. It became clear she was dead serious about it all. She had become a semi-recluse in her apartment for decades so she could write all her stories down, stories that most people upon rst glance would dismiss as gibberish. She became obsessed and would o en write the same story over and over, startingindi erentplaces.Shedidotherthingstohelppaytherent,buthermanuscripts became her obsession. She became the complete storyteller of her own life. ere was a gem in each story that she had written. Once it was all edited it became the basis for this book: It Ain’t Over Until Faye Leung the Hat Lady Sings. But it took two years to go through everything. ere were lots of photos as well. We had created a layout using her photos, and all it needed was to nish the story. I told Yosef Wosk, who had hired me, that the book was still not quite ready. He tells me to wrap it up and include what I had written even though I knew it wasn’t ne-tuned yet, because there was no more money. About  pm that night, we get an email from Faye wanting to cancel the book if it isn’t going to be written properly. I trusted you guys, she said. What was wrong with the book was it was all about her stories and not enough about Faye. I could see that neither of us would be happy with it, as it was. So I started writing down all the details about writing the book: meeting Faye, our interviews, her thoughts, her speech patterns and soon something started to happen. I began thinking back more about my early days growing up in the 90s and 0s in Vancouver. ere was an energy around Faye. Before long, I was able to capture that energy by concentrating on the details of the times. I could see an incredible story about energy plus money unfolding in a place that no one ever gave much thought to: at least in Caucasian Vancouver: Chinatown. e classic sixties style of Faye Leung with her Oakridge housing development and her Canada Trust branch o ce helping the little guy move forward towards a better life. She was in uencing a whole society. Usually, it is the upper class that does this. But a er World War II, things changed. ere was more money everywhere in society. Faye would go on to change the way banking was done in Canada, how construction sites operated, how high buildings could be built and most importantly of all, who could come to Canada to live

9

a better life. All these things greatly changed Canadian society in the twentieth century.

It was not only the little guy whose life she changed but the wealthy as well. Developers made a fortune from what she introduced. In twenty years, the skyline of Vancouver went from three stories to thirty stories. It doesn’t matter if buildings are three stories or thirty stories but this shi in people’s thinking marked a radical change in society that still goes on today. Not many think of the e ect these changes had on society but are more concerned with the money involved, the wealth created. e educated classes in society who control everything are more interested in what they see today. ey were not interested in helping the little guy. Or that millions of people would be able to come to Canada to live a better life. ey were interested only in the money that her fantasies were generating.

A curious thing was happening in Vancouver society as well. Because of the Leung’s success, they were getting invited to all sorts of society functions: garden parties, balls and bene ts. ey found themselves around establishment bigwigs, bankers, CEOs, presidents. Faye was soon sitting on various boards and joining establishment clubs. She and Dean paved the way for other minorities to follow in their footsteps. Faye was the embodiment of the new sixties girl liberated from the home, a businesswoman, free and willing to speak her mind and take her seat at board meetings with the best of the men.

In later years, she would travel to China where the media went crazy over her. But in Vancouver, there was a lot of outrage over her lifestyle. Why was a woman like that being followed so much by the media? She came to represent the new lifestyle of the day: not the super lifestyle of the movie stars, but more home-grown. Faye celebrated the lifestyle of the newly liberated sixties, multicultural woman. Long a er Faye is gone, Canadian society will be celebrating what she did. She will still be in uencing Canadian life with her amboyant hats, her modern woman lifestyle and the Leung’s many achievements: that fantastic Vancouver skyline, now found in every suburb and town in Canada, new Canadians of every color and nationality found in every Canadian city, town and home. e impact that she has had on Canadian

people everywhere has been enormous. Yet, she came out of a discriminatory environment with little education.

If you ask new Canadians today who is responsible for you being in Canada? ey usually think economically. Family money or I worked hard to get here. I say to them, “No, I mean, who in Canada made it possible? Who opened the door so you could come to Canada and live a better life?” It doesn’t matter if I ask a Filipino, an Indo-Canadian or a Mexican; they don’t know the correct answer. When I ask them, “Do you know that Canada was once a racist country?” ey usually don’t know or they say something like, “Oh I heard that.” If I tell them that their race was once restricted from entering Canada they are shocked; especially younger Chinese. en, when I nally tell them, they are here today because of one person who helped change the immigration laws they think about it over and over and over again and say, “Freedom!” Marvelous! It doesn’t matter the person’s name, only that it is synonymous with the word freedom. ey are not hung up on names. To hell with Trudeau, Chretien and Harper if they have even heard of them. ey are the new world order speaking. ey are here. ey are grateful. SoIrealizedIneededtowriteamonumenttothehatlady.Herewasthisincredible woman who lived through an exciting time and accomplished big things. Suddenly I could see what was happening. e details of the events in her life far surpassed the story of Fantasy Gardens, yet it was still a part of her story. Who would ever have thought that the little hat lady had lived such an incredible life.

Part One BACKGROUND 1930s-1940s

A CPR steamship, Aunt Susie, Mom, Dad, Kenje, Faye, Wally

Vancouver’s West End 2017

I arranged to meet with Faye in the library of her apartment building the following Friday a ernoon. Faye was sequestered high on the twentieth oor of an apartment block on the Georgia slope, in the West End of downtown Vancouver. I was looking forward to getting to know her on a one on one basis. ere were no little voices in my head telling me, be careful what you wish for, so I gured everything would be smooth sailing.

When I arrived at her building, I pushed the number she had given me. Faye answered and buzzed me in.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” she said in an anxious voice. “Go on into the library.”

Once inside, I made my way down a hallway past two elevators and turned to my right. I could see an indoor pool on my le in the distance on a lower level, but there was no water in it. Either management was trying to save money, or the pool was under repair. irty feet away, I turned to my right to go to the library, which was at the front of the building, through an exercise room. e exercise room was just a oor area covered with weights and other athletic equipment. e library, in comparison to the weight room, was very tiny. I gathered most of the tenants were younger and preferred working out rather than sitting reading a book. ere weren’t that many books anyway, just one six-foot-high bookshelf about three feet wide. e rst book I picked up was Peter C. Newman’s, A Company of Adventurers. Was that prophetic or what? Little; did I know that Peter C. Newman would play a role in the writing of Faye’s book and, in some strange way, make me feel like, I too, was a part of the Company of Adventurers.

When Faye nally came down to the library about an hour late, we sat down at a long card table in front of a large picture window. I set my recorder down on the table and turned it on. She was all dressed up with another oppy hat; however, upon further inspection, I realized she was wearing a t-shirt with a colourful red sweater on top and a Chinese embroidered vest. It worked, and Faye looked like a million bucks.



“I know how to dress,” she said. “I just threw this together.”

“I’m looking forward to hearing all about Fantasy Gardens,” I exclaimed.

“Fantasy Gardens? at didn’t happen until the 1990s. I had a whole life before that and did many amazing things along with my husband. We need to go back to the very beginning, to Victoria, where I grew up, my rst home, the Yick Fung Company. You need to understand rst the time and place that I grew up in and the people who shaped my life, then I will tell you all about Fantasy Gardens. So she began:

“My grandfather was an inspired man. In 1881, on the traditional land of the Lekwungen people in the days when the city fathers of Victoria and the Chinese got along, imagine a Chinese man wanting to start a textile manufacturing business. What the HECK! British Columbia was all wildernesses with gigantic r trees, no roads, even on Vancouver Island. It was only ten years a er confederation, twenty years a er the start of the Cariboo gold rush and only thirty years a er the proclamation of the crown colony of Vancouver Island. Here was Victoria more British than anywhere in Canada, named a er the queen. ere was nothing more signi cant in Victoria than a few streets and bars where everybody sang British songs, maybe you might hear a bagpipe or two. It began as Fort Victoria with only about two hundred and y people but shot up to over twenty thousand during the gold rush and then fell back down a erwards, remaining western Canada’s largest city throughout the rest of the century.

My grandfather probably brought the money with him from China to start his new business because there is no mention in the family history that he struck it rich as a modern-day Argonaut in the gold elds; of the Cariboo. But there is mention that he did start the rst textile manufacturing and distributing company in western Canada. e only British connection was he supplied linens and bed sheets to British companies, the Hudson’s Bay Company and Spencer’s Department Store and, he secured exclusive contracts with the CPR Steamships, how British can you get? To tell you the importance of the Hudson’s Bay Company, James Douglas as Chief Factor of the Hudson’s



Bay Company received title to the whole of Vancouver Island. So all the big establishment corporations supported my grandfather. It was cheaper to do so than having merchandise shipped from England or Toronto.

His store on Fisgard Street he named the Yick Fung Company. It was a popular place for all to drop by and purchase dry goods and work clothes. My aunts would help the older Chinese write letters and send money home to China. It became one of the most popular businesses in Victoria with a retail store in the front with tons of fabrics with such colours as red, green, blue, brown, yellow, purple, vermillion, sapphire, ruby, magenta, orange, fuchsia. It had a large pantry and kitchen area in the middle and a manufacturing area in the back. Upstairs was all residential, where the family slept with a large staircase and banister, leading up to a mezzanine oor. Oh, such grandeur!

e business history of Yick Fung was quite successful also, as my grandfather turned out to be a visionary. anks to the CPR, people kept moving to Canada; and British Columbia and, so did the Chinese. ere were o en ghts between the Caucasians and the Chinese. e Chinese would work for less that the British immigrants causing a problem. A er lots of legislation to discourage Chinese immigration to Canada that didn’t work, nally, in 1923, the government passed the Exclusion Act barring all Chinese from immigrating to Canada.

Yet, my grandfather’s vision and inspiration continued to thrive. As long as they were making money, the establishment corporations continued supporting him. It must have been an awkward situation when the head of the largest textile manufacturing company on the west coast su ered from discrimination. Businesses continued to pop up all over Victoria and western Canada in the decades that followed. I am sure they competed with Yick Fung until a er World War II. By then, Yick Fung only sold antiques.

e six square block area where the Chinese lived on the outskirts of Victoria; was known as Chinatown. In later years, Caucasians would regard it as a novelty where they would go for dinner on a Friday night a er work and buy colourful trinkets and bamboo items just o the boat from China. It would never be the same again, the way it was before 1923.



The Empress Hotel of Chinatown

Life in Chinatown in the 1930s could do things to a person. ere was a lot of aggressive behavior everywhere. If given a chance, probably no one would have chosen to live there. Living in Chinatown seemed to make aggressive. people. Aggression can ruin a life, there were a lot of ghts in Chinatown. e Chinese were always ghting amongst themselves. ey even fought with those who visited Chinatown. ey say if you put a Chinese man and a Japanese man together, they will start a business, but if you put two Chinese men together, they will ght. Yet, it took aggressive people to be able to survive in a place like Chinatown in those early days.

It was always a busy a ernoon in the Yick Fung Company on Fisgard Street in downtown Victoria, B.C. My mother, Kate Nipp Leong and, my Aunt Susie Nipp were both seamstresses. ey would be busy sewing the CPR chef’s uniforms and lling orders for Spencer’s Department Store and the Hudson’s Bay Company. When I was working, I would be straightening the bags under the retail store counter in the front where they sold men’s work clothes, pants, socks and other items. My aunt and mother always praised me for doing such a ne job at such a young age of three or four.

e wedding of Faye’s mother and father

When I wasn’t working at Yick Fung, I was out on the street with my friends Louise, Reta and Corinne Quon. ere were no parks because this was Chinatown. All kids played outside in front of where they lived. I remember an incident that happened one day while we were playing. Suddenly, we all ran into Yick Fung and locked the door behind us, except Louise; she was still outside. Louise pounded frantically on the window-pane in the door so hard that the glass broke and cut her arm with a long gash ( e Chinese couldn’t a ord stitches or medicine). Childhood tragedies o en have long lasting consequences. e several inches long gash on Louise’s arm from early childhood remained throughout her whole life. Her father Mr. Quon Yen was the landlord of Yick Fung and also the o cial Chinatown bully. A er it happened, the Quon Yen family snubbed our family and was wouldn’t speak to my grandfather, parents or anyone in our family. Chinese families are like that. Rivalries and ill feelings o en run deep and long!

I am not sure if my grandfather ever dreamed that Yick Fung would become the icon of Chinatown that it did, just like the Empress Hotel was an icon to the people of Victoria. But in many ways, it did, without any of the establishment baggage of the real Empress. e real Empress Hotel was for high society types. ey would take the CP Steamship Princess Alice, Princess Margaret or Princess Louise over from Vancouver and stay the night or longer, Englishmen with lots of money. ey had to dress for dinner and have high tea at noon, none of which those at Yick Fung would ever think of doing. HECK, we had tea at (L-R), Louise Quon, Corrine Quon, Faye Leong and Reta Quan in front of Yick Fung in Victoria, B.C.s Chinatown.

any time of the day, whenever someone came to visit. At the real Empress, you had to have money and dress the part but not at Yick Fung. Yick Fung was for Chinese without any money. All Chinese, the pioneers, young people and the business class frequented my grandfather’s store. Guests at the Empress Hotel included Edward, Prince of Wales and Shirley Temple. ere was lots of small talk (establishment talk, not very important) going on in the glass-roofed Palm Garden, I am sure. Guests at Yick Fung; included the father of Doug Jung, Canada’s rst Chinese MP and Harvey Lowe, the future yo-yo champion of-the-world. ere was always lots of direct talk (important talk by the little guys in society) going on upstairs in the living room at Yick Fung. It was a big part of the permanent landscape of Chinatown.

Although Yick Fung was always there, it moved a few times in Chinatown; which was all right because Yick Fung was as much an ideology as it was a brick and mortar store. It was the idea of having a place where all Chinese could gather and feel safe, socialize, do business and get whatever help they needed for free. I had several Yick Fung’s in my life, later on, all based on the same ideology and still do. We greeted people from near and far as taught to do at Yick Fung. at is why my husband and I became known as the host and hostess with the mostess. As the old Chinese adage says: “When faraway people arrive, you must show hospitality.”

Yick Fung moved to 0 Government Street (at Cormorant) into a much larger three-story commercial and residential upstairs building owned by an early Victoria pioneer named Mr. McPherson. He also owned the whole block of retail stores. For me, this was great. I had a larger world to explore. en, Yick Fung moved again to  Government Street because a re caused much smoke damage. Eventually, Mr. McPherson donated these properties to the City of Victoria which built McPherson Square in his honour. e York eatre next to Yick Fung was where we kids saw free movies which we enjoyed both days and evenings. Because the theatre was next door to Yick Fung and had long line-ups to see the lms, Aunt Susie expanded the operation of Yick Fung to sell candy bars, so drinks and cigarettes. e York eatre is now called the McPherson eatre and; is used for operas and symphony concerts.

9

“ at’s interesting!”

“It’s important for you to know the history of what’s what and who’s who!”

Yick Fung was a haven for young and old, an oasis in a sea of discrimination, a er 9. Everyone was looking for a safe anchorage during those bad times. All Chinese were seeking an answer and looking for a place to belong and contribute. Every day was the same in Chinatown. Nothing changed. Yick Fung o ered relief to all from the tedious boredom of the times. It gave short term pleasures so everyone could go back and concentrate on solving the long term problems of making a living, surviving and living in the discrimination and depression eras.

My sense of contributing began when I accompanied Chow Bing Choy, a helpful friend who was also an employee of the famous Butchart Gardens. He Faye’s grandfather, Nipp Ng and her grandmother Nipp Eng Shee who founded and owned the Yick Fung Store in Victoria B.C. ey are seen below with Faye’s aunts and uncles in this 1930s era photo.(L-R) top row, Lun Hung (maid) became Mrs. Jang, Faye’s grandmother, Chew who became Mrs. Woo Lin (maid), Faye’s grandfather, Uncle Jim, bottom row (L-R) Uncle Philip, Aunt Susie, Faye’s mother Kate and Uncle Frank.

would come to Yick Fung to help. I would go with him to Spencer’s Department Store. In the linen department on the main oor, the woman manager, Betty, would load a wooden wagon, with bolts of material. Chow Bing would then pull the wooden cart, with me walking by his side, back to Yick Fung for cousin Nipp Gee Jing to cut into sheets for beds and pillowcases and for my aunts to sew. I felt so proud. Yick Fung was a high energy store, bustling with people and full of good spirits.

Yick Fung was much more though than a work place. My whole family lived together in Yick Fung. Ours was a large family; besides my grandfather, Nipp Ng and my grandmother, Nipp Eng Shee, they had eight children in all who lived to adulthood, including my mother and Aunt Susie. We all lived together in Yick Fung. All Chinese families lived together in one place for several reasons ().

e Exclusion Act of 9, impacted the lives of all Chinese both in China and in Canada. In China, it meant families could not see their loved ones in Canada. In Canada, it made it much harder for the Chinese to make a living, prosper and nd positive meaning in their lives. e establishment put

(1) e rst Chinese to come to Canada came to work in the gold elds in 1858 and then again in 1881 to build the CP Railway, yet it seems we only hear about them a er they are banned in 1923 when only British Commonwealth subjects could immigrate to Canada and even some of them were restricted such as the East Indians and the Hong Kong Chinese. Why, because between 1885, with the completion of the railway and the 1923 Exclusion Act, over one hundred restrictive laws and policies were passed by the provincial government in B.C., aimed at disrupting Chinese family life and stunting Chinese family growth in Canada. Chinese in Canada couldn’t apply for Canadian citizenship so they didn’t have the right to vote or to attend English schools so they were English illiterate. ey were forced legally to live in what were really ghettos but referred to as Chinatown. ey were barred from getting jobs other than in the laundry, grocery, farming or tailoring elds so they had to work for low wages. ey were prevented from bringing their loved ones over to join them in Canada so they had to live a lonely existence all alone. Besides the above, it was the Depression and the unemployment rate amongst Chinese was at eighty percent. ese bachelor Chinese became known as the Chinese pioneers. e Chinese lost all social acceptances until a er 1947, but things still wouldn’t completely improve until 1967. If any Chinese did not follow the above rules they could be reported and deported at any time. We always lived under the fear of deportation.



