Arts, Faculty of
Anthropology, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Yan, Bing
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
Chinese seniors are an important part of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside community. However, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to them. In this thesis, I conduct research on the everyday life of female Chinese elders living in the Downtown Eastside. Using ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation and in-depth interviews, I explore how their everyday lives are braided by daily suffering and reciprocal activities. I thereby suggest that, first, everyday life forms an important site to examine how immigrants experience the macro social system, especially the intersected structural inequality. Second, a complex form of moral economy grows out of friendships among immigrants as well as friendships with non-immigrants, which invites scholars to draw attention to the intersection of reciprocity, migration, and networks. Finally, I suggest that the relationship between welfare receivers and providers is dynamic within the context of everyday life.
TWO SIDES OF EVERYDAYNESS: SUFFERING FROM FOREIGNNESS (SHOU YANG ZUI) AND AFFIRMATIONS VIA HUGGING AMONG SENIOR CHINESE WOMEN IN VANCOUVER’S DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE by BING YAN LL.B, Shandong University, 2020 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Anthropology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) November 2022 ©Bing Yan, 2022 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: Two Sides of Everydayness: Suffering from Foreignness (Shou Yang Zui) and Affirmations via Hugging among Senior Chinese Women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside submitted by Bing Yan in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Anthropology Examining Committee: Dr. Alexia Bloch, Professor, Department of Anthropology, The University of British Columbia Supervisor Dr. Millie Creighton, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, The University of British Columbia Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Leslie Robertson, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, The University of British Columbia Additional Examiner iii Abstract Chinese seniors are an important part of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside community. However, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to them. In this thesis, I conduct research on the everyday life of female Chinese elders living in the Downtown Eastside. Using ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation and in-depth interviews, I explore how their everyday lives are braided by daily suffering and reciprocal activities. I thereby suggest that, first, everyday life forms an important site to examine how immigrants experience the macro social system, especially the intersected structural inequality. Second, a complex form of moral economy grows out of friendships among immigrants as well as friendships with non-immigrants, which invites scholars to draw attention to the intersection of reciprocity, migration, and networks. Finally, I suggest that the relationship between welfare receivers and providers is dynamic within the context of everyday life. iv Lay Summary This research is about the daily struggles and friendships of a group of non-English speaking, female Chinese seniors in the Downtown Eastside area of Vancouver. Chinese seniors are important to the Chinese community and Downtown Eastside community. However, their lives are not widely represented in academic writing or well known to the wider public. By studying how they make a living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, I emphasize the importance of everyday life and a kind of exchange that brings about community building and mutual support for senior Chinese immigrants. v Preface This thesis is an original intellectual product of MA student, Bing Yan, and is based on fieldwork conducted by the author from January to May 2022. Drafts of this thesis were reviewed by Bing Yan’s supervisor, Dr. Alexia Bloch, and committee member Dr. Millie Creighton as well as an external reviewer. The fieldwork discussed throughout was approved by the UBC Behavioral Research Ethics Board (BREB) under the title “Chinese Elders” BREB number H21-02391. The author, Bing Yan was responsible for all major areas of concept formation, ethnographic data collection and analysis, as well as manuscript composition. vi Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary ......................................................................................................................................... iv Preface ...................................................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................... vii Chapter 1 Wandering through The Everyday ........................................................................... 1 1.1 Everydayness in Immigrant Life: Blending Formality and Informality ..................................... 3 1.2 Everydayness, Reciprocity, and Social Support ............................................................................ 4 1.3 Situating Chinese elders in Transnational Aging ........................................................................ 10 1.4 Outline of the Thesis ....................................................................................................................... 13 Chapter 2 Research Contextualization and Methodology ...................................................... 14 2.1 Geographical Introduction: the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver .......................................... 14 2.2 An Overview of Research Participants ......................................................................................... 16 2.3 Research Methods and Fieldwork ................................................................................................. 19 Chapter 3 “Shou yang zui”: Intersected Experiences, Intersected Lives .............................. 25 3.1 “Shou yang zui”: Stories about Suffering ..................................................................................... 26 3.2 Everydayness in the Social Support System: Being Chinese, Being Elderly ............................. 33 3.3 Intersectionality and Elders as Ethnic Minority .......................................................................... 36 Chapter 4 Hugging and Making Friends: To Give or to Keep ............................................... 39 4.1 Grandma Quan’s Secret Social Life .............................................................................................. 43 4.2 Giving? Keeping? ............................................................................................................................ 50 Chapter 5 Conclusion: Presenting the Buddha with Borrowed Flowers .............................. 