We arrived in Prince George about an hour ago and have settled comfortably into our hotel. Prince George is only two hours or so from Wells, but we spent most of the day at Barkerville, the centre of the Gold Rush. Having grown up in BC, I have been learning about Barkerville since elementary school, but this trip completely exceeded my (and also our) expectations – not so much for what we saw, although there was a lot to see, but rather because of who we met and the issues they brought to our attention. Since it’s late, I’m going to give a brief sketch of our day and blog more about it tomorrow.
We arrived at Barkerville just before 10 AM. It took a bit longer than expected to get there because Gu wanted to take photos of the spectacular scenery. So Jennifer took a camera and decided to take pictures of Gu taking pictures.
But we got to Barkerville just in time to take in the first tour of the day. It was well executed and informative, although a bit hokey (which is to be expected). The idea is to transport you back in time to hear from “locals” about life in this pioneer town. So for a while we played tourist (actually, Jennifer and Gu wandered off into the various restored buildings, but I’ll let them blog about that another time).
Tour guides
Me trying out an old piano
We learned at the visitor information centre that at one point, almost half of Barkerville’s 12-15,000 residents were of Chinese descent, a percentage that rivals Richmond or Vancouver today. But the intriguing thing is that the main tour ends right at the gates of Chinatown – the Chinatown tour is a separate event. While that division may well be practical, it has the odd effect of making the Chinese community seem completely closed off from the rest of town. But is that actually possible in a (still small, although for that time big) town like Barkerville?
This question haunted us for the rest of the day. It turns out that Barkerville’s recognition of its Chinese history is fraught with implications that demonstrate the difficulty of public history. Luckily, we met two people who work there in the summer who helped us understand the real stakes of this historical site for Chinese migration – chance encounters that made our day.
Actually, I was strolling down Chinatown when a voice called out to me “Ei! Ni jiang zhongwen ma?” – which means “Hey, do you speak Chinese?” in Mandarin. When I said yes, I met Dr. Yingying Chen, who has been doing research in Barkerville since 1991, soon after she immigrated to Canada from China. Even though she finished her dissertation research in Anthropology from SFU and moved to the US to teach and still lives in the Midwest, she returns to Barkerville for about half the year, often at her own expense, to continue her research. And what she has found is amazing: records for clan associations anad secret societies (such as the Chinese Freemasons) that are unavailable almost anywhere else in the world. Because the community petered out in the 1940s, much of this material was just left lying around unlike in places like Vancouver where they got thrown away. I’ll blog about her discoveries another time, but it was amazing to meet someone who has labored her whole life to recover this history, often receiving very little recognition from others.
Our other new friend was Jimmy Ji, who immigrated from China when he was ten and recently graduated from University of Northern BC in First Nations Studies and Archaeology. This is, needless to say, a very unique background and he’s been spending his summer working as a tour guide and researcher. He has also studied filmmaking and will be starting his MFA at UBC this fall, which is a great boon for us! Here he is in his “tour-guide” attire:
We spent the afternoon filming their respective Chinatown tours, hanging out, sipping tea, and talking about the challenges of doing public Chinese Canadian history in Barkerville. We also did in-depth interviews with both, which yield a goldmine (pun intended) of information. We’ll come back to some of their insights in future postings.
After dinner with Jimmy (Yingying had to leave early), we finally left Wells around 8:30 and headed up to Prince George as dusk fell on the Northern landscape. Once we got into the van, we realized how tired we all were, espeically Gu, who has been holding a heavy camera and running around all day in 32 degree heat. Since it’s late, I’ll sign off with one more landscape shot and a word of wisdom from Gu: “In a time when we know too much and everything seems to be out of reach, we have to listen to individual stories and believe they can bring light into darkness.”
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