Had it not been for strong-minded community leaders like my father, mother, grandfather, Aunt Susie, Uncle Frank and others, they would have succeeded. Five family members were the most important in uence on my formative years growing up in Victoria, British Columbia, especially showing me what was most important in life.

My grandfather, Nipp Ng, was a visionary and taught me to be one as well. My mother, Kate Nipp Leong, was an excellent role model, a community leader and taught me; that I could raise a family and work outside of the home, as she was also a teacher at the Wah Kiu Chinese Public School on Fisgard Street in downtown Victoria. My Aunt Susie was also an excellent role model for me growing up and taught me how to be a good businesswoman. She was aldso a teacher at the Wah Kiu Chinese Public School and a strong community leader. My father was a scholar, an educator, a businessman and a leader of all Chinese, and my Uncle Frank became an exceptional scholar in the USA.

Hard work, vision, leadership skills and a good education were the most important things to the Chinese. I learned these things from them all. Here are their stories.

My grandfather, Nipp Ng, was the rst Chinese person in Canada to secure tailoring contracts for his business. He was a visionary and inspired me to think big as well. Ours was a family business. It was the rst shop in Western Canada to o er exclusive hand-made men’s three-piece custom-tailored suits. With my mother and aunt’s help, ladies’ designer dresses. Yick Fung also retailed men’s underwear, work socks, and shirts. He sold these in the front of the store and expanded to include new products and services. He was the rst Chinese to manufacture linen goods such as tablecloths, bed sheets, pillowcases, towels, and tea towels, all for the Hudson’s Bay Co. and Spencer’s Department Stores. Yick Fung was very prominent all over Vancouver Island and supplied men’s denim work overalls to the saw-mills and forestry workers and the CP Steamship’s chefs and kitchen sta .

My grandfather and the Chinese community raised funds to build the Chinese Wai Kui (Overseas Chinese) Public School in the; 00 block Fisgard Street (). My mother and her siblings attended that school. My mother and Aunt

 a choke-hold on Chinatown and tried to squeeze the last breath of air out of it.

Susie, as I said, became Chinese school teachers there. My mother and Aunt Susie were illiterate in English due to the restrictions: Chinese could not attend English public schools because they were not Canadian citizens. Aunt Mable was a younger sibling. In her youth, she was allowed to enter a segregated oneroom Canadian/English public school with a limited curriculum.

My mother, Kate, was the eldest daughter and a teacher and community leader. She raised four kids in Victoria and three more a er we moved to Vancouver in 9. As the loving wife of my father, Leong Chap Kwong, a leader, scholar and the Chief Editor of the Chinese Times Daily Newspaper, she was always by his side and supported him in every way. She did all these things in a time when women usually stayed at home and cared for the family and were not expected to become leaders-in-the-community. My mother showed me that I could do it all, work, be a community leader and raise a family for which I am forever grateful.

My Aunt Susie was the second daughter and third born. She was also an in uence and exceptional role model for me while I was growing up and in my later years. She was an intelligent, versatile, intellectual and charming business lady. Aunt Susie served as a Chinese community leader all her life. She was also a teacher at the Wah Kiu Chinese Public School for many decades. Aunt Susie Nipp continued to operate the Yick Fung business a er Grandfather Ng died, but she never married.

Uncle Frank Nipp, the younger son, was a genius. He was a scholar and had the rare good fortune to attend a Canadian public school, which prepared him with the familie’s help to attend the University of Washington in Seattle and

(2) Today, the Chinese Wai Kui (Overseas Chinese), Public School is still in operation and has taught many generations of Chinese students just as it did my mother and Aunt Susie. e best Chinese scholars were allowed to come from China to teach Chinese students in the Chinese public schools. ey had to pay a 1000 dollar bond to the Canadian government. Back then 1000 dollars was a lot of money. I spoke to some Canadian government o cials, and even wrote Prime Minister Harper about this 1000 dollar penalty, and they didn’t even know about it. eir ignorance really made me angry. Not being able to attend Canadian public schools caused so many problems for all Chinese growing up.



Faye’s Uncle Frank departing for the U.S.A.(Empress Hotel in background). (L-R)

Aunt Susie, Uncle Philip, Faye, Uncle Frank, Aunt Mable, father carrying Wally, mother carrying Gwen Early 1930s.

the University of California at Berkeley. Uncle Frank was a capable professor, but because of the lawful discrimination in the USA against all Chinese, he was not allowed to work in his chosen profession and remain in the USA. He suffered severe hardships in the USA although during World War II, the Chinese National Government o ce in the USA hired him as an “Overseas Voice” in Washington, D.C. He lived in San Francisco a er the war. I visited him many times. My Uncle Frank was an example of the value of an education and how education can change one’s life for the better. e whole Chinese community took great pride and joy that a Chinese person from Victoria, B.C. proved able to graduate from an American university, a rare accomplishment. Just the cost given the limited opportunities made it nearly impossible for Chinese to attend university. e importance my family put on education stayed with me all of my life.

My other aunts and uncles were: fourth son Uncle Philip, third daughter Aunt Mable, fourth son Uncle Bill and fourth daughter Aunt Gladys. ey were all born in Victoria, making them all second-generation Chinese Nation-

als, which: was stamped on their birth certi cates. Chinese could not hold Canadian citizenship.

What stops a man from being what he aspires to be and leaves us all without anything? e answer is in the following phrase, a premature departure from this world!

Life was very fragile for us Chinese because of the horrid situation thrust upon us by the Canadian government. I had two more uncles who both died in their early teens. Uncle Poy died of pneumonia. Uncle Jun was cycling with a group of boys on Beacon Hill Park’s waterfront when one of the boys fell into the water. e other boys tried to pull him out, but all drowned as they pulled each other into the water. Again, it made me realize how fragile life can be. We shouldn’t waste one minute.

Yick Fung played a role in the lives of many young people in Chinatown. Like-minded souls huddled in places like Yick Fung for camaraderie around a prominent gure like my grandfather. What held them all together was that spirit of de ance against the establishment. ey donned their crazy hats, long scarves, a picture of the poor, but free spirit began to form. ey aspired to be classless, forever cutting themselves o from the ruling class, the establishment. ey tried to be whatever the establishment feared most. ey tried to look at the world in a way that the establishment couldn’t see. ey enjoyed themselves and partied high but lived low and wanted to live forever.

Yick Fung was a great meeting place for young men and ladies. Friends of my aunts and uncles would frequent their shop and home on the weekends and hold parties in their upstairs living room. ere was a piano with song sheets. ey played and sang songs like “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” and “Sleepy Lagoon,” amongst others. I remember how I would take a tray of candies and sweets upstairs to the guests in the living room. People who visited Yick Fung were friends: Harvey Lowe (the world yo-yo champion and later a producer and part owner of the Smilin Buddha Cabaret). Roy Mah (the famed future Chinese WWII veteran and later, founder and editor of the Chinatown News in Vancouver that circulated widely in the USA and Hawaii). en there was Richard Mar and Pearl, the future wife of Tim Louie,



Louie, brother of London Drugs former chairman Tong Louie. ey all lived nearby and joined in the sing-a-longs and parties. I was in contact with many people at a very young age because of my notable mother and father. is exposure made me want to be around exciting people. I did just that; throughout my life!

I am not sure where the inspiration for Yick Fung came from or if it just slowly evolved out of necessity. It was probably the latter. Anyway, the inclusion of my grandfather, Nipp Ng’s, store from entrepreneurial to include a social conscience; probably astounded him more than anyone. He probably built Yick Fung for his family. But discrimination made all Chinese his extended family, sort of like what happens during war-time when everyone huddles together. I do not recall there ever being a problem at Yick Fung. So the combination of successful entrepreneur/visionary coupled with a social awareness and a need for a place where people could gather, spelled success.

Everyone came to Yick Fung. Many Chinese pioneers who were illiterate would use Yick Fung’s address as their mailing address and would drop by frequently to pick up mail. My aunts would help them with whatever

(LtoR) Faye’s Uncle Philip, Uncle Bill and Uncle Jim on board one of the Princess steamships to Vancouver. Pre-1936.

Many future leaders in our society came out of Victoria’s Chinatown. My earliest recollection of this connection was of a kindergarten in a local church on Fisgard Street, which we all attended. Our teacher was the mother of Canada’s rst Chinese Member of Parliament and WWII veteran, Douglas Jung. ey called her “Shee Mo” (Madam Teacher). She was a charming, gracious lady. Douglas Jung’s father was a tall, lanky gentleman who always wore a felt hat. He was a landscaper who would come to visit in Yick Fung a er work.

I fondly remember many of the Chinese master chefs on the CPR steamships. Yick Fung manufactured all the chef’s uniforms for the Canadian Paci c Steamships (Princess Joan, Princess Louise, Princess Patricia and the others). ey o en came to Yick Fung to visit us and pick-up their chef’s uniforms and hats. On their day-o , they came and asked for my mother and aunts to assist them with their correspondence in Chinese and English. Sometimes they needed an interpreter. O en, my mother and aunts would help them send their money that they had saved to their wives, children, and parents in China. Most of their money, they sent back to their loved ones. ey were very frugal and lived a very sad existence in Canada. It makes me so mad how Canada’s laws hurt the Chinese. It was horri cally sorrowful. Everyone su ered. ey were such wonderful, hard-working gentlemen, who never thought about themselves. I made my mind up at an early age to help them as much as I could. I have spent my whole life crying on the inside for these Chinese pioneers.

While many Chinese came to visit in Yick Fung, others went o in pursuit of more complex pleasures. ey would take a few bucks with them, had to be cash because there were no pension cheques from the government or Joe’s Laundry or Sam’s Tailors or Western Market in those days. ey’d disappear down an alley for an hour or two. Gambling o ered the same short term pleasures as a visit to Yick Fung but usually was more costly. Even with the restrictions, gambling went on twenty-four hours a day. ere were lots of back alleys in Victoria’s Chinatown. Lots of things went on in them that I knew nothing about at such a young age. ey were like traps for the Chinese;

 they needed. Chefs on the C.P. Steamships would drop by and so would the families of future leaders of Canada.

whenever life got too unbearable in the Age of Discrimination. e alleys are still there today but what went on in them, of course, is not.

My mother’s Cousin, Nipp Gee Jing, was the master cutter at Yick Fung and cut all the pieces of the men’s suits ;but he had a sideline. He helped the; Bak Pew (Chinese Keno) that operated in a back alley shop. Everyone needed more than one job to survive. is famous Chinese lottery (Keno) was like the present British Columbia 9 lottery.

e Bak Pew is a square of white paper, framing poetic phrases in green Chinese characters. You choose from four to six numbers, and they sold for , 0 cents or a dollar. I and my friends; were asked by the Chinese pioneers to choose the Chinese characters up to  or  or  numbers for them just for fun and good luck. It is the ancient Chinese Keno that I believe Reno and Las Vegas casinos also copied. Every hour or two, the Bak Pew would draw the winning numbers. At night, when they closed, the pioneer gentlemen would bring their stacks of money that they won for Aunt Susie to audit for them. I developed a strong work ethic helping my Aunt Susie and watching the others. Funny though, later in life, I never gambled. I felt I worked too hard for my money to risk it on a bet.

In later years, I had a vision for a place like Yick Fung that would be all about the people and not about business. I could see hundreds of people dropping by daily to connect with all things Chinese in the community. My husband and I would help build such a place years later in Vancouver and he would come up with its name, the Chinese Cultural Centre. I will tell you how we and many others got it started later on. It’s quite a story with lots of intrigue in the beginning. It has become a very culturally important place for the Chinese today in Vancouver.

As I became older, I loved working in Yick Fung. Behind the glass counter, on shelves, were the various brands of tobacco, including snu tobacco and cigarettes. Alongside was a smaller cast iron cash register with gold decorations. e bottom shelves held multiple paper bags. I remember how o en I would help sort out and stack everything neatly. e visitors and my aunts complimented me for my excellent work and sales ability at such a



I learned a lot about purchasing, inventory, retail sales, unpacking and stacking of displays and how to use a cash register and other machines. With Aunt Susie we would go to the Imperial Wholesale Tobacco Company in Victoria to purchase inventory such as tobacco, chocolates, and candies. Crepe paper decorations framed our two front window displays, which were both artistic and elegant. My days spent at Yick Fung were a strong in uence on my young life; as I said, I developed a strong work ethic from watching my aunts and mother.

At : on any given night in Chinatown, amidst the hustle and bustle of tra c noise and people buying groceries to take home, a well dressed Chinese pioneer could be seen somewhere on a sidewalk lecturing a child or children on the rules of how to play the game, the game being discrimination. ese children would soon nd themselves out in the Caucasian world and would need to know how to act in public. If they were ever going to ful ll any of their fantasies in life, they would need to know how to behave survive.

e Chinese pioneers all treated Chinatown families and children as part of their own family because of being forced to live restricted lives. ey had a say in everything. ey taught girls to respect their gender and act correctly. Such as never going alone to eat in restaurants. It was only ‘bad (naughty) girls’ who do that. To this day, I will not dine out alone. e whole community watched us kids grow up in Chinatown. Everyone looked out for everyone else, for the most part. at’s why I have always loved; the pioneers. is respect helped develop a strong sense of community within Chinatown of which my mother and father were leaders. Because we were all con ned to live in Chinatown, Chinatown shaped all Chinese lives but didn’t necessarily bring all Chinese together. Somehow we managed to survive in this sea of discontentment.

Despite the di cult times, there was lots of fun to be had for us kids growing up. Boys would play hide and seek ten, nine, eight, seven, six, ve. But you o en couldn’t hear the rest of the numbers because a truck or car would pass by and drown them out. ose playing the game had already scattered to parts unknown behind signs, down alleys, behind buildings. ere was usually an

9 very young age. Working became another of my fondest memories.

accident close by where some car hit another car and smoke would pour out from under either one or both hoods, a Ford or a Chrysler. e driver of the Chrysler would be holding a big cigar. He would dislodge from the Ford with a big screeching sound from his wheels and carry on up the street. Spectators would come over to see what the fuss was all about. It was all the aggression and destruction that caught their eye. What can be more aggressive and destructive than the modern-day automobile? e adult world was the real world. But for us, it was an amusement park for kids.

By the time we moved to Vancouver in 9, we had four kids in our family: me, my brothers Wally and Kenjie/Ken and my sister Gwen. One thing that made life bearable in Chinatown was the fun and camaraderie we all shared. Hazel Yee, Uncle Fred’s niece, challenged my brother Singie/Wally. He had to jump two stories from the second oor of Yick Fung’s staircase to the ground oor. She had done the jump herself. Wow, what a brave kid! e Chinese elders would give my brother Singie/Wally and Waysen Quon, Louise Quon’s brother, a hammer; to walk along the; 00 block Fisgard Street and bang a dent into every car’s fender. “Bang on” became a bad word. e pioneers taught them. e elder’s had fun with the young boys. But it was more to do with aggression and destruction, I think.

Today, if you get sick, you go to the pharmacy. In the pharmacy, you look around for something that will cure your ailment. ere is an instant cure for everything; it says so on the box. If you ask someone today, they will know for sure what will cure the problem. Try aspirin, histamine, this and that. Everyone knows for sure. You will probably still be asking around a er you don’t need it anymore. e Chinese had their way of dealing with illnesses.

Everyone in Chinatown was strongly connected to the past because there was no future. ere were many; 00-year-old taboos brought over from China that I would learn more about as I got older. Because we could not a ord doctors or medicine, our families passed down 00-year-old herbal remedies that o en came in handy.

It was never a good idea to get sick in Chinatown. e Chinese would never be sent to the local hospital because they couldn’t a ord it. ere were no halfway houses or drop in centres or gathering places where you could dress in

0

street clothes all day and socialize with the sta and eat and relax until you felt better, all paid for by the government. HECK that’s what Yick Fung was all about.

Reta Quan and I were o en sick with either: the u, colds or bronchitis. My mother and Grandma Quan Nin, and Mrs. Wah Quan (her second son’s wife), would concoct an old Chinese herbal remedy for us to drink. e Chinese could not a ord doctors or store-bought medicine. It was a horrible thick brown drink that they forced Reta and me to drink. To this day, I cannot take any medical uid, only capsules or tablets. We hated that Chinese herbal drink. Ugh! e elderly Chinese men would point to Reta andme and say; you will not live to be twelve years old.

Corinne Quan and her sister Reta and me were at Louise Quon’s wake, “Bless her soul.” Reta said, “All the “ginseng, cinnamon and Chinese herbal drinks we were forced by ‘holding our nose’ to drink when we were kids, may have been useful a er all.” Corinne chided in, “Look at you both now,” meaning we were healthy and well. Corinne was the most robust and was never sick or had colds like Reta and I.