54 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 56 vii Acknowledgements I sincerely acknowledge that my research is conducted on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. I am grateful to be able to come to, live on, and conduct research on these unceded territories. I would like to conceive my most sincere gratitude to the Chinese seniors who generously and kindly shared their stories and insights with me. This research would not have been possible without their support, friendship, and collaboration. In addition, I would like to thank my facilitators, Cassandra, Nadia, Teng Lai, and Sean. Without their support, I would not be able to conduct my fieldwork successfully. It was generous of them to give me instruction and opportunities that shape my projects, my fieldwork, and my relationships with my interlocutors. Many people kindly provided me with their guidance during the preparation and writing of this thesis. I would especially like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Alexia Bloch, for her patience, knowledge, and understanding in my exploration of anthropology and graduate school. I am also grateful to my committee member, Prof. Millie Creighton, who is always there for me with valuable suggestions and insights for improvement. The effort and constructive suggestions of the external examiner, Prof. Leslie Robertson, are also appreciated. During my stay in Canada, many friends around me who had been international students finally went back to China due to being overwhelmed by loneliness, helplessness and stress. Therefore, I've been very fortunate to be surrounded by friends who have provided me with valuable support and comfort. I give my special thanks to Anudeep Yakkha Dewan, Elias (Eli) Alexander, Caitlyn Yates, Lindsey Paskulin, Malika Hays, Raphael Deberdt, Rosalie Gunawan, and Younus Ahmed. They were always there for me in times of ups and downs. The whole project would not be possible without Eli’s non-judgemental care and encouragement. Eli, thank you for seeing me when I wanted to give up and disappear. I would also like to thank Mingze Bai for giving this thesis comprehensive reviews and constructive suggestions. My thanks finally go to my 2020 COVID Cohort. I am always honoured to be a part of this tenacious group that navigated together during the fierce graduate schooling years during the pandemic. It is my pleasure to express my gratitude to my parents, my uncle and my aunt for their love and support. As well, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my old friends in China who are now studying and working all around the world. Your constant love and companionship will be what I count on as a Chinese student in Canada. Thank you, Chen, Lerong, Mingzhe, Shuxin, Yantong, Xiaochun, Xinrui, Yongsi, and Yunyi for supporting me without time limits. Thank you, Jojo, Olive, Vera and Tuotuo for establishing our unforgettable friendship in Vancouver. Finally, thank you, Mark and Hendery, for being my mental support with your fantastic works. Finally, thank-you to the Department of Anthropology for having me as a master’s student. 1 Chapter 1 Wandering through The Everyday It was a quiet afternoon. I was sitting in the dining hall with Popo Jane and Georgia, having hot tea and chatting with them. Another auntie sitting in a wheelchair approached and greeted Georgia, “Hey, where have you been to? I kept calling you in the morning, but you didn’t answer the phone.” Then, she zipped down her bag, brought out some little cucumbers, and asked if Georgia would like to have some. This auntie got these cucumbers from a food bank not far away from the women’s association. Georgia did not want to have them at first, saying that her refrigerator was full. However, the auntie insisted that she should keep them since they were really “fresh and sweet.” Popo Jane also joined their negotiation, “Georgia, you should keep them! Soak them through brine to disinfect them after getting home, and then you can have a taste of this refreshing vegetable.” “All right then. I’ll keep them. Thanks.” Georgia finally smiled and accepted the small package of cucumbers. She opened her bag and put them into it. Having a glance at the contents of the bag, Georgia asked the auntie, “I also went to the food bank today. Would you like to have some food from me? I can’t finish them.” She took out some boxes of food. The auntie picked up a small lunch box with some rice and salad and then left. I was sitting beside them when they exchanged their food. Popo Jane gently poked at my shoulder with her finger and whispered to me, “Aren’t they interesting? This is an exchange.” I nodded. She continued saying, “This kind of exchange happens every day here.” We smiled at each other. (Fieldnotes, 2022.4.29) This is a vignette of an exchange of daily necessities between two Chinese senior women in my field site. Georgia, one of my closest interlocutors on the site, unexpectedly received some fresh vegetables and willingly gave out some food. Earlier that afternoon, she also gave some 2 pizza to another woman whose husband likes eating pizza. In contrast to Popo Jane’s comments, Georgia described the whole process not as an “exchange”, gift-exchanging or barter since she never expected any rewards. She explained: “We do not usually meet each other every day. We meet today but we may not see one another tomorrow. So, if I get food from food banks or charity organizations, and I cannot finish it, I will give it to others. Maybe others, like my friends, like it and they will be happy to take my food. If no one takes my sharing, I will bring them home and eat them myself.” Georgia’s comments signify a dynamic interaction between individuals and social welfare institutions such as food banks and community service centres. She picks up food from food banks around the Downtown Eastside Women’s Center, stops by the center to chat with her friends there, and goes back home. She also receives other necessities, such as toothpaste, toothbrushes, and soaps from the center and beyond. There are many food banks nearby and she does a circuit of them with the hope that she can get something she likes to eat. After the tour, she has her meals, shares some extra necessities with other seniors, and takes leftovers back home. In this process, Georgia not only endeavours to fulfill her needs and desires but also cares about others, especially her friends whom she knows personally (such as the one whose husband is a pizza-lover). She also receives care and sharing from other seniors. This portrait of Georgia’s life provides one example of Chinese seniors’ everyday life in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Georgia mainly takes her necessities from food banks, but always gives out and receives something from her friends. What is anthropologically interesting is that multiple paradoxes of giving and receiving are woven into this everydayness. In this thesis, I pay attention to senior women’s narratives of everyday life and daily reciprocal activities to explore how these seniors are experiencing and fighting against suffering in their immigrant life. 3 In this chapter, I will go through some of the important concepts in the research, and thus situate my research in the academic realms of the everyday, migration, and transnational aging. 1.1 Everydayness in Immigrant Life: Blending Formality and Informality I start with Dorothy Smith’s (1987: 133) classic work on the everyday as “problematic”, which emphasizes that the daily activities of individuals “are not only concerted in the immediacy of the everyday”. The problematic of “everyday life” emphasizes the embeddedness of the everyday in broader social forces and contexts. The everyday is thus seen as an ideal site for examining the personal embodiment of macro and meso narratives such as heroic national identities, modernity, and catastrophes (Boym 1994: 20). Focusing on the everyday brings seemingly unimportant things such as daily routines and habits to our attention (Back 2015; Smith 1987), thereby demonstrating that these seemingly fixed and naturalized trivialities are personal, contextual, and unstable. From the perspective of migration studies, migrants’ everyday life is contextually anchored in enduring and specific political, economic, and cultural structures of both host and origin countries (Malanassan 2003: 91). In the past three decades, several theoretical approaches such as transnationalism from below, grassroots cultural circulation, social agency and agency-centrism, have burgeoned. All these concepts pay attention to the informal and private worlds of immigrants in which their subjectivity, activities and networks are constantly interacting