Week 5: 06.12-06.18 Vancouver

——— Continue to Explore Chinese Immigration Among Yum Cha Culture

This week we worked on the project which focused on the changes and relationship between yum cha culture and Cantonese Chinese migration. We found that yum cha culture as the heart of Cantonese culture, had a great change during the overseas Chinese immigration from southern China to Hong Kong, and to the West.

We had a Chinatown tour on Monday. I had a different feeling for this time, it may be because I came with a group of people at this time and I felt it was much safer than I walked alone. To be honest, for me, if I don’t have any specific thing have to do in Chinatown, I won’t go to Chinatown by myself because I think it is unsafe and insecure.

I had been to different Chinatown from different cities in the North America. The feeling of mine is that I don’t think all of these Chinatown are the dirtiest or the most insecurity place of the local cities. I believe the Chinatown in Montreal and Victoria in Canada are quite better than other Chinatown in the North America. I don’t exactly know why this two Chinatown are cleaner than others, but I think it may relate to the background of Chinese migration. From the Chung Collection, which we visited last week, I remembered it shows that most of the Chinese immigrants came to the main city Victoria of British Columbia first, and then entered the mainland of Canada, for example, they went to Vancouver or even the eastern part of Canada such as Toronto and Montreal later. I think it is important to know about the history of “Chinese gold rush”. The Chinese immigrants started to work in the mines of the Fraser River Valley. They also built the railway, which is quite important for immigrants to enter mainland and access to the eastern Canada.

Moreover, the main task of this week is to produce the video for our project. It is my first time to create and edit a film actually, but I find it is quite interesting to make a film. Then, I feel it is not easy to edit a film even though when I watched a film it seems quite simple. Because there are four of my group members traveled during the weekend, so Jenn and I worked on the whole video stressfully. It is quite tried to edit every scene of the film. I did all the Cantonese to English translation and put them into as the subtitle of the video. It needs lots of time to finish it. Additionally, I really enjoy adding the B-rolls in the video because it can make the film be more attractive and dramatic.

There is only one last week left for this course. Time passes quickly and I feel a little bit upset because I may have fewer opportunities to meet the new friends who I met from this course in the future. Lastly, I hope our group can achieve a great successful work for the final project! Flighting!