I think I know how a mummy must have felt in ancient Egypt. Really?

Yes, all wrapped up in those layers of cloth. It wouldn’t have had to worry about breathing because it was dead, but I did! e layers would have been su ocating if it had been alive, and if wrapped too tight, that would have been even worse. Believe me; I know what I’m saying. it wouldn’t have been a pleasant situation. I still don’t know though how they managed to keep the cloth from coming o over the centuries. My experiences of being wrapped up in cloth from head to toe; didn’t last that long. ank goodness!

I had an allergy. My allergy (which was then unknown) caused itching and my skin to break out. Doctors said it was eczema. It turned out I was allergic to wool and annels which irritated my skin and gave me problems. e problem was there was no central heating and I had to wear layers of wool clothes. At night we slept in annel sheets and Pajamas. All Chinese needed to watch out for their health because, as I said, we couldn’t a ord doctors or medicine. We all lived this way. I remember how loud I would scream in pain when



the ‘Chinese witch doctors’ told my parents to wash the skin outbreaks in the fold of my arm with Lysol and similar products. ey wrapped; cotton cloth around my arms, legs and elbow. ese were held in place by rubber bands that cut deep into my skin. I would not tell them that I was afraid of the Lysol wash and that the rubber bands cut deep. I still have scars on both of my arms. Medical doctors and medicine were too expensive and out of the question, and there was no Medicare in those days. We had to rely on the old remedies and ancient treatments. Many are excellent and used today, and I still use them and share them with others.

If you were lucky enough to be still standing a er all the street fun and didn’t come down with some incurable disease or did but showed courage and showmanship in the way you dealt with such adversity, all your friends would give you a rousing cheer or boo you if you hadn’t. e boos were for those who didn’t participate but stood on the sidelines away from the action. If you were one of them, everyone would dare you to do something dangerous or destructive, and you had to do it or never show your face in public again. en, everyone was free to go back to whatever it was they loved doing the most, which for me, was exploring Yick Fung. Even a er we moved to Vancouver in 9, Yick Fung was a sanctuary, especially for us kids when we returned in the summers. ere were always many exciting places to explore. e staircase leading up to the next oor: called the mezzanine, was unusually-wide, ve times wider than ordinary stairs. It was a beautiful natural hardwood. Aunt Susie’s bedroom was here, and there was a long hallway for storing fabric. A private wall telephone hung there for residential use and cost less than the business phone downstairs. Its number was Empire , and it was under the name of Uncle Willie Nipp. Later, B.C. Tel changed it as technology improved, and the population increased to become Evergreen (EV ), which remained until Aunt Susie went to heaven and Yick Fung closed in 9. A large ancestral memorial altar tabernacle table was located at the top of the stairs on the mezzanine oor and had incense burners with incense joss sticks or Chinese blessing candles. Large portraits of my grandfather and grandmother and Uncle Jun and Uncle Poy, who died young, sat on the table on the landing between the main; and third oors. When I and



my siblings and I were little kids passing by the altar, we were scared because it seemed like the portraits’ eyes were staring at us; telling us to be good. We had to go past the pictures to go up to the third oor to the row-of- bedrooms. At the end of the row of bedrooms was the living room parlour, which faced Government Street. I can remember it all just like it was yesterday. Everything seemed so big and animated in those days, but that was because I was so small. You had to be careful not to knock anything over because everything was valuable and we couldn’t a ord to replace it. It was like a Chinese version of Alice in Wonderland, and I was Alice, although I wasn’t really. It was all so magical thinking back on those days and the experiences I had. Whenever we le Yick Fung, I wanted to take the magic with me and keep it with me for the rest of my life. I knew I would try to recreate Yick Fung someday, somewhere else, using the magic I took with me from my childhood. And I did.

“One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. And the ones that mother gives you, make you strong and tall. Go ask Alice; when she’s ten feet tall.” 1. (song list p 465)

My mother had a lovely giant-size wooden leather padded rocking chair to rock us kids to sleep when we were babies. e Chinese pioneers always joked about mothers “rock a bye babying” us kids to sleep, and she would fall asleep too. At certain times of the night, one of the babies would always cry on time. It was my brother Singie/Wally who always closed his eyes to sleep nightly at a speci c time: 9:00 pm. Chinese pioneers and friends’ frequented our shop and as the whole Chinese community “says” to help raise the kids as we were raised by the watchful eyes of the Chinese community, meaning the pioneers. I was known and called ‘beautiful daughter’ with out-standing looks, the teacher’s daughter.

Aunts Susie and Mable and their lady friends formed the Chinese Ladies Auxiliary during WWII and raised war funds for Canada and China. Members of Victoria’s WW II Ladies Auxiliary raised funds for the Red Cross, which nanced a truck. Aunt Susie led the ladies and organized the Chinese



community who worked on the “One Bowl of Rice” campaign raising money for China’s WWII war-starved Chinese refugees. I remember seeing Chinese men parading in the streets carrying a large Chinese National government ag into which parade bystanders threw coins and bills. Adults sold War Savings Bonds and children, sold War Savings Stamps to raise money. Aunt Susie and the whole Victoria Chinese Community did their best to help the two great allies, China and Canada. While the war was hard for the Chinese, it proved to be a turning point for us, as well.

We live in a world where everyone wants to label others. My father later worked in a bakery. My mother and Aunt Susie were seamstresses. Uncle Frank probably had a part-time job in a grocery store when he was earning money for college. But to think of them only in those terms; wouldn’t be representative of their true potential. Just because someone is unemployed or even a student, it doesn’t mean they will not rise to be something far more contributory to society in time. Chinese culture in Canada was at a low point during e Age of Discrimination. But it too came into its own when Canada changed for the better in later years. Today, Chinese cultural centres are a part of Canadian society, and Chinese associations are everywhere in Chinese Canadian communities. eir future may depend on Chinese from other countries who come to Canada and what ideas they bring. All my family succeeded in life despite the restrictions. Aunt Mable le Yick Fung during World War II a er she married Uncle Fred. ey founded the Ideal Fruit Market at 0 Yates (on Broad Street). When we returned to Victoria in the early days, we always stayed at Yick Fung, but later we o en stayed with Aunt Mable and Uncle Fred. ey lived above the Ideal Fruit Market until they bought an elegant home at 09 Lansdowne Road with a beautiful garden that Uncle Fred loved. He was co-editor with my father, the managing editor and chief; of the Chinese New Republic Daily Newspaper at 0 Cormorant Street. Aunt Gladys; was able to attend Sprott Shaw Secretarial School even though Chinese ladies were not allowed to hold secretarial jobs. She married a Chinese scholar and teacher, Uncle Stephen Bing Foon Mah. Together they founded and operated Vancouver Island Produce at 0 Yates Street and later



the Esquimalt Fruit Market, 9 Esquimalt in Esquimalt B.C. (across the Johnson Street Bridge from Victoria), o Fisgard Street. We were a hard-working family, as successful as a Chinese family could be at this time. Experiencing success at a young age; made me want to be successful later on in my life. e Nipp Family in Victoria served the Chinese community in every facet of life.

ALBERT, DIANA, HARVEY AND VERA escaped Shanghai! Does anybody understand what that means? Does anybody comprehend what it took to leave China in 99? Does anybody understand what a victory it was to return to Vancouver safely? Does anybody understand what was happening in China in 99 when Mao seized power and communism got a foothold in the country allowing land-owners, teachers and shopkeepers, decades later, to be rounded up, imprisoned, tortured and eventually killed? No, I doubt it. Nobody will understand unless they were there, not even Chinese Canadians, although they will be more sympathetic, having heard stories from loved ones of the atrocities committed. You can imagine how Albert, Diana, Harvey and Vera felt when they arrived safely home, especially decades later a er hearing about all the atrocities. ey went into business here together and did quite well. You will soon read their story, the same kind of business they had in Shanghai, the night club business. Down on Hastings Street with the glass panels and the big Smilin Buddha sign out front, I bet they felt pretty good to be home and safe; and back in business.

A notable Chinese family we all knew well that lived and thrived in Victoria’s Chinatown in those days was the Kwan family. e Kwan (Quon) family (Albert, Jock Ning, and Jock Tong Kwan); were sent to study in China because Chinese Nationals were not allowed to study in Canada’s English schools. Only Canadian citizens could attend Canada’s schools in those days. eir mother, Mrs. Quan (Ah Nee Kwan), was one of my grandmother’s shipmates on the Empress steamship. It brought the rst three Chinese ladies to Canada. ese ladies were; my grandmother Nipp Ing Shee and two maids, Mrs. Quan and Mrs. Lim, later the mother of Harold Lim, who was the owner of W.K. Gardens in Vancouver), to Victoria from China. e Kwan family owned the well-known Yee Lun Chinese Merchandise and Grocery Store in Victoria, B.C., on Fisgard Street near my grandfather’s Yick Fung Manufacturing Store. Most well-to-do families would send their children



children to China to study in either Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) or in Shanghai, where the Kwan kids studied at St. John’s University. Shanghai life was very cosmopolitan.

Albert Kwan and his wife, Diana Au Kwan and Harvey Lowe and his wife Vera, and their children, stayed in China until the Communists took over Shanghai in 99. en they returned to Canada that had political stability. Over the years, Albert and Diana had four sons, Sherman, Eugene, Brewster, and Shubert. All Canadian Chinese in China ed in 99 when the Communists came into power. Some went to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Elwin Xie’s father, Henry Xie Yuan was another. I need to mention Albert and Harvey because they are part of our story later on. You won’t know who I am talking about later if I don’t.

In Chinatown, Aunt Susie was something of a legend. No matter what she put her mind to, she was loved by all, running Yick Fung, the Ladies Auxiliary, teaching school, helping the pioneers. She wasn’t only a legend in Chinatown for her abilities and style but later, in Caucasian Victoria. My grandfather was a visionary, my mother was a community leader, my father was a leader of all Overseas Chinese, my uncle Frank was a brilliant academic, but Aunt Susie had style. At Yick Fung, people would want to be waited on by Aunt Susie. In the world of Yick Fung, she was the commander and chief, the head honcho. e one everyone loved for her wit, hard work, loyalty to duty and beauty.

Aunt Susie was a superb businesswoman, multi-talented and had a winning personality. A er the war, she converted Yick Fung into a Chinese antique shop and imported antiques from Hong Kong from the Lun Kui Company run by a Mr. Yu. Aunt Susie and Uncle Fred Yee, with Aunt Mable, bought shares in Lun Kui in Hong Kong. Uncle Fred; was involved in exporting to Hong Kong from the U.S.; ginseng and fertilizers for chickens.

Besides assisting or auditing Chinese “Bak wa pew,” Keno (lotto), Aunt Susie designed the menus for the cafés, the Poodle Dog Cafe and ex-principal, Lee Jin Hong’s Chinatown Cafe. She was highly respected and admired in all of Victoria. Chinese friends from across Canada would come to visit her at Yick Fung and ask for her advice. Several generations of Victorians got to know Yick Fung



Aunt Susie (Suey Gim Nipp), Aunt Mable (Suey Hung Nipp Yee), Aunt Gladys (Suey Fong Nipp Mah), and my mother Kate (Suey Kate Nipp Leong). ey were all prominent Chinese community leaders.

Aunt Susie never married. I remember seeing my father and Peter Hem, a prominent Chinese translator, court interpreter and Co-Chairman of the 9 Vancouver Golden Jubilee (0th birthday), with my father. He advised me not to sacri ce my marriage as Aunt Susie did. Peter Hem had wanted to marry

Aunt Susie, but Aunt Susie felt she could only look a er one family. “Married still can do,” he said. Later, when I found myself in a similar situation, I remembered what Peter Hem had told me.

At famous Butchart Gardens, Victoria, B.C. (l-r) Jon Wing Jung was the co-editor with Faye’s father at the Chinese Republic Daily Newspaper, Aunt Susie, Peter Hem, Lily Chan Nipp/Uncle Jim’s wife, Faye’s father, Chap Kwong Leong.

ABOUT ALL I KNEW AT MY TENDER AGE WAS I wanted to be just like my mother and my aunts, who were all highly regarded. My mother, Aunt Susie and Aunt Mable were all exceptional role models for me growing up. My mother was always by the side of my learned father. My Aunt Susie was always helping the pioneers and, Aunt Gladys, who was younger, later managed to get into secretarial school. When discrimination hit all Chinese hard, they managed to hold their heads up high through it all; and for that, I am most proud of them all.

My three aunts and my mother were exceptional women despite the social pressures and restrictions preventing women from working outside the home. ey were some of the rst Chinese women to cut through the glass ceiling of discrimination in the early 90s. ey were excellent role models and mentors to me as I would break through many glass ceilings of my own starting in the 90s.

Aunt Susie ran Yick Fung until she passed away in July 9. Our whole family honoured Nipp Ng, his progeny and Aunt Susie was one of them. She was a hard-working, compassionate lady. When she died, people came from all over the world to pay tribute to her. I aspired to be most like Aunt Susie. Sadly, the Yick Fung Company closed its doors in 9 and stopped contributing to the community. It closed a full century a er Grandfather Nipp Ng opened it, in . So Yick Fung served all Chinese in the Chinese community well; for several generations. at includes my mother, who, as I said, was a great role model for me and Aunts Mable and Gladys, both devoted, loving wives. I would carry on the Yick Fung tradition in Chinatown in Vancouver in many social and business ventures.

In 9, my parents, siblings Gwen, Sing/Wally, and Keng and I at; the age of six, all moved to Chinatown in Vancouver. I have many exciting stories to tell you about that, as there was more opportunity than in Victoria.

“Yick Fung sounds like it was a wonderful place to grow up.”

“Oh, it was, despite the hardships. I hadn’t thought about Yick Fung in years until you started interviewing me with this book. I mean, for this book. I think in Chinese. My parents made us spit it out if we made a mistake. My



and aunts were sure good role models.”

“I did some research and found headlines in the Vancouver Province newspaper from December 21, 1921, which (pulls a paper out of a binder) read: Liberal Candidates pledge to a White British Columbia. It went on to say: Who is to dominate British Columbia, the white or the yellow man?”

“Discrimination was terrible. People don’t remember it today. Look around Vancouver in 09, and you can’t imagine that the Chinese and other minorities ever could have su ered discrimination. But it happened! e Government of Canada was so racist in its e ort to help only British immigrants settle and nd work. It wasn’t until the war came that things began to change. e war changed everything with the Chinese in Canada, I mean for the Chinese. My grammar is bad. I don’t have no grammar. No phonics. I don’t know what it’s for A or B, thee or they.”

“Neither can anyone today imagine working for the wages the Chinese worked for in those days.”

“No credit cards or debit cards. What can you buy for two dollars and 0 cents today? Maybe a loaf of bread, and that’s all. Nowadays minimum wage is  dollars an hour. WHAT THE HECK, who would ever think of working a whole shi for  dollars, but the Chinese, did!

We all should have a Yick Fung in our lives at some time or another. It was our Rock of Gibraltar. I had more than one Yick Fung in my life.

Really?

I will tell you about the others later, but rst things rst.”

Freedom Road

ABOUT ALL I KNEW ABOUT VANCOUVER’S CHINATOWN was it was bigger than Victoria’s Chinatown and there were more people. With its colorful lights, Vancouver’s Chinatown was bustling twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Tra c noises argued long into the night. Chinatown’s characters and energy in the 0s and 0s attracted everyone from all over Greater Vancouver. It was the place to go. First and foremost Vancouver’s Chinatown meant good food and the place to shop for herbs, art cra s and merchandise of all kinds. In comparison, Victoria’s Chinatown seemingly had been le behind at the turn of the century when all eyes focused on Vancouver rather than Victoria, at least economically speaking. Business and commerce had shi ed to Vancouver and Victoria would eventually evolve into a tourist and retirement destination. Vancouver was the terminus of the CP Railway and its chief benefactor. For me, Vancouver’s Chinatown was an exciting new place to explore, even during the war years. I would make many new friends and through my learned parents, come in contact with many important people. I o en heard the streets beckoning, calling my name. ose days were the Chinatown of my youth.

All of us kids attended Strathcona School. On our way to school, we would walk past this elegant “Hollywood style” house built by Chang Wun Fung, VJ Day Parade through Chinatown, 1945

Chairman of the Kong Chow Benevolent Association. It was very exceptional and classy for the Chinese community and Chinatown to have that kind of a house. e house had white stucco, a at roof with blue tile and double blue garage doors that you could drive-in from the street. Alongside the built-in garage were stairs up to an elegant living room with a long curved sectional couch. It was very elaborate and gorgeous and only a dream for most Chinese to own and live in. Most Chinese lived in Chinatown from the unit block of Pender Street to the East to Campbell Avenue on Pender, Keefer, Georgia, Union, and Prior Streets. is Chinatown residential area in the 90s became known as Strathcona.

Chang Wun Fung, a prominent Chinese community leader, and philanthropist was the Chairman of the Kong Chow Benevolent Association of Canada which he incorporated on December , 9, and registered under the Societies Act of British Columbia. e Chinese community called him by his profession as, “Yee Sub Low.” It meant the head of a shery company that hires workers. He and his family lived in Chinatown and built that house at  East Pender Street, second to the corner of Jackson by Strathcona School. It was a big deal for a Chinese person to be able to a ord their own house let alone build one.