with the formal and public settings (See, for example, Boccagni 2012; Gardner and Grillo 2002; Guarnizo and Smith 1987; Nare et al. 2017). These grassroots and agency-centred approaches contribute to unfolding the complex dynamics between the hegemonic macro such as nation-states and subjective agents, and probing into the embeddedness of individuals in the power hierarchy and 4 inequality in a transnational world from the perspective of “below” (See Boccagni, 2012; Mitchell 1993, 1996; Ong 1996; Smith 1994). In sum, the everyday discloses the construction of selves, interactions, interpersonal relations, and intricate negotiations and suffering of people in diaspora (Malanassan 2003: 89-91). It vividly presents people’s involvement and embeddedness in public corporations while paying attention to their personal lives and individual agencies. Aligning with Nare et al.’s (2017: 517) argument that investigating the everyday explicates how social structures present themselves in immigrant life, I would argue that everyday life personalizes social structures, and thus a focus on the everyday turns out to be a significant site to examine immigrants’ strategic responses to formal norms, regulations, policies, and structures. Their efforts to cope with feeling foreign play an important role in their everyday lives, which are shaped by their migration. 1.2 Everydayness, Reciprocity, and Social Support A broad system of supports, what some call “social protection”, is critical to the everyday lives of senior ethnic-Chinese women. There are a series of debates on the definition of “social protection” and its relation to the social welfare system, the earlier “safety net” discourse, and different agents (Deverex and Sabates-Wheeler 2004: 3-5). Generally, social protection can be defined as a series of programs and strategies aiming at protecting and empowering relatively vulnerable, marginalized, and poor groups and others considered to be at risk. Social protection mitigates against social risks and manages to help these groups of people to realize their life chances (Carter et al. 2019; Deverex and Sabates-Wheeler 2004; Faist et al. 2015; Locke et al. 2013). In my research, because of language and cultural barriers, as well as being relatively low-income, seniors like Georgia rely on social protection systems to access daily necessities and services. Most of these seniors have lived in Canada for over 10 years and have access to the 5 Canadian Pension Plan, and they enjoy free meals and food supplies, as well as other social services in Vancouver’s Chinatown and Downtown Eastside areas, as I discuss further below. In this way, various mechanisms of social protection and welfare services permeate their everyday life. Despite the supports that do exist, these Chinese seniors still have difficulties navigating through social welfare, social assistance, and community services. Vancouver’s Chinatown and Strathcona neighbourhoods host a large visible minority group of Chinese. Their limited English language skills and literacy, cultural distinctions, and extreme unfamiliarity with the support system and their surroundings create impediments for them to get help and support (City of Vancouver 2010, 12). As a part of the Chinatown community, as well as in Vancouver more broadly, they are also racialized, ethnicized, and othered (Anderson 1987, 1988,1991; Ang 2006). Consequently, they rely heavily on their families and friends to get access to public resources, services, and support (City of Vancouver 2010; Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House 2020). The women I interacted with also speak about seeking help when they are unfamiliar with their surroundings and communities, something they describe as similar to trying their luck (Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House 2020, 29). Therefore, Chinese seniors are facing intersecting challenges caused by language barriers, cultural distinctions, status as immigrants, abilities, gender, race, and ethnicity. Intersectionality works as a useful toolkit to understand these multilayered barriers. It offers critical insights into the combined forces of inequalities and the lives of minorities under hegemonic structural violence by highlighting the interconnectedness of traditional social stratifications and categories (Staunaes 2003). In my research, I argue that these intersected categories and their deviated 6 inequality shape Chinese seniors’ daily life in the Downtown Eastside. Intersectionality connotes the dimension of suffering in the everyday, and these seniors have their interpretation of it. To ease their suffering and daily struggles, these seniors actively use strategies. The process of seeking help and mutual support comprises a significant part of their everyday lives. I mainly focus on reciprocity and reciprocal activities to explore this proactive part of their daily lives. My ethnography will pay attention to their unique pattern of reciprocity and exchange which is shaped by their migration and immigrant life. Reciprocity in this sense serves as a confirmation of their membership in a relationship or in the community of immigrant Chinese seniors they seek care and support from. It is a critical site that requires thick description in Geertz’s (1973) sense. This kind of reciprocity involves giving and receiving, although nothing is guaranteed. It is characterized by intersectionality, in-betweenness and uncertainty in immigrant life. It is a subjective expression of relations and communities, a coping strategy, and a form of quotidian cultural citizenship (Manalansan 2003: 92). Anthropologists have studied exchange and reciprocity in diverse cultural contexts and backgrounds. Early anthropologists and sociologists treated these concepts as key to a specific form of economy, a gift economy, such as those widely found in hunter and gatherer societies where market exchange and capitalism had not been established. For example, Malinowski (2014 [1922]) and Mauss (2000 [1990, 1954]) introduced some related concepts, such as the “pure gift” and total services, to anthropology. In their research, they were more interested in the motivations for gift exchanging and the functions of gift-giving in social formation. According to Sahlins (2017 [1972]: 175), Malinowski and Mauss place considerable emphasis on the two sides of the giver and receiver, the timing and equivalent value of giving and returning, and the obligation of reciprocating. 7 Thereafter, many scholars have developed the theoretical realm of gift-giving and reciprocity in more detailed and specific ways. For example, Sahlins (1972: 174-178) suggested a continuum of types of reciprocity, ranging from more altruistic generalized reciprocity to negative reciprocity that is purely interest-driven and usually conducted among strangers. He (2017 [1972]: 175) defines generalized reciprocity as having ambiguous time limits for returning and its value is more dependent on the need, capacity, and timing of both givers and receivers. The concept of generalized reciprocity is frequently utilized in migration studies to explore the patterns of giving and returning in transnational life. Scholars tend to highlight the flexible and symbolic nature of reciprocal activities in transnational life (e.g. Baldassar and Merla 2013; Bilecen and Barglowski 2015; Faist 2000: Chapter 4; Serra-Mingot, 2020; Sienkiewicz et al. 2015). Relations between reciprocity/gift-giving, social bonds, and community are widely debated in anthropology. Reciprocity and gift-giving are widely accepted as signifiers of relationships, but anthropologists are still discussing how reciprocity forms, shapes, or ruins social relations. For Mauss (1990 [1954]), gifts lead to reciprocal exchange and thus give rise to solidarity. Mauss’ argument sets up a foundation for further anthropological discussion on this topic. Stepping forward from Polanyi (2011 [1944]), Sahlins (2017 [1972]: 168-258) argues that social relations and social distances are correlated with different patterns of reciprocity along a spectrum. In this way, reciprocity is structured by social relations, such as kin-based relations, which further gives rise to a kind of morality. The morality of reciprocity refers to an expectation that people will respond to the gift in a proper way. Sahlins’ idea of social distance also demonstrates how unequal positions, such as power and wealth inequality, may affect reciprocity and the morality of reciprocity. 