I recall Chinatown resident, Mr. Chang Wun Fung very well. He was a distinguished pioneer gentleman, and his wife Mrs. Chang Wun Fung was a handsome looking woman. eir family, son and wife, daughter and husband and grandchildren, all lived together in this home. I visited their home with my mother’s sister-in-law Aunt Lil Nipp, who was a good friend of the yo-yo champion Harvey Lowe’s sister, Winnie Chang, the daughter-in-law to the aforesaid prominent chairman of the Kong Chow Association. Carol Ann Wong Sung is his granddaughter. Carol Ann’s mother Florence was married to George W. Wong, who was then the manager of the famous Bamboo Terrace Chinese Restaurant at  East Pender Street on the lane corner in Chinatown.

It seems my father had a very express purpose for moving to Vancouver. It was to start a very public-spirited project. He and mother wanted to go beyond being an educator and a teacher. But rst of all he needed to nd a place for



us all to live. I suppose he gured if they were going to make the move, they better make it at that time. If it didn’t work out, then all he would be out would be a little bit of money. If it did work out, then so much the better for everyone. In any case, they were going to follow their fantasies.

In Vancouver, my mother, Kate and my father, Leong Chap Kwong founded the Kwong Gee Chinese Public School at 0 East Pender Street at Gore Avenue next to the Paramount Gas Station. ey also both taught at the school. We all lived in the same building behind the school, on the third oor. All Chinese lived above or behind stores in Chinatown which was cold in the winter because there was no central heating and hot in the summer because we didn’t have refrigerators, only ice boxes. My parents became pillars of the Vancouver Chinese community, and founding the school was only one of the reasons we moved to Vancouver. I was proud of my parents for opening a school. is school played a big part in my life, and what happened to it, partly made me into the force of nature I became.

As luck would have it, everything worked out for my mother and father and their school, at least for the next decade or so and us kids had lots of fun exploring the nearby buildings including the one that housed their school and learning about all the past stories of people who lived there before us. My

e Kwong Gee Chinese Public School building at 320 East Pender is on the right behind the Paramount Gas Station in white. Wintertime 1930s. e photographer has his back to Main Street.

parent’s new school was well received and became very successful. All eyes were on my parents to see how things would turn out, at least for the short term. ere were only so many Chinese kids in Chinatown since the passing of the Exclusion Act. But my father didn’t enter into things lightly, he knew they would succeed.

I vividly recall my parents, Kwong Gee Chinese Public School building at 0 E. Pender Street. On the third oor was the headquarters of the Hong Fook Tong, the o cial name of the Yen Ping Society of Canada, which my father founded. On the second oor was the Nam Ping Bit Suey Society living quarters, for the pioneers. On the main oor was Kwong Wo Yuen Chinese Merchandisers and meat store (Earlier it had been a soybean cake manufacturing shop). My most unsettling memory of it was the owner of the soybean manufacturing company, Lowe Sum, sadly hung himself inside the doorway by the stairs where I and my siblings passed by on the mezzanine oor. He committed suicide because of his gambling losses. Every time we kids ran upstairs, we had to call for father to come and get us because we were too scared to pass the doorway on our way up to the third oor. ere were many superstitions in Chinatown and we kids were o en scared. e Chinatown YWCA was on the other side of the street at  E. Pender. It’s now the Lee Association. My father and my future husband were always involved in many Chinatown associations. e associations were important in those days because they actually helped people.

We arrived in Vancouver the year of Vancouver’s ieth Jubilee in 9. It was quite an occasion. In y years Vancouver had gone from a population of about two thousand to over three hundred thousand. e promotional

In the ROC China National Government’s Kuomintang building rose garden at 529 Gore Avenue at Pender Street. Chap Kwong Leong, father, Singie/Wally, Kengie/Ken, mother, Faye and Gwen. e Kwong Gee Chinese Public School building is in the background, 320 E. Pender Street, 1936.

material for the event declared the city as cosmopolitan with quarters for Hindoos, Chinese and Japanese. ere was also mention in e Vancouver Sun newspaper of the many Indian villages located in Stanley Park, Jericho, False Creek, Coal Habour and Kitsilano Beach but none of these ethnic groups were allowed or even asked to participate in celebrations due to racism so the Chinese decided to hold their own celebrations in Chinatown. I am not sure if any of the others were in the mood to celebrate or not but the Chinese were ready.

My father, Leong Chap Kwong, was co-chairman with Peter Hem of the Chinatown celebrations. It was a really big deal. ey imported from China musical troupes such as the famous Chinese Cantonese Opera. ey built a traditional pagoda with archways and stages both inside and out located at  Columbia Street at Keefer Street. It had all the conventional Chinese paraphernalia: embroidered silk tables, chairs, beds, and coverings for the opera properties.  Columbia Street, at the corner of Keefer Street was where one of two Chinese opera houses was located in Chinatown.

When I got a little older, I would walk across the Georgia Viaduct which connected Chinatown to Caucasian Vancouver. Lots of Chinese travelled this route to get to uptown. We would walk down Dunsmuir Street to Granville and alongside the Hudson’s Bay Company with its amazing window displays. All we kids dreamed of one day being able to buy the clothes we saw on display in the windows. We would walk all the way up past Georgia Street to where the movie theatres were located. It was all very exciting even though we couldn’t go to the picture shows because we were Chinese. Vancouver was even more restricted than Victoria. Chinese needed to nd other ways to entertainment themselves.

Although we were not allowed to go into Caucasian theatres, no Chinese, East Indians or Jews allowed, Cantonese opera troupes traveled regularly, by ship, to perform along the west coast, in the Chinatowns of Victoria, Vancouver and San Francisco. Each city had at least one opera house and Vancouver, as I said, had two. It was always exciting when they came to town.

When I was a kid, my parents took me and my brothers to see the operas on the ground oor of  Columbia, (the opera house is still there). It is called



the Gin Wah Cantonese Opera House. e other one, the original one, was in Shanghai Alley and was called the Kiu Shing Cantonese Opera House. I still love Chinese operas and can sit through several in a row. Troupes would arrive every few months in Vancouver. I have a photo of  Columbia when we attended the opera with my mother. I will never forget the famous diva, Mow Done So. She sang dressed as a ghost in an all-white gown, her long black hair hanging loosely to her waist as she knelt at a grave. It was a sad scene that scared me.

I doubt if any of us kids in those days truly understood the sitution in which we all found ourselves, it was just the way it was and we accepted it. We were so absorbed in everything that we never realized there was a hidden side to it all. Sometimes I would disappear with a friend and we would talk about how we felt, all sorts of things, life, our siblings we talked as candidly as we could about what we saw around us for kids our age. We didn’t understand a lot of it but thankfully, there always seemed to be someone to talk to about things so none of us were ever lonely. We may have looked lonely from time to time but heck we were just starting out we couldn’t come swinging into every situation like tarzan king of the jungle, those days would come soon enough. is site above was once a vibrant center of Chinese culture. I have known the old stories of the people’s heritage ever since I was a young child, such as Ng Shew, the famous Chinese de da (a traditional bugle) player for Chinese weddings and funerals. He lived at  Columbia Street when it later housed Chinese pioneers. Ng Shew was the only Chinese bugle player in Vancouver.

Faye With her siblings and mother and father at the Gin Wah Shing Opera Association presenting a Cantonese opera at 544 Columbia in Chinatown.

A tall, handsome, distinguished, gentleman, he was in much demand. I also knew other pioneer men who lived there like Leung Yen Lim, an expert carpenter who built a cabinet for my mother’s school. If there had not been a Chinese Pioneers’ Housing building, the pioneer men would have been homeless with nowhere to go. e building housed mainly men. All our problems were caused by the 9 Immigration Act and the 9 Exclusion Act. e Canadian government was racist. e establishment was racist. No Chinese allowed. I get so upset and cry all the time inside for them. I think I am repeating myself.

“ at’s okay. It doesn’t matter if you are. What you said should be repeated many times until everyone hears it. You know what they say, “You need to repeat something three times before people will remember it.”

“My mother later donated the cabinet that Leung Yen Lim made to the Vancouver Museum as a much loved treasure. He also made two foot stools later when my rst son was born so I could rest my feet. e pioneers were so unhappy because they could not bring their wives over from China. ey worked hard in any jobs they could nd sawmills, agriculture, farms, landscaping, not only in Vancouver but all over B.C. Some found work on the Douglas Ranch in Merritt, B.C. Others operated laundries and groceries during the discriminatory era. I still get mad when I think of it, laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.

IT DIDN’T TAKE ME LONG TO REALIZE HOW IMPORTANT A MAN

MY FATHER WAS to all Chinese Canadians. He was always busy. Besides running and teaching at his own school, he was heavily involved in many Chinese Benevolent Associations and the Chairman of one. It was a strange phenomenon sharing your father with everyone but he had a charisma and a presence about him. I always enjoyed it when he had time for us and always loved it when he was able to spend more time with the family. It was a long shot though at times because of his schedule, teaching, the associations and something else which was the other reason we moved to Vancouver.

To give you an idea of how important my father was he was appointed Honorable Secretary General of the Kuomintang KMT (Vancouver Branch) located at 9 Gore Avenue by the Chinese National government in Taiwan. He was



very scholarly and had been well educated in China. He was voted twice by all the Chinese across Canada to be their chief delegate (an appointment rati ed by Chinese National Government President, Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek) to the National Government Congress Legislature rst held in China in 9 and then held again in 9 in Taipei, Taiwan. He represented all the Overseas Chinese in Canada.

Even though my parent’s school prospered they had to be careful because of the restrictions.Vancouver’s Chinatown was no di erent than Victoria’s Chinatown with its share of bullies. e aggressive behavior of many made daily life a constant challenge. Because everyone was looking for a way to make money and get ahead, some would use any means possible to achieve their fantasies, even at the expense of other Chinese. ere was not only a con ict between Caucasians and Chinese, but a con ict between Chinese and Chinese who often couldn’t seem to live together and get along. ere was very little sense of being united against the establishment in a common cause but more like every man for himself.

Our family was always worried about being deported back to China. ose who tried to deport us, wanted to close my parent’s Chinese school and use the premises for their own gain. Any mean-spirited government o cial could have deported us. We kids are third generation Canadian Chinese born and raised in Victoria and Vancouver and my mother was second generation, born and raised in Victoria B.C., yet because of the restrictions, this was possible. My uncles and parents put up a pretty tough ght for our security in Canada as they were harassed and discriminated against by the elder Fung Chang Gee who is Olympian gold medal gymnast, Lori King’s great grandfather. He was also the grandfather of World War II veterans Henry Fung and his sibling’s. My father had to arrange for me to study in Hong Kong at St. Paul’s School should we be deported. ey were horrid times for my parents. My two younger siblings never knew how severe our situation was or even knew they were rough times and how much our parents sacri ced for my generation so we could become excellent Chinese Canadian citizens who all contributed greatly to Canada. My parents served the Chinese community as academic scholars and taught the Chinese students who still today praise and compliment me.



Despite that fear, we prospered!

“Yes, and how many times must a man look up Before he can really see the sky?

Yes, and how many ears must one man have Before he can hear people cry?

Yes, and how many deaths will it take ‘til he knows at too many people have died? e answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind e answer is blowin’ in the wind” 2.

I was always working somewhere and soon my boundaries grew to include other parts of Vancouver. Somehow my strongest memories of Vancouver in those days seem to be of when I was working. I’d catch the trolley if needed and climb the Main Street hill or travel out Broadway the same way later on, through Kitsilano not far from the Indian villages at Kits Beach and Jericho, although I never went down there. I was always going to work at one of my relative’s, grocery store or at a friend’s store. I never knew the Indian villages would sadly soon disappear as more Caucasians arrived in Vancouver and the establishment would con scate their ancestral land for developments and city infrastructure, such as parks and public beaches.

Betty Wong was my classmate in Chinese School. As pre-teens, we worked weekends from nine a.m. to midnight at her brother-in-law, Sam Joe’s Western Produce at 0 Main Street in Vancouver. Betty and I worked for  dollars a day. en I would spend  dollars and 0 cents on groceries to bring home to my family. I learned all about bedding plants and cut owers from working and selling hundreds of owers at Western Produce. I remember we sold 000 bunches of da odils one day at Easter. In later years, my father and Uncle Philip bought Western Produce. e business did quite well until Safeway opened across the street. It was a hard life. Just when it seemed like you were getting ahead, something knocked you back down. In spite of it all, we were rich with lots of friends and family. Where money was concerned though, the taboos, restrictions and discrimination hurt us and all Chinese badly. My childhood

9

was both good and bad and this propelled me as an adult, to want to have what the establishment had, stability and security but I didn’t want to be one of them (a racist).

Interestingly, when the war came none of we Chinese realized it would change all our lives forever. What was a terrible thing turned a majority of people’s thinking around and eventually opened up opportunities for we Chinese and other minorities to accomplish things that we had been struggling to achieve for decades. Funny, at rst we are all so opposed to the war but each individuals faith and love of Canada made it happen where we should have all let history just take its course rather than always try to oppose everything, no matter how noble our thinking or reasoning. Here’s how it happened. e action – meaning what everyone was thinking about - all shi ed a er 9, over to Asia a er Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Canadians everywhere were joining the war e ort and enlisting to go to the Paci c theatre the same as they had been doing since 99 to ght in Europe, bumper to bumper, ying planes, driving jeeps, tanks, joining the infantry but here in the Home of the Chinese, things were di erent, it’s not that our boys didn’t want to go and ght the Japanese who had invaded our ancestral homeland. Everything here in Chinatown was about not being recognized as Canadian citizens.

During the early years of WWII, Vancouver’s Chinatown held big rallies and demonstrations against the Canadian government. Heated debates took place as to whether Chinese Nationals should enlist and/or be dra ed. I vividly remember as a young girl a er the Chinese boys got dra ed and deployed to the Paci c theatre. eir parents were emotionally distraught and cried out for help to my parents whom were their con dents. Some of the young Chinese boys felt obliged to ght for Canada’s freedom. ey enlisted patriotically. I can remember Frank and Bing Wong’s mother, Mrs. Wong Chew Pang and her daughter, Francis Wong Lim, (Mrs. Al e Lim) agonizing in our kitchen. Her two sons, Frank and Bing, had gone o to ght in the war and she needed my mother’s support. ey had been my parent’s Chinese school students.

But the war was not just about ghting overseas. e whole Canadian lifestyle - shopping, restaurants, trolley cars, factories, corporations, racism, and

0

ethnic quarters - here in Canada needed to be preserved, or it might all die o , even the students at the university, across the water from Vancouver needed to be looked a er so the whole cycle could continue on into the future. We didn’t want it to get to the point where the Chinese might disappear. Who would do the laundry, tend the gardens, run the grocery stores and make the clothes? It was unbelievable to think the Chinese, who were the focus of so many restrictions since , who couldn’t get near the university let alone graduate from it, who all lived in one neat little spot near downtown Vancouver called Chinatown – the object of all those years of restrictions and discrimination could be gone forever? No, someone had to stay home and defend the home front.

My family was lucky during the war years. Uncle Willie, who moved to Vancouver from Victoria, was dra ed then rejected because he was at footed and overweight. Uncle Philip got selected, but he was allowed to remain home to operate B.C. Bakery and feed the home front. During the war years, it was one of only three bakeries in Vancouver, the others being McGavin and Weston. In those days, my father was a partner in B. C. Bakery. He was of course a teacher but because teachers were poorly paid, he needed another income. B.C. Bakery was located at 00 East Hastings Street at McLean Drive. e Richmond Dairy was next door. One of my father’s jobs was to feed the bread into the slicing machine. I would be at the other end to grab the loaves. At age eleven, I could li ten or een loaves at the same time and load them on to the wagon. I can still see it all. My mother had to get up at three a.m. to feed Uncle Philip who did the baking. Uncle Willie delivered the French rolls to the stores and restaurants at  cents a dozen because of wartime price controls. It was a money losing business but everyone had to follow the wartime restrictions. e bread was  cents a loaf. I can still see the design on the cover of each. My father was not afraid to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty in the bakery. Yet, he was just at home as the head of the Kuomintang representing all Overseas Chinese across Canada or being a scholar and teaching at our Chinese school. He was an amazing man! Chinatown in those days was not like Chinatown is today.

So I was beginning to get used to life in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Meantime, the war started and miraculously my family all stayed in Vancouver to protect



the home front. But that didn’t mean we didn’t feel the e ects of the war here at home. All precautions were taken to protect the public even though the war was being fought many miles away. If the Japanese had sprung a surprise attack here on the west coast, we were all prepared. Everyone knew what to do just in case. It was a dangerous situation none-the-less. We all needed to go beyond the danger and be prepared.

Vancouver had wartime blackouts. I can remember the sirens sounding. When you were on the street, the Bamboo Terrace Restaurant was one of the places you must go to be safe in blackouts. My Aunt, Mable Nipp Yee, and I were walking in Chinatown one day a er visiting Ming Wo owner, Wong Chew Lip when the sirens sounded. e lights all blacked out. We rushed into the Bamboo Terrace, frightened and worried. I can still envision this event in the darkened, creepy Chinatown night!

Beyond that though, night life in Chinatown was such a big thing, I discovered, that despite the blackouts life went on. Everyone still wanted to enjoy themselves and they found ways to do it. All eyes were on Chinatown during the war years as everyone needed a break from the horrors of the war and Chinatown and its many restaurants, lled the bill. Lots of sailors and soldiers frequented Chinatown when o duty to have a good time. What was meant by a good time was o en questionable. It could mean anything from having dinner, to getting drunk to womanizing, to visiting the gambling joints and other such dens of iniquity to getting into ghts with the locals.

During the war, there were two famous restaurants in Chinatown. One was, as mentioned, the Bamboo Terrace at  East Pender Street (in the heart of Chinatown), with its brilliant green bamboo neon sign. It was featured on many of the postcards and photos of Chinatown. It was, “ e Chinese Restaurant in Greater Vancouver.” People came from all over and lined up to get in. e other famous restaurant was the W. K. Gardens dine and dance supper club located a few doors down. Harold and Wilbert Lim owned W.K. No liquor allowed. No liquor of any kind was for sale in restaurants and nightclubs because there were no licensed premises, except beer parlors. Beer parlors had separate ‘Gents’ and ‘Ladies’ entrances. Nothing was open on Sundays not department stores, or even movie theatres. Because nothing was open on Sundays, Chinese



banquets were always held on Sundays in Chinatown. Everyone would “BYOB,” which meant to bring your own bottle and hide it under the table in a brown paper bag. e liquor helped to ease the nerves in wartime because the sailors and soldiers who came into Chinatown to drink and get drunk, got into ghts with “ching chong” chinaman, as they called us. My Uncle Bill had his ear bitten o by a sailor. My mother and father would go into a tizzy if there was a late night telephone call out of fear that Uncle Bill had gotten into another ght. Other restaurants included the Chungking Chinese Restaurant, the famous Sai Woo Restaurant, Mings, Yen Lock, the Hong Kong Cafe, the Royal Cafe and more. e Golden Coin Cafe served the best ever original apple tarts, butter tarts and other Chinese delicacies. Wo Fat Chinese Bakery had ‘egg cake’ (KaiDone-Ko), almond cookies and all the various pastries needed for a traditional Chinese wedding. Chinatown was an exciting place to grow up in those days. roughout 9, many young Chinese men joined the war e ort and went o to ght in the Paci c theatre. e armed forces eventually found a need for our Chinese boys in ltrating Japanese lines in South East Asia. Because of the color of their skin, the Japanese would not notice them in the local population. When the war ended in 9 and everyone came home, the Chinese veterans staged their own mock ceremony down Pender Street in Chinatown for a couple of reasons, one was to protest the fact that they had gone o to ght for Canada even though they were still not recognized as Canadian citizens. It should have been a gathering of all tribes but it was not. e other reason was when the veterans came marching home from the war, they were not allowed to take part in the big victory parade down Hastings Street. Because of the discrimination they were not allowed to participate in Caucasian functions, they were acknowledged only in Chinatown by the Chinese. Eventually, their participation in World War II would prove to be the turning point for the Chinese in Canada but at the end of the war they sadly returned to the same racist country they had le .

In the years to come when veteran’s associations sprang up, all but the Chinese veterans were allowed to purchase property and build a legion hall. e Chinese vets had to rent their own place. Later, I and my future husband were charter members in Chinese Veteran Unit 0 and attended their functions.



V-J Day celebrations down Pender Street, the heart of Vancouver’s Chinatown.

Looking west on Pender Street towards the Sun Tower.

Today, most veteran’s associations are rich because they own land. Chinese veterans today still do not have a legion hall. ere were so many di erent ways the Chinese were discriminated against by the Caucasians. It still makes me cry when I think about it.

Life goes on, even during war time. No one knew the changes that would soon come for the Chinese as a result of the war so in the mid-90s, for most Chinese it was still life as usual in a sea of discrimination. We still lived on Pender Street behind my parent’s school at Pender and Gore. Like most of Chinatown, it was full of a lot of aging wooden buildings that didn’t stand the test of time very well. Even though it would be considered Vancouver’s slum neighborhood by Caucasians, if you could see all the people going about their daily business, it was really a wonderful interactive, vibrant, little community, with di erent neighborhoods.

By the mid-90s, our family had grown considerably. Besides us four kids, there were now a total of seven. ird daughter Joan was born, then third son Moody/Wilfred, then a fourth son, Bernie/Honkie. I have a photo of Moody at age ve or six, taken by the lamplight in front of where we lived in Chinatown at 0 East Pender Street. We had just come back from buying a quart of milk (for 0 cents) at the Jong Wah Confectionary Store. We also had a half-brother, Chun Gee, who lived in China. My mother had seven children to look a er. What a job! And besides that, she had her teaching and community leadership activities as did her husband, who was the leader of the leaders with his community and academic circle, always by each other’s side. As for me, I would learn how to work with all di erent sorts of people with di erent backgrounds, di erent social status and di ering wealth, thanks to my parents.

One of the ways we were all taught to deal with discrimination was to be exemplary citizens in every way. e world we found ourselves in was a chaotic place and that didn’t mean for us to go around waving the Canadian ag in everyone’s faces. Maybe that would have been a good idea or perhaps to sew pieces of the Canadian ag on our clothes but that might have been interpreted in another way. e world was a theatre with lots of di erent acts to be played out and we were the actors. We needed to know how to play every part. All the seats were empty right now but soon they would be full and we would have to



be able to present ourselves in a way that won over all audiences, whoever they happened to be.

Early in life, I was raised in the old fashioned Chinese ways of speech, respect, traditions and custom. en I was also trained in the Chinese-Canadian cultural way. I and my siblings were taught to respect the elders. If we got out of line, we would be in trouble with the community. Our parents would be seen as irresponsible for not teaching their children to be proper Chinese-Canadian citizens. We must not be seen as street people without a home or education. No class! Goodness was instilled in us by the community and our noble parents. I and my siblings were all watched over and in a sense raised by everyone in the entire Victoria and Vancouver, Chinese communities. We learned to respect Chinese manners and etiquette, both in everyday life and in our business/work ethic. We had to take on the best ways of the Chinese and the Canadians, both customs. Respecting people is essential! ere is an old Chinese adage: “At three you are taught a good life which will stay with you until you are eighty.” Over the years, I learned to speak several dialects of Chinese by helping the pioneers. I also learned early in life to both read and write in Chinese.

When on stage (out in public), I felt I needed to be nine feet tall, taller than everyone else. I needed to glow. I wasn’t really nine feet tall but I felt I needed to be bigger than the rest and glowing from head to toe. I needed to bounce across that stage far above the uorescent lights below. When I stopped, my face must always be pleasing to the eye and I must always wear a smile when greeting others. I must always say something pleasing to get a positive response from the audience, glowingly, and then go bouncing o the stage to the delight and laughter of my audience.

I had to behave extraordinarily well and to have the highest standards. As the prominent teacher’s, role model daughter, I too had to be a leader to the other Chinese students and their families. is would prove to Caucasian society that Chinese were good people and should not be discriminated against. Girls, young ladies were very conscious of themselves and not allowed to walk alone through Chinatown because the eagle eyes of the Chinese pioneers who hung around the streets were watching them, criticizing them. I overheard the streets talking about you. ey would watch the girls and ladies go by and

At the same time in Europe the biggest crime of the 20th century was revealed to the world- e Holocaust - 6,000,000 jews died in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany during WWII, this one is Dachau.

criticize or gossip about whose daughter or wife you were. ey respected me as the eldest daughter of prominent Chinese teachers and community leaders. I was trained to be a good role model for all the children in the community. We had to uphold these standards throughout our childhood and youth as I still do today. I learned to laugh and put on a good face in all situations. In my presence, mothers of friends lectured their children to learn from Faye, the Chinese teachers’ daughter. Before long, I had a following!

A bigger glow in the center of the stage attracts more followers. I see a school bus in all di erent colors orange, green, and magenta covered in hundreds of designs big and small, ready to take us all to faraway places. A sign on the bus reads, THIS IS YOUR LIFE, HOP ON BOARD! Music is playing from some where and everyone is happy as they all get on Faye’s bus of life. e audience loves it as the bus is about to embark on the rst scene, of the rst act, of the rst play, in the rst theatre of our young lives. No one knows where we’re actually going or where we will eventually all wind up but everyone trusts me and that’s good enough for now.

Girl’s mothers would allow them to go out because they were going out with the teachers’ daughter, Faye, who does no wrong and goes to no wrong places. All of them had to have permission from their parents whenever they wanted to go out. In our teenage and young adult years, my girlfriends would tell their parents that they were going out with Faye, the teachers’ daughter. ey always got permission to attend dances, roller skating parties, and outings to Lynn Valley and Bowen Island that I led. I made life-long friendships in this way and was fond of taking photos as treasured, cherished, keepsakes of those good times.

is strikes me as marvelous. I am the hero of the play, the CHINATOWN KID, always racing around, back and forth, always chasing life and all its fantasies, trying to outrun everyone else, I wonder where I will be at forty, always talking. I never stop talking. It doesn’t matter if anyone is listening yet there usually is someone, all are welcome aboard the bus. We can’t stop anywhere for very long; we have to get to the next stage, the next play, and the next act in the next theatre on Faye’s bus of life and good times.

I became known as a leader. Faye is the one who creates joyful activities.



My friends stuck with me through good times and bad. I would also get blamed if there was a problem, though. Well, they’re all wonderful old friends now. As for my new friends, it seems I am still the organizer and coordinator for activities, whether social or business. Today, I have a vast network and portfolio of business and social contacts from all over the world from the highest o cials to the political heavyweights to the average girl or guy on the street. ey all remember how good I was to them and that I cared. Eventually, my family was prosperous enough to move out of Chinatown.

BY 9, LIFE PRETTY MUCH WENT LIKE THIS FOR ME IN OUR apartment behind our school above the Kwong Wo Yuen Chinese Merchandisers and meat store. e Chinese pioneers continued to watch us all as we grew up. ey had lots of suggestions for us all so I did everything they said to show I was listening. We all just hung around for something to change as life went on, kids went to school, babies cried, I continued to glow and be a leader, people continued to go to uptown over the Georgia Viaduct and the neon lights on Pender Street continued to dazzle the crowds as they gathered on the weekends to enjoy the nightlife of Chinatown.

Life changed for me and my family though when my mother and father were able to buy their rst house. It was located at  West th Avenue by Manitoba Street in Vancouver. e law changed in 9 and Chinese were allowed to buy a house outside of Chinatown. We were the only ones in the Nipp and Leong families to have their own house. Buying a house was a big deal. Everyone appreciated it as a huge accomplishment and congratulated my parents. Chinese friends visited and hosted parties in the house and relatives came and stayed with us. We enjoyed their visits. e previous owner, Captain Lewis built the house and it featured a ship’s interior décor with a three-piece bathroom and a sawdust furnace. He was a ship’s Captain. Both upstairs bedrooms each had two built-in (ship style) double bunk beds for Captain Lewis’ many kids. We used one bedroom for my brothers Wally (Singie) and Kengie (Ken), and Wilfred (Moody) and Bernie (Honkie). Later on, Singie shared Uncle Philip’s room.

You can imagine the change in all our lives moving from a few rooms above a retail store in Chinatown to having our very own house in a nice new neigh-



borhood on Vancouver’s west side. We le behind all the street noises, lack of privacy (o en no hot water as we all had to share), line ups for the bathroom, no central heating (hot in the summer and cold in the winter), our new house was like heaven. Who knows what lives in the ra ers of those old wooden buildings in Chinatown. If there was a line up for the bathroom we could always go down the street to the Paramount Gas Station but that wasn’t really convenient. No, having our very own house was much better.

Our house was living space for ten people. ere were ve bedrooms, den, living and dining rooms, all with solid hardwood oors, full size kitchen, basement, rec. room and garage. It was my Saturday job to polish the hard wood oors on my knees. I will never forget when I was about thirteen going down into the dark basement when no one else was home and looking for the string that hung down to turn on the lights. When I found it and pulled it and the lights came on, there was a big black bear staring right at me. It was a gi a hunter had given my parents that he hung on the wall waiting for my mother to turn it into bear soup. e bear’s fur became a bear rug which lay between the living room and dining room forever.

Our house was actually quite elegant. e dining room had built-in ti any, glass cabinets and beautiful oak panels with ‘plate holder’ edges. e beautiful solid elegant, walnut, three-piece dining room suite, with ten solid walnut and

Our rst house at 117 West 15th Avenue.(L-R) Singie (Wally), Gwen, mother, Moody (Wilfred), Bernie, Joan, Ken (Kengie). 1946.

leather chairs and bu et china cabinet, is now in Moody/Wilfred’s home. e full-size living room had a black brick replace. On the mantel were attached red and green lanterns. In the kitchen, we inherited Captain Lewis’ old electrical cooking range (a very ine cient antique), but it saved us from buying one. Cash was scarce. e old refrigerator was better than nothing because if you lived on top of a commercial building or store in Chinatown, you certainly had no fridge or central heating. Our rst house seemed genuinely luxurious like a castle with all the needed amenities. I loved the brown velvet curtains and the Venetian blinds. e public yearned for such a lovely home. I almost forgot to mention the large guest bedroom. Like Yick Fung, I can remember it all so vividly as though it were yesterday. is house made me want to have a house of my own someday.

e sad part about it all was what we le behind in Chinatown was not going to change for most men, women, boys, girls from the lower class, children and babies and this is the way we had been living for years as well. Visiting

Christmas in our dining room with (L-R) top row Faye, Sing (Wally), Gwen, Keng (Ken), second row (L-R) Wilfred (Moody), Chap Kwong (father), Bernie (Honkie), Kate (mother, Joan Leong - It was always a delicious meal! 1947

O cials of the Legislative Congress Yuan (National government) from Shanghai visiting Faye’s mother and father at their house in 1946.

bathrooms in service stations and restaurants was normal for many I am sure. I can still imagine the hassles they would get into with the owners trying to keep their facilities clean for their patrons let alone have it become a drop in center for those less fortunate. We were lucky; we could a ord to move into our own house but it always bothered me that so many others could not and I made up my mind that I would try and do something about it one day. Everything costs money; especially a new house so we couldn’t a ord to do everything at once that needed doing. It didn’t take long for us all to get used to our new house, although there still seemed to be an issue with space. With all the boys in one bedroom, that was di cult especially for my oldest brother Wally/ Singie. He needed his own space and

it wasn’t long before a solution to the problem presented itself. e feeling begins when the others start to get on your nerves and you start saying things you shouldn’t and then you ip out over something not very important, you try to keep your head down in the universe of the house and go outside or into the basement and then it dawns on you, nothing happens by accident.

My sister Gwen was asked by Aunts Susie and Gladys to come live with them in Victoria when she was still a kid because there was more room, as our aunts were not married. Gwen saved all her “Lai Shee” or good luck red envelope money, which she received from the pioneers each Chinese New Year, as tradition. It was 00 dollars. at was a lot of money then. My father used it to convert the sawdust heating to natural gas, even though it was expensive. My mother felt it was a waste of money. Later, Singie converted the sawdust storage room in the basement into a lovely bedroom for himself. Years later, back in Vancouver, Gwen attended King Edward High School, and UBC to get her Ph.D. (Honors) in biology.

A er our Chinese boys had fought so valiantly in World War II, it was im-



possible for the Canadian government to not let we Chinese become Canadian citizens. For two years a er the war, the Chinese lobbied Ottawa to change the laws regarding barring Chinese from immigrating to Canada and becoming Canadian citizens. Finally, on May , 9 the Chinese won what was called Enfranchisement and we were all allowed to become Canadian citizens and bring our families over to be with us in Canada. Unfortunately, not all the restrictions against the Chinese especially those having to do with jobs and where were could work were removed, many stayed in place, some for another twenty years, up until 9.

A er enfranchisement was won, my parents and I helped many eligible Chinese apply for naturalization and to bring their families over from China. To become a Canadian citizen, you rst had to ll in the papers in English, and then you were summoned to the B.C. Supreme Court before an Honorable justice. e judge would either approve or reject your application. Finally, wives and underage blood-related children could join their loved ones in Canada without restrictions caused by the Exclusion Act of 9. Each applicant needed to bring with them a witness, and I o en helped them with each step of the procedure. e pioneers were English illiterate, so they had to be assisted with their papers. I was o en in court acting throughout the years as their witness, interpreter and translator when I was in my late teens.

“Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth Rip down all hate, I screamed Lies that life is black and white Spoke from my skull I dreamed Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now” 3.

I will tell you later how I single-handedly fought Ottawa between the 90s and the 990s. I cried inside not only for my people but for all minorities. I won more rights for not only Chinese but for all immigrants to enter Canada legally, making Canada the multicultural country it is today.”

“I thought there had to be more to this story than merely Fantasy Gardens.”



“Oh, there’s a lot more. You haven’t heard anything yet. We’re just getting started, back to the China connection.

WOW! e establishment actually meant it, enfranchisement I mean. Every body’s life was signi cant. Everyone was alert though watching for the meaning of it all. But the vibrations, there was no end to the vibrations. When everyone found out that not all restrictions against the Chinese had been li ed, everything became a parable of their life. at was typical with the establishment; everyone had to still carry on playing the game. at’s the way they designed it. It’s always in their favor and not in the favor of your life, it’s the old bullshit, they didn’t even really think about it, they just gave us some rights and that was it and they are there and we are here and they were still going to keep coming at us.