8 Annette Weiner (1992: 1-19) further discusses how power relations and structures are reconfirmed in reciprocal activities by combining Trobrianders’ mapula (repayment) and the concept of inalienable possession. In a nutshell, inalienable possessions are those possessions whose absolute value outweighs exchange value. As a result, they are independent of the exchange system. It is more appropriate to refer to them as signifiers of identities, status, power, wealth, or honour. Consequently, gifts of this kind reflect social structures and interpersonal relations. To give, therefore, is to present and maintain one’s position within social relations and social structures. Gudeman (2001: 80-93) also greatly contributes to this discussion by bringing the idea of community to scholarly attention. He suggests that gift-giving and reciprocity are an expression of community as well as attempts to form/extend it. This is because gifts enable community members to reach out to people outside the community, and thus gifts are experiments of maintaining and expanding boundaries. In this way, goods “mediate borders by extending and contracting relationships that make community” (Gudeman 2001: 88). Thus, reciprocity is not only a symbol of relations, structures, and boundaries but also an active tool to shape them. Reciprocity as a relation/community signifier is also prevalent in social protection and transnational studies. Theoretically, it involves larger-scale social contracts, resources exchanged, and the ethics of reciprocity, friendship, and trust (Bilecen and Barglowski 2015). Regarding reciprocity and social protection, Faist et al. (2015) argue that reciprocity is an analytical unit for understanding agents’ interpretations of social structures and relations in transnational settings and social protection. Reciprocity enables people to gain social support in their transnational life. However, this research focuses on reciprocity as a societal mechanism that describes power relations between multiple agents (Faist et al. 2015: 198-199; also see Faist and Bilecen 2015: 9 287). Therefore, Faist and his fellow researchers (2015) risk missing rich insiders’ interpretations of reciprocity. Despite the universal principle of reciprocity, we cannot overlook its contextual interpretations and specific reciprocal activities (Gouldner 1960: 171). I would suggest that the rich context of migration invites scholars to explore it more carefully, and thus develop a “thick description” (Geertz 1973) of reciprocity in immigrant life. My ethnography on reciprocity thus demonstrates how Chinese elderly immigrants in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside interpret and practice reciprocity in their cultural contexts. Scholars consider reciprocity in social support as dependent on informal arrangements, as evidenced by the material provision of remittances and parcels (Kpessa-Whyte 2018; Saksela-Bergholm 2019; Sienkiewicz 2015; Serra-Mingot 2020) and the immaterial part of emotional support and family care (Serra-Mingot 2020; Serra-Mingot and Mazzucato 2019; Sienkiewicz 2015; Kpessa-Whyte 2018). A major aspect of this research involves the symbolic equivalence between a dyad of sender and receiver, as well as discussing how reciprocity becomes a recurring mechanism of inequality in transnational social support. Much of the migration studies scholarship uses reciprocity as an analytical tool instead of considering how reciprocity can be analyzed as a culturally specific phenomenon. In addition, many scholars focus on kin-based support and care in transnational or immigrant families. In contrast, my research questions concern reciprocal activities among friends, peers, and community workers. Compared with family and kinship connections, friendships and peer communities seem to be less intimate and more flexible. The relations between senders and receivers are more tactical and nuanced in this way. However, like kin-based and family relations, these friendship and community relationships combine instrumental and affective aspects in their flexible relations. 10 1.3 Situating Chinese elders in Transnational Aging Being an elder is an important aspect of my interlocutors’ everyday life and self-identification. It is combined with the immigrant context and intersects with the latter, as reflected in my fieldwork. In the past few years, migration scholars have recognized “elders” as a valid yet somehow vague category of immigrants in the era of globalization. Generally known as “post-retirement migration” or “later-life migration”, the mobility of elderly immigrants is categorized as amendment migration, assistance migration, and “migration in response to severe disability and spouse absence” (Walters 2000). There are also studies about return migration, that is, a group of returnees who choose to return to their homeland in later life (See Lim 2016). This research greatly inclines to the later-life migration of people moving from the Global North, with a few exceptions from Asia and Africa (For example, Lamb 2000, 2002, 2009; Devi, Herd and Samanta 2021; Kauh 1999; Lim 2016; Näre 2017; Newendorp 2020; Liu 2020; Samanta 2018; Wanka et al. 2019). Research on immigrants from the Global South illustrates what the intersection of aging and ethnic minority entails in later life, including hegemony and inequality, renegotiations of cultural values and norms, home-making processes, acquisition of modernity, the making of subject and personhood, claims of welfare and social rights, the aging body, as well as re-enacting cultural identities. As scholars suggest, aging in a foreign country leads to a series of challenges, such as experiencing feelings of detachment, reassessing cultural ideals of aging and how to create a sense of belonging, facing language barriers, and having intergenerational communication gaps (Liu 2020: 2-5). Most of these obstacles permeate immigrant elders’ everyday life. While these challenges correspond to the barriers observed during this research in a Vancouver context, there are some differences. Research has tended to be somewhat top-down and ignore how seniors 11 themselves interpret, narrate, and cope with their everyday challenges in their socio-cultural settings. Besides, traditionally, research concerning Vancouver’s Chinatown area inclines to the history, development, cultural performances, gentrification, place-making, and metaphors and representations of the area without paying particular attention to seniors (for example, see: Anderson 1991; Anderson 1988; Anderson 1987; Li and Li 2011; Madokoro 2011; Mitchell 2000). However, there are many Chinese seniors living in the broader Downtown Eastside area due to the wealth of resources and community services it offers (City of Vancouver 2010; Su 2021). Chinese seniors and the broader regional context of the Downtown Eastside are thus often overlooked in previous research. Therefore, my research will fill this gap by focusing on the everyday life of immigrant Chinese seniors living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside area. In research dedicated to Asian-originated elderly immigrants, there has been little attention paid to