It was still a bad situation where the work place was concerned. e Chinese still couldn’t get good, high paying jobs and employment prospects were still very di cult. Canada still discriminated against its minorities: NO ORIEN-

TALS

AND EAST INDIANS

HIRED was a sign in all businesses in Canada. Especially guilty of this were the multi-national corporations who wrote these restrictions right into their constitutions. It would not start to change until I in 9 and my sister, Gwen Leong Chan (Dr. Gwen Leong Chan) in 9 invaded e Bay and Woodward’s and convinced them to hire us. Our e orts led to a change in policy regarding hiring minorities. e old ways of doing business would then begin to fall. is horrible situation gradually changed one step at a time over the next two decades until the Chinese in Canada were on an equal par with Caucasians, at least legally speaking. It didn’t change the thinking though of a majority of the establishment who were still racist and full of prejudice and discrimination. ere was sure a lot of talk though, everyone’s life was becoming more important than the characters in some of the best novels. It was all phony but infectious. It was all about games. e whole world was playing games, millions of people and they didn’t even know it. Even the Communist Chinese in China were playing the game of power. eir side was winning so if they wanted to call someone a hero whether he was or not they just did it. If they wanted to kill people, they just did it. Brainwashing everyone including ourselves is a game.



e more you oppose someone the more they will want you to play the game. It was a long time before people saw through the games being played in China and it cost a lot of people their lives.

Shortly a er WWII ended, civil war broke out in China. My father’s brilliant brother, Uncle Leong Shek Tung, was a university student in Guangdong/ Canton China at that time. He and a group of university students were all killed as the Communists took over China in 99. Mao Tse Tung killed millions and changed the course of many lives. e ROC Nationalist government, led by President Generalissimo Chang Kai-shek, ed to Taiwan. e pioneer losses were dreadful. e communists honored my father’s brother, Leong Shek Tung, as a Communist hero and placed a forever plaque on the threshold of our Yen Ping Region ancestral home in the village of ‘Tit Mah Tune.’

All families in Chinatown were close to loved ones in China. ey were essential to everyone’s life. Without them people in Chinatown would feel no connection to the past. Without the letters being sent back and forth a strange lonliness would set in at home. For the most part life in Chinatown was bearable but you had to force it sometimes to remain that way. Besides maintaining a home in Chinatown, people o en needed to contribute to maintaining a family home in China. Every family had to do what was ever necessary to maintain both homes. But there was a locomotive coming down the track and around the bend that was about to throw everything o kilter. A really big monster train, a menace of the highest order and the only energy that could stop it was barking commands at it which would hopefully stop the monster in its tracks but if it didn’t then there wasn’t a goddam thing anyone could do about it.

In 99, my mother had used her k gold wedding gi s to nance their ancestral home. She sent the gi s back to my grandfather (my father’s father), to build the house in their ancestral region. e Communist plaque was to honour my uncle’s bravery. e Communists thought my uncle was ghting for them because the group of students he was with was pro-communist. Whatever, the communists made a hero of him. Many years later this plaque saved the life of Leong Chun Gee, my half -brother. If it weren’t for this honour, he and his family would have had to go to hard labour and re-education during the Cultural Revolution. I will tell you more about the hard times of the Cul-

9

tural Revolution when it happened. Much later, my nephew Kerry and niece Cindy Leong travelled to our ancestral home and honoured our ancestors at their ancestral village.

Before President Generalissimo Chang Kai-shek there was Dr. Sun Yat Sen. Dr. Sun Yat Sen served as the provisional rst president of the Republic of China and the rst leader of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China). He is referred to as the “Father of the Nation” in the Republic of China for his instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty during the Xinhai Revolution in 90. He lived for a while in Honolulu, Hawaii with his brother where he learned English and then returned to China where he became disillusioned with the policies of the ruling class. He escaped to Hong Kong with his childhood sweetheart and enrolled in medical school and was one of only two to graduate from his class. Because the rulers of the Qing Dynasty refused to use western medical technology he decided to devote his life to changing the political structure of China. He was a great man!

Dr. Sun Yat Sen stayed on the second oor of a building on the corner of Pender and Carroll Street owned by the Freemasons, # W. Pender Street for a while. In 90, Dr. Sun Yat Sen traveled overseas to Japan, the USA, and Canada to raise funds to overthrow the Qing/Ching Dynasty. He stayed in Boston for a long time. You can still see a sign on the side of the building in Chinatown

Faye’s father Chap Kwong Leong meeting Dr. Sun Yat Sen in Vancouver in 1910.

along the top that reads Peking Chop Suey Restaurant which in later years was on the third oor of the same building. A er WWII, the building was the home of the Kung Yee Chinese Public School sponsored by the Freemasons Association.

“Do you know anything about a letter he wrote to a colleague back home during his visit?”

“I might but not now. Don’t interrupt me or I will lose my thoughts.

My friends were always waiting to see what I would do next. I arrive. I give no indication of what might be next such as carry a suitcase which meant I was about to take o for parts unknown. I was just a clean cut kid from Chinatown, wearing inexpensive clothes, laughing and smiling like I always did, very outgoing just someone everyone loved except for maybe a few who were jealous of my popularity I don’t know, like I said, I always glowed especially a er dusk, walking around Chinatown with my friends. I got lots of letters from my genius uncle in California inviting me down. He was de nitely a genius that’s for sure; he looked the part and always hung around with scholarly types. When they went out together they always looked like a college fraternity group but he had gotten a new job and I was anxious to learn more about it. I wondered if he would seem so scholarly doing what he was doing now.

I o en travelled to San Francisco in the 90s where a lot of my father’s distant cousins and friends lived. It only cost 99 dollars to y down in those days. I always saw my favorite scholarly uncle, Frank Lung Foon Nipp and his friend Dr. Hoenigbaum. He was a skin specialist. He discovered my allergy to wool.

As I said, Uncle Frank worked during the war as a news broadcast writer for the National Government of China in Washington, D.C. (Overseas Chinese Voice). Uncle Frank was a Chinese Canadian, and it had been an exceptional honor for him to be able to attend university, let alone an American university. In the U.S. he was classi ed as a foreigner and Chinese which restricted his rise in academia. is horrid situation existed all over North America. He was now however, doing public relations work for the Chan brothers who owned the famous Kuo Wah Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

I got my rst taste of high society at a Faye’s Uncle Frank. young age. e Kuo Wah Chinese Restaurant hosted a dinner for the Democratic National Convention in 99, while I was visiting. ey invited me,

through my Uncle Frank, to be one of the VIP guests. I was seated next to James Roosevelt the eldest son of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his wife, and behind US Vice President Barkley and his wife. Roosevelt lived nearby in Millbrook. He was instrumental in trying to dra Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Democratic candidate for president. When Eisenhower lost, Roosevelt resigned as head of the California State Democratic Central Committee. Roosevelt was a decorated WWII Major in the Navy and a colorful fellow. I remember the conversation was quite stimulating and inspiring for a young Chinese girl from Vancouver as we held hands and had pictures taken. is trip to San Francisco didn’t disappoint and I think it was good for my uncle Frank to move into other circles outside academia. Yet, as they say you

In San Francisco, California Faye with James Roosevelt the eldest son of former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Jue and US Vice President Alben W. Barkley and his wife behind Faye at a reception at the Kuo Wah Chinese Restaurant in Chinatown during the Democratic Convention, September 18, 1949.

can take the boy out of the homestead but you cannot take the homestead out of the boy so I was not surprised by some of the people I met on this trip to San Francisco but it was still so exciting. I was broadening my horizon that’s for sure.

Chen Kong Min was seated across the table. He was a Chinese classical scholar from Nanking, China, and had been a classmate of my uncle, Stephen Bing Foon Mah. In 99, he wrote the only book on the Chinese in North America. It preserved for posterity the stories of the pioneers, the Chinese scholars, the merchants and others, what their life was like and the contribution they made to society. I spent many months o and on in San Francisco. It was beautiful in those days. Easter was always a lovely time of the year. What I have been telling you is all from my diary when I was -years-old. at’s why I remember it so well.”

“You graduated into higher social circles.”

“I guess you could say that. I was certainly broadening my horizon and meeting people from all walks of life and social circles but back to Vancouver’s Chinatown. A lot of the people I have been mentioning, while they may not be still with us, their children are and I am in touch with many of them. I want to honor their family by mentioning their family connections to you.

Back in Vancouver’s Chinatown, a pioneer sits on a chair outside a building and smiles but says nothing. Another pioneer tells me as I walk by with a friend; he’s waiting for the game to start. Another pioneer standing beside the rst says: We don’t have anything to do except wait for the games to start. e rst pioneer continues, it may not look like much but it transcends all the bullshit. e pioneers all wanted to stay away from the games the establishment played, the power, the authority, the positioning, why should they play the establishments games when they have their own games to play. God isn’t anyone listening to them these poor souls, I thought.

Another way the Chinese found to entertain themselves during these segregated times was with Chinese social clubs. Chinese social clubs in Chinatown were legally established for the Chinese pioneers to gamble for recreation on a social basis. e game was Pi Cow but rarely Mahjong. Various organization

tions/associations held Mahjong games which were more social. Pi Cow was for larger bets and hard gambling, serious Chinese pioneers. is was the pioneers’ only recreation. As I said, they were alone in Canada without their families.

Soon, someone opens a door and they all disappear inside one of these social clubs one by one, bowing politely to us as they go. Strangers are coming towards us down the street so it is time to leave. At least when we were with the pioneers we were safe. We could get into a lot of trouble out here all by ourselves and I would be to blame because I was the leader but we were all happy the pioneers were busy so we quickly departed. When I was young, I and my friend Kay Jung went into these gambling clubs, only on Tag Day, to tag each of the gamblers to raise money for the Red Cross (which is now known as Poppy Day). In these days, any women who frequented the social clubs were considered low class. ey were only there to entertain the men.

I remember them all so well! Gordon Lee, Gary Lee’s father, ran one of the social clubs. His brother, Henry Lee was the doorman at the entrance preventing foreigners (Caucasians) from entering, Chinese only (I always called him Chinatown Charlie). Later, when I had my own business, at  E. Pender, a few doors up the street, he was always there waiting for me when I drove up in front of my place. He would yell, “Get out!” then he would park my car. Henry was terri c, and I will never forget him with his cigar in his mouth and his black derby hat.

ank God for the Chinese social clubs, at least the Chinese pioneers had some place to go, there were lots of them still out on the streets though, trudging o into the gloom, towards wherever they lived the Pioneer’s Men’s Building probably, with their hands by their sides, walking slowly, heads down, one then the other, they never got to go anywhere but then again no one in Chinatown ever got to go anywhere for that matter, what a life!

As I have said, everyone needed more than one job to survive. Gordon Lee became the rst undertaker at the Armstrong Funeral Parlour. Henry Lee also drove in the Chinese funeral entourages through Chinatown. To digress for a moment, his stepson Winston Wan is the e ciency expert with Jack Gordon’s SCI-USA, funeral and cemetery conglomerate. Gordon Lee’s two sons, Gary and Alvin, are both excellent artists. I am sure you have gured out by now

that Chinatown for the Chinese was very special and a haven from the di culties we Chinese faced in those days and we would protect it at any length to preserve what little we had.

rough the sunlit glass window in the front door of our house, I see a car pull up and out of the car steps my father. e Chairman is home early. I half expect the whole neighborhood to jump with joy but that doesn’t happen. In fact, it’s all very quiet. My father has his eyes down as he walks towards our house. He is carrying something in his arms. He sees me but there is no hello, not any sign of recognition. He opens the door and comes inside and still doesn’t say anything to anybody as all have gathered behind me waiting for the Chairman. It is unusual for him to come home so early. We all rush up to him but don’t know what to say. My mother comes down from upstairs. She has long black hair and is one of the prettiest women I have ever seen. She is radiant. en, all of a sudden the Chairman smiles and hands my mother a bouquet of owers and lets out with a big, hurry let’s all go down to CHINATOWN for dinner. Now, that was a surprise!

Vancouver’s Chinatown was the bustling centre of commerce for the Chinese in Canada before the 90s, because it was much bigger than Toronto’s Chinatown. Toronto’s Chinatown had fewer Chinese pioneer families. Ships from the Orient docked in Vancouver laden with Chinese merchandise and goods such as ginger, herbs; dried mushrooms rice and much more had to be shipped to Toronto by train from Vancouver. e gold rush was on the west coast and the railway ended in Vancouver, both reasons for the large number of Chinese pioneers on the west coast.

We didn’t go out together for dinner o en in those days, it usually only happened on special occasions so you can imagine how surprised we all were but happy none-the-less. We all loved going down to Chinatown, especially a er we moved to west eenth-avenue. I already had so many wonderful memories of Chinatown and would soon have many more as I grew older and met more people. My world was quickly growing and I was beginning to understand it all much better, even the discrimination.

Kuo Seun Emporium at 9 E. Pender at Columbia shipped goods across Canada and I worked at Kuo Seun from 90 through 9. I remember Cal-

gary, Alberta gi shop owners Linda May, Mr. and Mrs. Poon and Chung Hem who came out from Calgary to buy art gi s to sell in their shop in Calgary. My father knew them all because he hosted conventions and gatherings in our home for people from cities all across Canada as the Chairman of the Benevolent Association in Chinatown. I got to know them all as well because I served them in Chinatown. I met people from across Canada, Saskatchewan, Montreal, and Toronto. I had a super memory. If you tell me their Chinese name, I would know them. If I read it in Chinese characters, I would recognize it. I would even get correspondence from these gentlemen starting in 9 when I was only thirteen!”

It wouldn’t be long now before I would meet someone who would change my life forever and for the better, in oh so many ways!

“So on May 12, 1947, Enfranchisement was won, and the Chinese were able to apply to become Canadian citizens.”

“ at’s right, they sure were. Amazing! Discrimination didn’t end like I said, for another ten years or more. It was still hard with the Chinese to get goodpaying jobs. I mean for the Chinese. Everybody made money o the Chinese. Mining companies sold them penny stocks, lots of them. To go to the movies, it later cost us  cents to see the feature and  cents to see the cartoon. Yet they still discriminated against us.”

“But a er 1945, the Chinese were allowed to live outside of Chinatown?”

“Yes, if they could a ord it. You have to remember making a decent living was always the problem for the Chinese and other minorities. Also, twenty years of discrimination le the Chinese very wary of Caucasians and their motive tives.”

“ e Chinese united in Chinatown you said?”

“No, I’ll tell you next about the many di erent factions in the Chinese community. e di erences were caused by their birth location (Canada or China) and to a great deal by their social and economic level. None of them mixed.”

“So, they were not only wary of Caucasians; they were wary of other Chinese as well.”

“ at’s exactly right.”

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“How did that change?”

“You’ll nd that out shortly as well, but I’ll tell you this, I think Dean and I played a major role in rst bringing the di erent Chinese groups together and then a major role in showing them the way forward into the Caucasian world.”

“It sounds exciting! I can hardly wait to hear how it all happened. Both Chinatowns sound like they were exciting places to come of age, despite the hardships. An imperfect situation as you so nicely put it.”

“Oh, they were. Vancouver’s Chinatown had two opera houses. ere were were lots of restaurants, all serving di erent kinds of Chinese delicacies and regional styles of food. ere were lots of associations that helped people out when they needed it. It was not like it is today, where it costs a fortune to join an association and then they don’t do anything for you. ere were lots of other businesses as well. We had our doctor, Dr. Chu and a dentist, who was Dr. Chu’s brother.”

“It sounds like a city within a city!”

“It was; that’s exactly what it was. We had our schools. We put on events like the Fi ieth Jubilee Celebrations and the Victory Parade down Pender Street in 9 to welcome back our Chinese boys from WWII. What I’m telling you is real. I don’t make things up.”

“I found it interesting that the reason you needed to be good Chinese Canadian citizens and contribute to Canada, was so that Caucasians would see that you were just like them, trustworthy and therefore should not be discriminated against.”

“ at’s true. And because I was the daughter of such prominent parents, I had to be extra well behaved. When you’re brought up to think that way, a er a while, it just becomes natural, I suppose.”

“Oh, I am not so sure of that. You always hear of someone who is well brought up and from a good family, rebelling in later life, the classic rebel without a cause, rebelling for rebellion’s sake.”

“I suppose, but we had a common enemy, discrimination, which pretty much set me on a course early in my life, and it stayed with me into adulthood. You don’t forget things like being told you’re not as good as someone else. Or

you’re not being allowed entry into certain establishments because of your colour. It’s what I know. I don’t speculate.”

“So, Dr. Sun Yat Sen stayed in downtown Vancouver.”

“ at’s right, pretty historical, eh? Who’s who and what’s what! I will tell you more about Dr. Sun Yat Sen’s visit later. It was imperative to all Overseas Chinese but most important to the future of China and what happened there in 90. He’s the father of modern China.”

“ e building where he stayed should be made into a living history museum.”

“Good luck with that one. With the price of real estate in Vancouver, it will be torn down and a condo tower built on the land. City Hall is already allowing gentri cation to take place in Chinatown. Chinatown should have been declared a National Historic Site, years ago, but all three levels of government in Canada are more interested in making money than they are in preserving Canada’s history. ey keep passing the buck. I’ve got to get a er them.”

“ at’s sadly true, especially here in Vancouver. So, you were dining with the son of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt in San Francisco when you were seventeen.”

“Something like that, I forget exactly how old I was. My Uncle Frank was with me, so it wasn’t like I was there by myself. As I said, Chinese ladies didn’t dine by themselves. But it was pretty exciting; I have to admit.”

“It gave you a taste of high society at a very young age. I can see how you went on to meet and befriend so many people from all levels of society, during your lifetime. I’ve been reading your manuscripts, and I looked at your website.”

“Yes, it was a good training ground, I guess for sure. But I never forgot where I came from and the people I knew growing up in both Chinatowns. ey were always there for me growing up, and I was determined to be there for them for the rest of my life, which I was. Dean and I were both that way.”

“It sounds like Dean was a pretty special guy.”

“Oh, he certainly was, but I’m going to introduce you to Dean next. Dean was my extraordinary, one of a kind, forever lover.”

“I can hardly wait!

We have set the time and place of your story, learned how the two Chinatown’s shaped your early life and met a few of your friends. e only person I

haven’t met yet though is your hero.”

“ at’s right. My husband was my hero, as you will soon hear. is is really when our story together begins. Are you ready? Do you think you know enough about the place and times and who some of the people were who came in and out of our lives? If not, you better go back and review it.”

“I hope so. I can hardly wait to hear more.”

“My story gets complicated. I hope I don’t confuse you. You have to think Chinese to understand my story.”

“Well, I’ll try my best. I’m not sure how to think in Chinese. You may need to help me along.”

“Don’t make a mole out of a big mountain. You’ll manage just ne. Here we go.”

“I’ll try not to.”

Friends from Victoria

In Calgary

Part Two A WARNING of the CHALLENGES AHEAD 1950s

In Vancouver

Chapter 

A Fine Romance

ey say when you fall in love it can happen when you least expect it and hit you on the head like a bolt of lightning which is exactly what happened to me. Dean always said, he fell in love with me rst and I think that’s true, I was too busy glowing and taking my friends to di erent places on Faye’s bus of life.

So you were a social butter y way back then.

No, I didn’t become a full- edged butter y and get my wings until the 90s, I was still in the cocoon stage of my life, a green caterpillar trying to nd my way but Dean could see the butter y within. One doesn’t expect to marry someone years older than themselves but that’s what happened to me. When I think back upon those days, we were all very lucky that Dean even made it to Vancouver a er what he went through during the war but he was a lucky man. He was always lucky they say, the luckiest boy in Yen Ping Village but I will tell you all about that shortly. First, let me tell you about Dean. at wasn’t his real name you know.

No, I didn’t know that.

No, it wasn’t. I’ll tell you all about that too.

Okay!

“Chun Kwong was to come from China in August 9 to the University of British Columbia. His father, Leung Hing Yee who lived in Vancouver, sent him passage via ship. Chun Kwong loved his grandmother. He told his grandmother he would die from seasickness. Grandmother immediately gave him the money for airfare which, in 9, took  hours ying via Philippine Airlines to San Francisco and several days for stopovers before arriving in Van-

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Chun Kwong in Hong Kong before coming to North America, 1948

“I always had pocket money during the hard times in WWII, for eating and spending.”

Walter Pang, a Hong Kong school pal, met Chun Kwong at the San Francisco airport in August 9. Chun Kwong had written Walter from Hong Kong asking him to meet him. Walter said:

“Chun Kwong was a stranger with limited English in the USA.” Walter looked a er him, showed him around, took him to his rst ball game and then sent him to Vancouver.

Chun Kwong was the real deal, he was well educated, not like us in Chinatown, he had school pals all over the place in Canton City, Hong Kong and even in San Francisco, he had been an actor in World War II in China and looked like Robert Taylor but here in Vancouver, he was still Chinese. e establishment had a thing about Chinese. In their minds, the worst were the educated Chinese and they descend from there. ey had a thing about all Chinese but at least the uneducated ones they felt they could keep under control. It would soon be the same in China when the communists started grabbing the educated class and the landowners and the businessmen. Back in China, Chun Kwong was very popular but somehow being an educated Chinese person with a nice new suit and shiny shoes didn’t mean he would graduate to doing the Caucasian strut anytime soon, in the racist world of Vancouver.

Chun Kwong arrived in Vancouver at the University of B.C. to start his postgraduate studies. He lived with his father at his father’s Daily Fruit Market store on Burrard Street near Broadway on the mezzanine oor, which had a shallow ceiling, no heat, and no hot water. It was entirely di erent from where he had come. It was quite disappointing and sad to him that his father lived here. How di erent it was from the beautiful six- oor home and grand commercial building they owned in Canton City. His father, Leung Wah Suey/Hing Yee and

0 couver. It was still better than to be seasick on the high seas. Grandmother, handmade a black silk money pouch for him. Chun Kwong called it his ‘Chinese kidney bag.’ It was to carry his money, and it was also a symbol of prosperity, the money he was going to make. Grandmother was a landlord and collected rent money from her di erent buildings. My future husband later would say:

grandfather, Leung Sheung Yen, had sent money back to China to raise their family and educate them and to build this Canton homestead. It was Chung Kwong’s rst experience with our horrid situation.

GOOD THINKING THERE CHUN KWONG. CHUN KWONG has just arrived in Vancouver feeling very out of place coming in from the old Vancouver airport in a taxi and down Fraser Street with Grouse Mountain looming in the distance. All those small newly built one level wooden houses constructed during and just a er the war, houses with a view for the white establishment streaming down the hill. His rst glimpse of downtown Vancouver over on Main Street reminds him of Hong Kong with all the views and the harbor and the mountains in the distance but there weren’t as many people as Hong Kong or even San Francisco and the people who were here were all white, even the policemen and customs guys at the airport, all white. e customs guys at the airport had looked at him kind of funny like he was from another planet so he wasn’t sure how he was going to t into this strange new world, he didn’t want to be messing up the minds of the citizenry everywhere he went, something had to change.

So Chun Kwong decided he needed a di erent name. Dean is the highest in the educational eld, so he named himself Dean. He gured he would be more comfortable in the western world if he were called Dean. His new friends at UBC though called him Lo Leung.

UNIVERSITIES SEEMED TO BE FAR AHEAD OF THE REST OF THE CAUCASIAN WORLD when it came to recognizing the Chinese. What was it that made them see so much promise in other ethnicities when the rest of the Caucasian world was beating them up? Could it be there was a competition between universities or maybe it had to do with funding. ere is of course lots of evidence of the high quality of Chinese scholars going back hundreds of years so they certainly couldn’t buy into the current ideology of discrimination, if they wanted to be credible. Nor was there any evidence that these Chinese scholars would be successful in the Caucasian world they would soon nd themselves in but maybe they did have hope that things would change or maybe, they were trying to e ect change from within.

Dean was in one of the rst groups of Chinese post-graduate students at

UBC and everyone in this group became close friends. One was his old classmate, Lowe Bak (Wing Lowe) who had been an old school pal in China. During World War II, they had out-run the Japanese together, staying one foot ahead of them all the time. Dean always said,

“Lowe Bak’s father saved us when we moved from place to place hiding from the Japanese. Lowe Bak used some of the money his father sent him for his education to buy pork fat.” No wonder Dean had a blocked artery later in life.

KEEPING ONE STEP AHEAD OF THE JAPANESE must have been a challenge. When you think about it to the Japanese they were real life fugitives. e advantage they had though was the Japanese couldn’t ask around to the town folks in the villages to see if they had seen any fugitives. If they tried, no one would have given them a straight answer. ey’re over here. ey’re over there.

ey’ve gone to a completely di erent place. ey would all seem to know for sure. e Japanese never did cross paths with them even though they did come quite close on a couple of occasions.

Dean was throughout his school days known as a successful sportsman and playwright. e whole school knew the school Captain who led his team throughout Canton province. When he was running from the Japanese with his classmates during the war years, everyone in all the towns where they hid remembered him from his school days, and he received royal treatment in all the villages especially Yen Ping. ey say he was the luckiest boy in the school.

It is said that if we prepare ourselves for life, then we will be ready when opportunity comes along but what is that quality that makes some people always able to see opportunity while others, always seem to be out of step with life? Whatever it is Dean certainly had that quality. Everyone knew that whatever it was he decided to do in life no matter how di cult, he would be successful. Certainly tness, good health and a positive attitude and strong mental capabilities are traits that we associate with successful people and Dean had them all.

Dean was always lucky and never starved. He had a good supply of food and money. In Yen Ping Village they asked him to coach their basketball team. Dean was their hero and he felt safe and secure as everybody looked a er him because of his winning ways. He won so many awards for Yen Ping Village in

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his school days that he became not only their sports hero known a ectionately as ‘King of Sports’ but also as a director and storyteller for which he was called ‘King of Songs’. ere were also great hardships being on the run and o en walking for days and having to hide in the bush when the Japanese passed by on the road above.

Once a student he was now on the run from the enemy and trying to help others from his school. Once an athlete remembered by all for his winning ways now needing to use his athletic abilities to merely survive. For most of the war, he had been acting in a play called the Black Rose to bolster the morale of Chinese troops all over China but now he needed to use all his skills to merely stay alive. What is it that people draw on when times are tough to rise above the present situation and become heroes to others, it has something to do with courage I would say!

During the war, while Dean and his classmates were running from the Japanese, one of their classmates with them was a girl. She became exhausted so Wing Lowe kindly and tenderly encouraged her to keep up. She told him she liked Chun Kwong, but Chun Kwong didn’t feel the same. He patted her on the shoulder and helped her to walk alone. Chun Kwong was busy carrying his professor’s possessions. e professor had a family. ey took turns helping the professor’s kids.

Luckily Chun Kwong made it through the war years and with the help of his grandmother was able to y to San Francisco and his friend Walter Pang sent him on to Vancouver where he became known to one and all as Dean. e scene must have been one of joyful anticipation for the future within this rst group of post-graduate students at UBC. I am not sure where they were taught at UBC but a er the war they built a lot of huts on the university grounds. I guess money was scarce so they might have been taught in these army huts. ey had a jolly good time indeed. ey all became life-long friends. ere was Wally Lee who would later open a communist store in downtown Vancouver in the 90s (selling goods from Red China). en, there was Je rey Hoy who I would get to know quite well as he was always hanging around Dean. Richard Wong, Yukon Lew and Wing Lowe, Dean’s friend and fellow student from China when they were run-

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ning from the Japanese, Colin Seto, Ding Wong and Dean. ey had many memorable parties’ together and social events and activities. Dean was a champion photographer in Hong Kong and China in his youth. He enjoyed very much taking and organizing his pictures. It had also been my favorite hobby in my younger days.

Dean is standing impeccably dressed in a suit, wearing a white shirt and a colorful tie gazing out the window of the Wah Kiu Chinese Public School towards Pender Street below. His hands are gentle like those of an artist and his forearms although hidden by his sleeve are long but wouldn’t be considered lanky. He is tall but looks even taller probably because his posture is so straight. His face is very handsome with chiseled jaw and cheek bones like those of an athlete. He has o en been compared to the Hollywood actor Robert Taylor as I said but without that thin moustache outlining the top of his upper lip and with his jet black hair all neatly combed he pervades an air of elegant masculinity that everyone recognizes immediately.

In 99, Dean was in big demand. In addition to studying at UBC, he took a teaching post at the Wah Kiu Chinese Public School at 9 Gore Avenue at Pender on the top oor of the Kuomintang Building. As Bill Lee, one of his students likes to say,

“And so enters, this tall, dark, handsome, young Chinese teacher.” He taught them Chinese which was extra special. He was knowledgeable and 1949, e Overseas Chinese Student Varsity Club Dance in the Fall at UBC ( rst group of post graduate students a ter WWII. Back row (L-R) Verna, Tommy Wong, Annie Yee, Kate Yee, Eleanor Yee, Irene Yee, Kay Chow, Macy, Margaret, Nadine. Front Row (LR) Hornby Derr, Colin Seto, Dean Leung, Wing Lew, Yeasting, Henry Yuen, Wally Lee, Richard Wong

intellectual and they all respected and admired him. Invitations to homes for dinner soon followed. Everyone wanted to enjoy Dean’s company. His greatest fans were the mothers and fathers who wanted to cultivate a friendship with Dean and to introduce their daughters to him. He was easily the most handsome eligible Chinese bachelor in Vancouver (if not in Canada). ey also wanted their sons to be friends with Dean, to learn from him. It was considered an honour to be his friend.

I wasn’t very tall but I had beautiful long black hair just like my mother’s that fell down to my shoulders and I always dressed quite smartly for work or socializing in those days. Mother always told us to look like we belonged to someone when we went out. I was quite thin and full of energy. People said I was good looking and beautiful and that I always greeted people with a big, friendly smile. I tried to consciously dress like I belonged to someone. e worst fate that could befall any of us we felt in those days was someone thinking we were homeless, with no class, a street person. So I always tried to look smart and be accepted as an honorable member of society even at the young age of sixteen.

I was busy myself in 9 and 99 and went to my share of parties. One day my mother told me, I was invited by the Wong’s Association to be the leading lady in a play Dean was producing as a fundraiser. I had heard rumblings and praise for this tall, dark, young man who seemed so powerful. ey told my mother that I had the right features and asked my mother if I would consent to play the leading part. I had participated in many Chinese pageants, fashion shows, dances, and parades.

“Who is this Chun Kwong Leung and where did he hear about me?” I asked. I refused. I wasn’t an actress, “Whoever invited me must be crazy,” I said. A er, they all talked about the great time they had. Even many years later when we were married, I would hear them all reminiscing about the play.

So life carried on –

Who is that?

Is that my hero? is strikes me as marvelous. I always wanted to meet my hero. Is Chung Leung going to be the hero in my new fantasy e Life & Adventures of Faye Leong, the CHINATOWN KID who is always chasing around all over the

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world, back and forth across the country in her bus, always one step ahead of herself and larger than life and here now is this older man, a producer stirring up all the girls in Chinatown with his good looks and powerful charm. So go the fantasies of an adolescent teenager looking for her Prince Charming in every one she encounters. I can’t stop to think about it anymore, there’s too much to do you understand so many miles to go, pictures to take, diaries to write all punctuated by – it’s all in your mind, you haven’t even met him yet.

We nally meet. e Yee sisters, Mamie, Katie, Irene, and Annie, lived at 9 West 0th Avenue. I was o en invited to dance parties in their basement. A er I paid my respects to their parents, I would go downstairs to their recreation room. is night, upon entering the recreation room, I noticed on the right side the men including Chun Kwong Leung, all leaning against the wall. I was escorted to a seat at the other end of the room.

Most of my friends were all older than me because I was involved with people of all ages through the Chinese pioneers and friends of my parents. I was encouraged at a young age not to discriminate on where people are from or

January 7, 1950, Faye and Gwen’s party in their rec room in the basement of their home. Faye brought together different classes/groups in Chinatown. This photo includes Harry Eng, Gilbert Eng, Ernie Kent, David and Albert Chow, Katie Lee, Lillian Chow, Bessie Kent, Mary and Margaret Chow (twins) Gilbert Mar (donout man), Ken Yuen, Yew Lee

how old they are. I was o en invited to parties by my older friends.

“Oh! So this is that Chun Kwong Leung, across the room in a blue double breasted blazer jacket with gold buttons and white trousers and saddle shoes.” ere he was, his arms folded, smiling, leaning against the wall chatting with his fellow UBC post-graduates.

My escort introduced me to Lo Leung, and we spoke for the rst time. Every Chinatown mother fought for their daughters to catch this eligible, handsome, Chinese classical literature scholar, this bachelor, and gentleman. I heard over the decades that the ladies would swoon over his speeches like the ‘bobbysoxers’ swooned over Frank Sinatra in the 90s or Elvis Presley in the 90s. e party and meeting Dean were pleasant. But he was Dean, the older brother, and I was Faye the younger sister. We had to respect Chinese etiquette.

“Only sixteen, only sixteen And he loved me so-o-o I was too young to fall in love And he was too old to know” 4.

MY TEN MINUTES WERE UP AND THE PARTY WAS OVER. It was my rst brush with this powerful, dark, handsome, stranger everyone had been talking about, the one every mother was trying to catch for their daughter, the one whose mere presence made girls swoon. I had lots to keep me busy so I didn’t expect to run into him again anytime soon but I was wrong. It seemed like a long shot that I would get to talk to him again since I turned down his o er to be in his play but as it turned out he seemed to be everywhere and our paths o en crossed during the course of our daily lives.

It was hard for everyone in the Chinese community to get a job but even harder for me a er I worked at my father’s Western Produce. Luckily, the Zack Brothers opened one of their Spotless Cleaners in Chinatown, and I was able to secure a position. Harvey Lowe would come in with his trousers creased from sitting as a security guard. Dean would come in as well always extra elegant and and dapper, to have his pants pressed.

Dean was always impeccably dressed. All the men wore four season hats



in those days. He always tipped his hat to be courteous. Chow Mee Ding, the grandfather-in-law of the now famous architect Bing om, always said, “Dean is the most respectable man in Chinatown.”