Chinese elders. With some exceptions, scholars tend to focus on health issues among Chinese seniors who are aging in foreign countries. The exceptions mainly emphasize their home-making processes and strategies (Liu 2019; Wang and Zhan 2021; Zhan et al. 2017) as well as grandparenting (Da 2003; Ho and Chiu 2022; Xie and Xia 2011). However, whether research focuses on homemaking or grandparenting, the image of Chinese elderly immigrants is associated with the concept of “home”. Thus, scholars often overlook that Chinese seniors are actively improving their current lives instead of merely striving for a sense of home, a home-like environment, or for meeting the needs of their families. In a rare exception, Newendorp (2020) provides a refreshing perspective by exploring the transnational engagement of Cantonese-speaking Chinese seniors in the U.S. Based on the rich life stories of her interlocutors, she vividly illustrates the seniors’ life strategies, cultural identities, friendship and dramas, cultural activities, as well as their dynamic relationships with their families. Her research provides a 12 valuable perspective on how seniors actively reinterpret retirement in the U.S. Meanwhile, she illustrates her interlocutors as actively engaging in transnational mobility and retirement migration to achieve a desired lifestyle. Her ethnography also presents a situation similar to what I found in my research, namely an in-betweenness in how Chineseness is performed in a place outside of China’s territory. I adopt her approach of empowering individuals and emphasizing human agency. While her research focuses on how migration itself becomes a way of life-making, my research shows how immigrants are resourceful despite also having less desirable aspects to their lives. I will base my analysis of the everyday on my interlocutors’ understanding of daily suffering and the interactions and friendships developed among Chinese seniors and beyond. Focusing on everydayness reveals how Chinese seniors understand their relatively marginalized positions in Canada, and how they form a community to struggle against these situations. By examining daily interactions, including befriending, exchange, and reciprocity that take place among Chinese seniors and community workers, I explore subtle and tactical processes of giving, keeping, and belonging. Together they constitute the “quotidian dimensions of cultural citizenship” (Malanassan 2003: 92) and serve as an indicator of economic class. The binary category of Chinese elders, as I will present in the following chapters, are experienced and articulated through the most trivial things such as daily routines, chatting, food and drink, familial interactions, and language practices. Here I deploy both the terms “Chinese elders” and “Chinese seniors” to examine how intersectional social forces are embodied and experienced, and how multiple layers of responses are negotiated and nourished. I will come back to the profile of female Chinese seniors that I stayed with in the Downtown Eastside in Chapter 2. 13 1.4 Outline of the Thesis The thesis consists of five chapters. In chapter two, I will briefly describe my field site, interlocutors, and research methods. In chapter three, I will illustrate the dimension of suffering, particularly in response to how these seniors interpret their so-called marginalized position in Vancouver. In chapter four, I will demonstrate that these seniors are proactive agents who take initiative to live fulfilling lives. Their reciprocal activities thus form another dimension of everydayness, that of agency. The implications of their socio-economic backgrounds for the forms of reciprocity they engage in will also be presented in this chapter. Lastly, conclusions will be presented. 14 Chapter 2 Research Contextualization and Methodology 2.1 Geographical Introduction: the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver My research is largely based in the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, BC. The Downtown Eastside generally contains five main areas: Chinatown, Gastown, Victory Square, Strathcona, and Oppenheimer. Additionally, a park and some industrial areas are located within the area. The area was originally a First Nations village, before becoming occupied by Anglo settlers who by the 19th century dominated the area, turning the landscape into a working-class centre, with many pubs and stores catering to industrial workers, but also continuing to be a site for urban First Nations interactions (Newhman 2005: 2-3). In the 1960s, Downtown Vancouver was reconstructed, and several theatres, pubs, and retail shops in the Downtown Eastside moved westward after the transformation. Meanwhile, low-income people who could not afford the expensive housing in other parts of Vancouver came here. In 1965, the Downtown Eastside became home to unmarried and undereducated men, relatively low-income families, pensioners, disabled people, and the unemployed. Moreover, since mental health institutions were de-institutionalized in the 1970s, psychiatric patients who had been excluded from other communities also flooded into the area (Newhman 2005: 2-3). Since the 1980s, the Downtown Eastside has faced severe challenges in housing, health, alcohol abuse, and economic development (Newhman 2005, 4-5), a situation that has intensified over the past 10 years. 15 Currently, the Downtown Eastside is struggling with poverty, mental illness, drug abuse, prostitution, homelessness, the prevalence of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, high crime rates, and high unemployment rates. The combined needs and efforts to overcome these disadvantages result in a large number of welfare institutions and community organizations locating in the Downtown Eastside. The Downtown Eastside is defined by dynamic forms of street cultures and ethics, as well as underground economies. On one hand, the Downtown Eastside is home to over 260 community organizations (Yan and Sutherland 2019, p.650). These organizations give out food and daily necessities to residents and offer various services, such as housing, medical and legal assistance, and access to restrooms. On the other hand, residents of the Downtown Eastside negotiate how to get access to certain supplies and services, and thus create underground economies and street ethics that are “continuously shifting in response to changes in the political and economic landscape” (Robertson and Culhane 2005: 13). The challenges faced by the Downtown Eastside community have led to a high level of stigmatization. By 1965, the Downtown Eastside had acquired a negative association in the public imagination (Boyd, Campbell & Culbert 2009, p.9). Yan and Sutherland (2019) point out that the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood has long been portrayed as troubled in both official documents and media (646-647). Such an image has made it more isolated and marginalized. The need to address the diverse challenges in the Downtown Eastside has also ignited debate and tensions (Robertson and Culhane 2005: 19). Different stakeholders are involved in a competition for power, making the Downtown Eastside “a carnival of strange bedfellows” (Robertson and Culhane 2005: 19). Despite these issues, the Downtown Eastside is a dynamic community with frequent intercultural interactions and several organizations providing substantial social support. It is also 16 the site for some of the most progressive drug policy initiatives in the world, as well as a place that an increasing number of healthy and relatively well-off people call home, as the Downtown Eastside is rapidly gentrified; disparities between affluent and impoverished, housed and homeless are stark. The linguistically, ethnically and generationally diverse population (Wang and Yan 2019) has a strong sense of community identity (Yan and Sutherland 2019, p.648), as well as an activist heritage (Hasson and Lay, 1994, in Yan and Sutherland 2019, p.648). 