Whenever Dean saw me walking down the street he would stop, “Bow/Kum Yow” and greet me very courteously. Everyone in Chinatown raved at how respectable he was; a true gentleman and scholar.

It’s funny how people always want to know how you met someone, were you introduced, was it by accident, a chance encounter due to a change of plans, maybe they think if it worked for you then it might work for them as well. Maybe they gure they haven’t met anyone interesting lately because they aren’t in the right place, I don’t know. Maybe people just like to be nosey or maybe they really, truly want to share in your good times and be a part of it all so they want to know every little detail.

If Dean and I were asked how we met and got married, Dean would always say,

“I picked her up on the street corner,” or I would say, “I was picked up by Dean.”

“You’re so young and I’m so old is my darling I’ve been told Sugar sweet and oh so nice Won’t you come and be my wife” 5.

No one ever got the real story. Some Enchanted Evening from South Paci c, is so appropriate, it became our meeting song. One chance meeting and three years later, we became husband and wife so dearly, so deeply in love, forever. “When I grow too old to dream,” this was our song, “I have you to remember.”

My strongest memories of Vancouver in those days were going to parties at my friend’s houses and being driven around in someone’s car, slipping and sliding down the hills to CHINATOWN. Everyone worked somewhere in CHINATOWN and one restaurant became our HQs, where I would sit glowing with my friends thinking we were in the center of the universe while the world carried on around outside. It was so great to be a part of something, I am



not sure we really knew what but we were out and about. Everything was larger than life and everyone seemed important to us even those we didn’t know (I was developing a social conscience).

I had lots of friends. We were all very busy but we always found the time to get together. Mamie Yee Wong was working at Kuo Seun Emporium on Pender Street. Dookie Wong, Raymond Lee and Lil Chan Lim worked at the Bank of Nova Scotia at Hastings and Columbia. Irene Yee worked at the Peggy Lee Beauty Salon a block away in the Holden Building. Katie Yee worked at the Bank of Commerce at Pender and Main. We would all get together for a Saturday luncheon at Yen Lock Chinese Restaurant at  E. Pender Street in the middle of Chinatown.

ere were lots of di erent social groups in Chinatown that di ered by their place of birth, social status and education. Many groups wouldn’t mix socially and lacked the social skills and desire to even talk to members of other groups. I was di erent because of my upbringing and I found it easy to mingle with the di erent groups.

I got to know the Yee sisters quite well and also their brother Danny. I lived just ve blocks from the Yee house, and they picked me up. Katie was the driver. In Chinatown, we would all go to our separate jobs. e Yee’s hosted a lot of parties. ey were four single girls, although they were much older than me. I was the only one born in Victoria. ey were an educated, mature group from China. In 99, their father, who then lived in Saskatchewan, went to China and brought them to Vancouver. Because of my knowledge and personality, we were all able to mingle together. eir style of communication and expression was di erent from the other groups.

e action - meaning how far I could get ahead in a job – was over for me at Spotless Cleaners. I couldn’t advance any further nor make more money which was o en the reality of many of the jobs available to us Chinese. No matter how much fun we all had, we all still had to make a living and get ahead in life. Pretty soon I would be older and life would pass me by and I would still be working in a dead-end job with no future. Everything in Chinatown economically speaking was about getting ahead.

Mr. Seto Kuo, of Kuo Seun Emporium, came to steal me away from Spot-



less Cleaners. I became his director of sales. He was an astute businessman who exported goods across Canada. He was also the largest importer of Chinese herbs and traditional medicine throughout Canada. e Emporium was like a department store. Wherever there were Chinese, he successfully imported to them. He added a pharmacy department while I was there. at was for western medicine.

We were all looking towards the future so Kuo Seun Emporeum o ered an opportunity for me to get ahead, at least for the time being. I am not sure how Mr. Kuo found out about me or what made him think I would be a good employee for his business but maybe it’s best that we don’t always know these things, but just be happy when they happen. I was young and full of energy and could help breathe new life into his business and I guess he saw that and that’s exactly what I did.

I increased sales for Mr. Kuo. When I became sick with bronchitis Mr. Kuo and Walter Wah Gor Chan visited me at our home to tell me; my job was always waiting for me. I was an expert in Chinese merchandising. I could read and write and ll the Chinese orders (they were all in Chinese). Mr. and Mrs. Kuo appreciated my abilities. His sta was surprised that I could mix Chinese and Western culture as they were mostly elderly and from China. I ate lunch and dinner with them, which was traditional Chinese cooking that most Chinese Canadians wouldn’t eat so they knew I was no snob. ey realized I was di erent. I won their hearts, love, and respect and later they became my clients when I had my own business.

Our house on west th Avenue always had lots of visitors – we never knew who was going to come to visit, it gave me a chance to see what my friends were really like some restrained, some re ective, some just plain crazy. th Avenue and Manitoba was a typical lower west side neighborhood in those days with picket fences and wooden two story houses. e window frames were o en painted white and there were lots of shingles, usually painted brown, which was an earthy tone. It was a world away from skid row Chinatown but despite all the trimmings, home is where the heart is and where friends gather. roughout 90, the more mature overseas Chinese students would come to visit me including Dean. ey had lived through the war in China, and my



father was most interested in hearing what had happened to his brother Leong Shiek Tung. We learned later that the National Kuomintang government executed my father’s brother for participating in a pro-communist rally. Charlie, Stan Nagi, and Andy Wong were friends from Victoria who o en came to visit me. Gwen would play the piano. When Dean started coming, he sang and Henry played the violin, and we all played Bridge and my mother would make food for my guests at midnight.

“It sounds like they were really good times!”

“Yes, they were good times.

My whole single girl hip life style – out with the girls, parties with the girls, and lunch on the weekend with the girls started to change about this time. I found myself being drawn more and more towards this powerful, handsome, university educated, teacher that every mother wanted for their daughters to marry, the Dean phenomenon, although I still only thought of him as my older brother. e hip scene for me now seemed to mean two not one, we were gradually thinking as a couple at least always doing things together, yet the word love, still never really entered my head if that makes any sense.

I got Wednesdays and Sundays o . Five and a half days a week, forty-eight hours was good. Mr. Seto increased my pay to 90 dollars a month. By now, Dean’s and my friendship had turned into what in those days was called courtship, Dean would walk by my Columbia Street window with his handsome smile and nod his head to let me know he was waiting for me on Wednesday a ernoons. He didn’t teach until four p.m. and nished at six p.m. On Wednesdays, I was o at noon. ese were extraordinary happy times in 90 and 9. We sometimes went to the Honey Dew Café in the Toronto Dominion Bank Building at Hastings and Cambie. en we would go to Sunset Beach or ird Beach and enjoy our time together. Besides dancing, this was our favorite thing to do. Dancing was Dean’s passion, and it became our great hobby. I was naïve and didn’t feel the love growing and our friendship, romance, did not happen right away because I still thought of him as my big brother.”

“ e detail is superb. Good thing you thought to keep a diary.”



“Yes, I always kept a diary in those days. I’ll read some more.

So I was starting to get the trend of thinking as a couple in the Chineseworld of Vancouver. Meantime, Dean and I had a very public spirited project we began thinking about. We had many friends in many groups and we wanted to bring them all together. We wanted them to all think about the future, it was going to be a GRADUATION CEREMONY out of Chinatown with a safe landing somewhere in the Caucasian world. inking beyond Chinatown with its discrimination was dangerous but we could do it if we all united together as one. e script was very popular in Chinatown amongst the di erent social groups who included the following.

My Golden Phoenix Girls Club girls were all from Vancouver, not China. It was a Chinatown YWCA group run by Esther Fung and directed by Florence Chu. For us, it was an extension of our teen years at Chinatown Y. Another group, considered snobbish, formed another CS Club. Some of their mothers invited Dean over to their houses under the pretense of their son’s friendship with Dean. ey were mostly born with a silver spoon in their mouth. ey were too wealthy. Besides these two groups, I had good friends, from Chinese school who were Chinese who had been born in Canada like me. Betty Wong, Nellie Chin, and Norma Koo, I had close friendships with them throughout elementary school. ese friends did not o en mix with the kids from China. It was even more complicated. Some boys and girls from China were from villages and unsophisticated while others were from the cities. ose from the city could be classi ed as either university educated or not so well educated with less polished manners. None of them mixed socially.”

“I see what you mean now about the di erent groups.”

“Yes, there were quite a lot of them.

A big event having to do with the war took center stage which grabbed all our attention. Anything that had to do with war was important to all Chinese because the war represented our liberation from oppression. Everyone in Chinatown always attended any event that had to do with the war. We all roared together and couldn’t help boasting about how better things were now a er Enfranchisement, at least on paper. Dean and I were still working on putting



together a GRADUATION CEREMONY but we all needed to join in when events regarding the war came along.

e Chinese Veterans of World War II (Paci c Unit 0) formed in 90, met on the second oor of  East Pender Street. Dean and I, as I said, became two of their rst charter members. It was here that the Vets held their regular meetings and functions. We were served tea and sandwiches by the Chinese Vets Ladies Auxiliary who faithfully and loyally made all the sandwiches and goodies which they had frozen for each occasion.

I remember one time I asked, “How long have these been frozen?”

“Two years,” someone said. at scared the devil out of me! Dorothy Leung, the wife of veteran Captain, Dr. Won Leung, was the Leader of the Ladies Auxiliary for many years. Mrs. John Ko Bong made her famous Australian Angel Food cake which was always one of the highlights served at the tea parties which Dean and I attended.

All eyes were on Dean and me or so we felt. e thing was, to get them all together. e thing could mean the future, parties, life, success, the way forward, salvation, prosperity, a better life, it wasn’t a negative word. We wanted to do something big to bring everyone together and soon we would do just that. But for starters, we did what we could as a couple.

Henry Yuen was very fond of my friend Nellie and asked Dean to double date with me and Nellie. So we went dancing at the Cave Night Club in Henry’s jalopy, an old black Desoto. As a good sport, I kept Nellie, company. We o en went to the Cave, the Palomar, Isy’s, all the nightclubs. Henry’s father owned the original English Bay Cafe, and we would have parties upstairs above the cafe.

Faye and Dean with Nellie Chinn and Henry Yuen at the Cave Supper Club celebrating Dean’s birthday, March 17, 1952.

e ladies never asked the men to dance or to go out on a date. at was considered undigni ed. Chinese-Canadian men and women socialized in a limited way. Chinese women were not allowed to go out by themselves. ey had separate classes as well. People at the top tended to be snobbish.”

“I haven’t heard the name Desoto in years.”

“No, times have changed, haven’t they.”

“You can say that again!”

THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMETHING TO DO IN THOSE DAYS FOR ME AND DEAN around town with our groups of friends while we tried to gure out what our big public spirited project was going to be. My friends took Dean and me pretty much for granted. ey all thought I was pretty silly whenever it came to any questions about my relationship with Dean. ey were all just eager to know what was happening. HECK, I didn’t even know what was happening; they seemed to know more about it all than I did. So I kept my cool to show I had pride. But nobody seemed to care about that, they just kept asking questions and I kept giving them silly answers.

At the end of 90, Dean invited me to the annual Chinese Veterans Christmas Ball, in Happyland on Christmas Day, at the P.N.E. It was the event of the year. It was the who’s who of the Chinese community. e ladies were always eager to be asked to go. ere was also a formal ball in Victoria on the twentyfourth of May, earlier in the year. We would go to Victoria to see the parade and the sporting events such as Chinese basketball and later the Chinese Golf Club and dance gala. It was excellent fun. It was always a joint social event between Vancouver and Victoria, not a competition. We also looked forward to the Labor Day Dance and golf tournament in Vancouver as well when the Victorians would come to visit.

My girlfriends bugged me over and over if Dean had asked me to be his date for the formal ball. e girls always expected to be invited. Everyone knew that Dean would ask me. ey laughed and giggled at my reply.

“Why should he ask me?” I said. “He might want to take someone else.”

So we all just hung around and Dean continued to bow courteously whenever we met on the street, Chinatown noises continued into the night, babies



cried, my friends continued to ip out over my silly answers, I glowed, people walked up and down, the pioneers kept a watchful eye on Pender Street as we all waited for some sign from Dean. en it happened, he asked me! I wore my blue laced mandarin collared gown with layers of blue and pink nets which I wore as the maid of honor for Aunt Gladys and Stephen Nipp’s wedding on June , 90, in Victoria B.C. at Christ Church Cathedral. It was a remarkable time on that Christmas day. My parents hosted a Christmas dinner for all their Chinese bachelor friends and the pioneers from the community. Mr. Dong Yuu Wai, the owner of Yen Lock Chop Suey Restaurant and C.C. Ho, C. C. Liu, and Dean arrived to pick me up. Dean gallantly entered our living room. He was in his tux, white scarf, and cashmere overcoat. e guests applauded. I came out in my beautiful lace gown. ey say I was radiantly beautiful, and I can still hear the lovely compliments to Dean and me. Dean looked so handsome and elegant with his bow tie and white silk scarf draped over his black overcoat. We waltzed to the Blue Danube and tangoed to Jealousy that night into the wee hours of the morning around a huge dance oor.

Dancing was our passion. We always tried to go places together where we could dance. It got so we could dance anywhere in a hallway, behind a fence outside, in our living room, at the o ce, anywhere there was a wide open space we learned to use it to our advantage but we danced best in a ballroom that was designed especially for dancing and of course the more people the better. No oor was impossible to dance on for us as long as we were together.

We would always try to get out on the dance oor rst before anyone else could ask me to dance. Dean and I always preferred to dance together. Dancing was always so enjoyable to us. It felt as if we were in another world. We danced tangos, rumbas, sambas, cha cha, amingo, bossa nova, twists, rock, fox trots, waltzes, to the lyrics of “Always,” and “I Love You Truly,” and the admiration of the dancers who o en copied but never equaled Dean’s fancy choreography.

Back at our house, everything carried on as usual. People came to visit my parents. Slowly, I was getting to know more and more people. What with all the visitors, the dancing, the bus and all my friends, I was a busy girl. We went to

9

a lot of parties and clubs. ere was so much going on I sometimes wondered about the importance of everything, how did it all and I t into the universe so to speak, I’d o en mull it all over until I had mulled the hell out of it and then someone in his wisdom would say, nothing happens by accident.

C.C. Ho and his colleague, C.C. Liu were interesting fellows and friends of my parents. C.C. Liu was a Shanghai businessman who partnered with C.C. Ho and established a Chinese magazine here called “Life Mirror.” ey imported Cantonese Chinese movies from Hong Kong that were shown every Sunday at the Avon eatre which was the old Pantages eatre at  E. Hastings Street. [C.C. Lui also founded the Buddhist temple on East 9th Avenue.] C.C. Ho was the best man at mine and Dean’s wedding because he was a family friend and was always with us in our home. He was always joking around with us, in a respectable way. Henry Yuen should have been the best man at our wedding. He had been a close friend of Deans since Dean’s arrival in Vancouver.

Here’s a thought, think about the term Mr. Everyone had two ways of referring to Dean. If it’s on a casual or trivial note or something o the cu they are talking about, it’s just Dean. But if it’s Dean as an authority gure, a person of stature and importance, he becomes Mr. Leung. is can sometimes come o as insincere but if you want to change the tone in a room, it works. Funny, how one little word can change people’s vibrations from good or bad.

In January 9, it was decided I and my friends would get a group together and go to Victoria to introduce the guys to my Victoria girlfriends. At Beacon Hill Park by Ross Bay Lookout, I was standing by the rail looking out over the ocean. Dean came up behind me and climbed up on the railing and pointed out to sea and said,

“Look at that beautiful future.” It didn’t dawn on me that it was our future to be together that he was meaning. I still only thought of us as good friends.

As usual, the girls all went wild when they met Dean. My aunts even addressed him as Mr. Leung. ey respected him also because they were all academic teachers. Even a er we married, for many years they still called him Mr. Leung out of respect and admiration. ey all loved him!

Everything in everybody’s life was signi cant. We were all watching for the meaning in everything. But not everyone had the good fortune and upbring-

0

ing that I had bestowed upon me with important parents and a wonderfully intellectual family of hard workers. ere were lots of kids that were trapped in the past by their parents and trying to nd a way out. e situation they o en found themselves in was much di erent than it was for me and they o en tried to rebel.

Chinatown was steeped in tradition and superstition. Dong Way Yu was an old friend of my parents who as I said owned the Yen Lok Restaurant at  East Pender next to the Wing Sang Building. Sherman Dong, his son, was a playboy. His daughter Han was a C.O.D. bride. She came from China for a matchmaking marriage in Norfolk, Virginia. Dong Way Yu convinced my parents to let her stay in our home for several days, which ended up being for a few months because she didn’t want to go to Virginia.

Anyway, and so the camaraderie continued, everyone joining in and having the time of their lives as if everything is ne in the whole wide world. We all enjoyed ourselves immensely in those days as if it was all never going to end. Of course we knew it would eventually end but it became so infectious that it was easy to get lost in the moment.

We all went up once to snowy Grouse Mountain in January 9 and it would be a day to remember forever. Dean and I had to borrow ski clothes

Snowy Grouse Mountain, Faye and Dean’s rst time up the mountain in winter, January 1951. Faye and Dean with Florence Ding Mah, Helen Lee, Henry Yuen, Alice Louie, Jack Eng, Tommy Lee.