2.2 An Overview of Research Participants In research and policy overviews of the Downtown Eastside, Chinese seniors are seldom described as having distinct attributes. Although being recognized as a special group (see: Su 2021), ethnic Chinese seniors are usually categorized as simply residents of the Downtown Eastside or Chinatown seniors1, and thus their special living conditions may be overlooked. Very few statistics exist on ethnic Chinese seniors. Therefore, in this section, I am going to provide a general profile of Chinese seniors based on what I have learned from several reports as well as my fieldwork. The Downtown Eastside is known to host a large proportion of low-income households (Kumagai 2010: 11; Keltie Craig Consulting et al. 2021: 19). Many Chinese seniors living there survive by relying on monthly income assistance2, Canadian Pension Plan (CPP)3, employment 1 In the Chinatown area of the Downtown Eastside, the elderly population (people who are aged 65 or over) comprise 25.1 percent of the population, much higher than the 13.1 percent for Vancouver overall (Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House 2020: 9). Ethnic Chinese elderly are only a portion of the total, with seniors coming from various countries and regions, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Vietnam, Malaysia and Myanmar. 2 $935 to $1720 Cnd per month depending on marriage and family situations (See: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/family-social-supports/income-assistance/on-assistance). 3 $727.61 to $1253.59 Cnd per month depending on the age at which the pension is initiated, CPP contribution, and average earnings (See: https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/publicpensions/cpp/cpp-benefit/amount.html). 17 income, Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors (GIS)4, Employment Insurance benefits, disability benefits, and pensions from China5, as well as supplies provided for free from community organizations. All my main interlocutors (a total of 13) were receiving at least one of the benefits above. Apart from my main interlocutors, some other seniors were still working since they did not have permanent residence in Canada and could not receive any government pension or benefit. This group of seniors mainly worked as shop assistants, plumbers, porters, waiters and waitresses, cooks or ran small businesses, the only employment they could find due to their limited level of English. It is important to note that the women I spent time with mostly lived independently from their children and grandchildren. They told me that they do this for several reasons such as pursuing a more desirable lifestyle, wanting to be independent, and avoiding bothering their kids. My interlocutors’ children were mostly living and working in Canada, the U.S., and China. Most of my interlocutors were living in Single Occupancy Hotel buildings, Seniors’ Supportive Housing and Subsidized Housing for Seniors in the Downtown Eastside. This housing offers single hotel rooms with shared washrooms and kitchens, studios and one-bedroom suites to seniors at a reduced rate based on their income. Some seniors I met moved to the Downtown Eastside from Richmond and Burnaby to save on rent, even though some of them had to wait for a unit to become available, sometimes up to ten years. Apart from these DTES residents who are the focus of my research, there are other ethnic Chinese seniors who travel to the Downtown Eastside from relatively well-off regions of the Greater Vancouver Area, such as Richmond and Burnaby, to enjoy the rich community resources it offers. The interactions among 4 $616.31 or $1023.88 per month depending on marriage and family conditions (See: https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/publicpensions/cpp/old-age-security/guaranteed-income-supplement/benefit-amount.html). 5 The actual benefit amount varies from province to province. According to my interlocutors, they received an average of $450 Cnd per month. 18 the residents and non-residents are frequent, as they usually come to the same area and same community centers to have meals and access necessities. I observed that my interlocutors seldom went to the traditional immigrant organizations, such as the Chinese Cultural Center and The United Chinese Community Enrichment Services Society (S.U.C.C.E.S.S.) since these organizations rarely offered food or basic necessities, and charged for their services. Meanwhile, some seniors indicated some unpleasant experiences with these organizations, and thus they did not picture them as sites for resources. Philanthropic organizations providing free food, necessities, and cultural events appealed more to these seniors as sites for socializing and making friends with one another. The life of these ethnic Chinese seniors differs from a stereotypical Downtown Eastside life characterized by drug use, drug trade, prostitution, homelessness, HIV/AIDS, and violence. Most ethnic Chinese seniors I met were living a “drug-free” life, and they usually expressed their concerns and even disgust about drug abuse in the Downtown Eastside. Similarly, some of them also criticized prostitution in the community, with one person even calling sex workers “dirty sluts”. Although also affected by violence caused by poverty, racism, isolation, and marginalization (Sing 2022), these seniors are clearly relatively privileged and sheltered from the most extreme social ills. They are also proud of being financially independent of their families through working and making full use of services and benefits provided by the community and the government. Having the option to draw on the financial support of their families is another source of privilege that is sometimes shown off by seniors I met. Nevertheless, my interlocutors especially suffered due to challenges with English. In sum, the ethnic Chinese seniors I interacted with were both disadvantaged and privileged. 19 My interlocutors told me that there are three main reasons for them to come to Canada. First, some seniors (4 in my sample) were originally from Hong Kong and migrated in the late 1990s to avoid the uncertain future brought about by Hong Kong’s handover to Mainland China in 1997. Second, some seniors, nearly half of my sample, came to Canada to assist in raising their grandchildren. They came here either alone or with their husbands. Third, some others were also attracted by Canada’s welcoming policies of aging and its generous social welfare system, such as the Canadian Pension Plan, and thus decided to stay here. They finally ended up living in the Downtown Eastside due to the array of community services provided, the lower rent and access to charitable donations, as well as to interact with the Chinese community around the Chinatown area. In addition to the above reasons, some seniors other than my main interlocutors told me that they came to escape from the extreme poverty and famine in China from the 1950s to the 1970s. 2.3 Research Methods and Fieldwork Emphasizing participant observation and in-depth interviews, my research methods follow a conventional anthropological path. Following methods of participant observation as outlined by Spradley (1980: 53-62), I engaged in active participation, “doing what other people are doing” to gain an understanding of cultural rules (1980: 60). This included taking part in the daily life and daily reciprocal activities of Chinese elders to understand their tactics of making a life for themselves. Through participation in exchanges and friend-making processes, I managed to understand how they forge relations when resources are relatively scarce. My method of in-depth interviews is partly inspired by Nelson (2000) who conducted her research in South Korea studying consumerism and nationalism among South Koreans. Nelson (2000: 4-6) designed two versions of interview guides to fit two kinds of interviewees depending 20 on the various degrees of mutual trust and familiarity between them and the researcher. In my project, I conducted my fieldwork mainly in a women’s association in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The outreach workers in the association kindly accepted me as both a researcher and a volunteer, so I could spend time in the dining hall and conduct my research. I realized that most elders in my field site were willing to communicate with me, but some of them did not regularly go to the dining hall. Therefore, I also developed an array of questions based on topics my interlocutors expressed an interest in discussing. After one week of fieldwork, I noticed that these elders were generally happy to share their family stories and life history with me, and as time went by, I encountered more and more supportive activities and networking processes among them. Thus, finally, my interview guides encompassed questions about giving, reciprocity, life experiences, and life stories. The interviews were done in a mixture of Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, depending on which language was preferable for the interlocutor. In addition to building on Nelson’s long and short interview approach, my methods were inspired in other ways by Nelson’s approach to her research. Nelson (2000: 4-5) indicates a mixed way to conduct interviews. She uses both formal and informal interviews based on whom she is talking to in her project with two versions of interview guides. In my case, my interlocutors were not generally comfortable with tape recorders and written consent forms. If I tried to gain their consent with a tape recorder, they would reject me for a variety of reasons. They might feel uncomfortable with the tape recorder or feel unconfident about whether their answers were correct or satisfying as well as whether their stories were attractive. My typical approach was to ask them orally if I could pose a series of interview questions at the beginning of an interview and then take out my notebook to convey that this was an interview rather than a 21 casual conversation. In this way, my interlocutors felt more relaxed and comfortable than they would have been in a recorded interview. I created pseudonyms for my interlocutors in this ethnography for the sake of their privacy. Also, their hometowns, current addresses, daily routines and family relations might be slightly modified for the same reason. Generally, I refer to interlocutors as “Grandma XX (surnames/names)” (in Mandarin) or “Popo XX (surnames/names)” (grandma in Cantonese) to reflect their kin-like care and affection for me. However, some of the seniors demonstrated that they consider me their friend and would like me to call them by their given names. This group of seniors have pseudonyms in my ethnography and are referred to only by given names. My main field site is a community centre in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The centre claims to provide safe spaces “within the Downtown Eastside exclusively for self-identified women and their children.” (Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre 2022a). It is a place for any people who self-identify as women and their children to socialize with others and find shelter, and the community space provides women with a plethora of assistance programs and weekly arts/language/social events. The center was established in 1978, embracing a philosophy of “participant empowerment” (Downtown Eastside Women’s Center 2022b). Its membership is comprised of a diverse population including women of multiple racial and cultural backgrounds, as well as from all walks of life (Downtown Eastside Women’s Center 2022b). The center has several outreach workers and on-site workers to support people with issues of housing, income, health conditions, violence, racism and sexism, and it also has a series of programs for indigenous women, Chinese seniors, violence victims, and community peers. A trilingual (speaking Mandarin, Cantonese, and English) outreach worker is working for the association, 22 primarily serving Chinese-speaking residents. She helped to introduce me to the elders as a researcher on my first day there. The centre has two drop-in centres, and they offer free lunch and afternoon tea every day. Women can also pick up free dinner at the second drop-in centre on Hastings Street. Through offering meals, the centre creates a public space (a public dining hall) aimed at fostering inclusion, safety, and friendships (Downtown Eastside Women’s Center 2022c). In addition, the centre gives out free snacks and daily necessities every afternoon and provides need-based aid. These giveaways form an important part of the reciprocal activities and moral economies that are at the crux of my research. In my fieldwork, I went to the public dining hall every day to interact with Chinese elders. Most of my interlocutors were aged between 65 to 90, with two exceptions aged 55 and 57. All of them have been living in Vancouver for over fifteen years. They are from a variety of cities in mainland China, as well as from Taiwan. Some of them had also resided in other places in Canada namely Toronto, Calgary, and Edmonton. As we built up friendships with each other, they started to take me out for walks, invite me to share a meal and bring me to places they frequented in their daily lives. Also, these seniors sometimes invited me to events, such as charitable banquets and art sessions offered by the association. Through participating in their lives, I understood more about seniors living in Vancouver from an insider’s perspective. As we fostered closer relations, my interlocutors spoke more frankly with me. They started expressing their sense of vulnerability and frustration with living in Canada, instead of simply acclaiming the extensive social support in Canada, as they had in previous conversations. Grandma Wan, an 87-year-old woman, sharply criticized her life in China when we first met. She was a kind, warm-hearted woman who usually chatted with me frankly about her opinions 23 and life. She was deeply impressed by Canada’s free medical system and would like to “stay in Vancouver forever.” When other women complained about pizza offered by the food bank, she always praised those delicious pizzas saying that she loved Western foods. One of her friends even complained to me about her obsession with Canada, claiming that “she even does not want to go back to China after death! I cannot understand why a Chinese can accept things like this.” However, as we became close, her words changed. She invited me to her place for dinner twice during my fieldwork. When we chatted together by the window in her small apartment, Grandma Wan kept repeating that she missed a signature food in her hometown in Henan province. She said: “Yes, I love Vancouver, and I confess that I enjoy the climate here. It is never too hot or too cold. Compared with most of the cities in China, Vancouver offers me a better environment to live in. But I also miss China. I know I am too old to go back to China and most of my relatives and old friends there have passed away. I have nowhere to go and no one to meet in China now. I just miss those foods, and nightlife in China. At least I can go anywhere independently without language barriers there.” I could sense a strong feeling of nostalgia in her words, sensing her helplessness, loneliness, and her complex experiences of living in both countries. As an immigrant senior, she missed her old life, her youth, her past husband, and her ability to move freely in China. This nostalgia is not an idealization of living in another country or living another life, but the production of her intersectionality of being an older, non-English speaking, Chinese woman residing in Canada. At first, I was surprised to hear Grandma Wan’s reflections since she always appeared as an independent woman who refused to even imagine her later life in China. This anecdote required me to pay attention to the ties between my interlocutors and me and the dualistic separation of public and private space. I infused these observations into my in-depth 24 interviews. Considering their nuanced expressions and relations allowed me to better understand their seemingly paradoxical words and activities so that I could conduct empathetic, detailed, and customized interviews. Volunteering was another crucial part of my fieldwork. My duties as a volunteer included being a teaching assistant and an interpreter during the English as Second Language (ESL) class offered by the association, assisting outreach workers at events, and informally helping Chinese seniors with their requests while spending time in the public space. Most of my interlocutors knew me as a student, a volunteer, and a researcher who was interested in their lives and would like to help them to get through their hard times. Thus, reciprocal relations and mutual trust were established and maintained between us. 25 Chapter 3 “Shou yang zui”: Intersected Experiences, Intersected Lives As mentioned in the last chapter, Chinese seniors face multidimensional difficulties in their daily lives, including language barriers, cultural differences, low self-esteem, and relatively lower social status (Su 2021). However, these reports obscure the rich knowledge embedded in everyday life, i.e., how Chinese elders interpret and even rationalize these difficulties as “suffering”. The word suffering shows their subjective feelings and interpretations of going through such challenges and difficulties. In this chapter, I will consider several interlocutors’ vignettes which portray their life experiences of living in Vancouver. “Shou yang zui” (受洋罪 in Chinese, suffering from foreignness) is an indicative phrase in their narratives. In the following section, I will illustrate how Chinese seniors interpret their immigrant life with the pros and cons of living in Canada and how they cope with them through reciprocity and forms of exchange. Their narratives highlight their intersected experiences of being Chinese immigrants and elders in Vancouver. The phrase “Shou yang zui”, or “suffering from foreignness”, reflects not only immigrants’ subjective living experiences in the Downtown Eastside, but also their interpretations of the structural inequalities and social forces they encounter in daily life. 26 3.1 “Shou yang zui”: Stories about Suffering In June, Grandma Wan invited me to make dumplings with her at her place. Her apartment is on the third floor with a wide window facing a bustling avenue. The apartment is not big. Grandma Wan lives in the bedroom with the window, and she arranges another single bed in the living room for her son who frequently visits her and cooks for her. A stove, an oven, a refrigerator, and cupboards are set in the narrow corridor connecting the living room and the bedroom, opposite which is a small washroom. Grandma Wan’s bedroom is usually messy. She has chronic pain in her left knee so she always likes to keep things around her instead of standing up and walking to get them. Grandma Wan started to share accounts of her life with me when we were preparing the filling for dumplings. She had been hospitalized in March and April because of severe pain in her left leg. She coughed sometimes when she talked to me. She said: “On that day, it was too painful for me to move. What was worse, my cellphone was not with me. I put it in the living room and I could not even walk 10 meters to get it. I tried my best to move from my sofa to my bed. See, there are only 2 meters between them, but it took me nearly two hours to stand up and walk to my bed. I lay on my bed and waited for my son to come back from his job. My son works for a hospital in Delta, and his family lives in Delta. His working hours are from 3 PM to 12 AM. He got home at 2 AM on that day with an exhausted face. He was so tired that even he, a strong man around 40, could not move me. He said he had to have a rest. Then he slept for about three hours, and he called 911 at about 5 AM. I had been waiting on my bed for almost 16 hours for him to call 911.” I said: “It was so bad! I am so sad to hear that.” 27 Grandma Wan continued: “I know, right? 16 hours! I cannot speak English and I could not get my cellphone, so it was impossible for me to call 911 myself.” I asked: “How about your neighbours?” Grandma Wan laughed: “My neighbours? Yes, they are good neighbours, and they helped me a lot! (Me: “Yes you told me about them before.”) But most of them are living at least three meters away from me, and most of them are English-speaking. I could neither move around smoothly nor tell them clearly what I was experiencing with gestures as we did before. That was desperate. And then I was hospitalized. Thank God there was nothing wrong with my leg! My son and I were worried about a potential fracture or some other issues with bones, but nothing happened. You know, it is common for elders to have these pains. However, during my time in the hospital, an air-conditioner kept blowing a cold breeze right on the top of my head. It made me feel so cold and I have tracheitis. Then a fever started. I coughed nearly all night long. I asked a nurse whether she could turn off that air-conditioner, but perhaps she did not understand me. I used Mandarin and gestures to communicate with her, and apparently, she could not understand Mandarin. I guess she said something like she was not permitted to turn it off, but I am not sure. So, after staying in the hospital for five days and my leg felt better, I returned home immediately. I kept coughing in May, and it is getting better now.” “It was suffering, I confess, and I thought if I were in China, I could be hospitalized in a better condition. I used to be a doctor in China, so I still can get access to medical services offered by the hospital that I worked for. The hospital may assign me a single room, or even an intensive care unit! At least I wouldn’t have to bear the air-conditioner over my head! I think I am suffering to some extent. See, I cannot move around, I cannot communicate with anyone smoothly, and I need my son to be with me all the time. When my friends and I talk to each other 28 about these experiences, I usually say that we are shou yang zui (受洋罪, suffering from foreignness). If we were in China, if we were not in Canada, none of us would suffer from these aspects of life.” Shou yang zui, a vivid description meaning feeling tortured by having to adapt to foreign customs or foreign lifestyles, is used to summarize her helplessness and complaints. Shou zui (受罪) means “to suffer” in Mandarin, and yang (洋) indicates “foreign” and “foreignness” according to the Modern Chinese Dictionary. Despite the lack of academic research on “shou yang zui”, Chinese authors and journalists have published on the challenge of adapting to foreign cultures. There are two dimensions of “yang zui”. On the one hand, Chinese immigrants from all walks of life feel upset and frustrated while trying to accommodate a new, foreign lifestyle after moving abroad. On the other hand, some Chinese writers, namely Liang Shiqiu, speak of odd phenomena in China such as Chinese people celebrating foreign holidays and adopting foreign customs (Liang and Chen 2005: 31-35). For example, if someone is scared during Halloween, the feeling of “being scared by a foreign custom” is suffering from foreignness. Together this combination signifies a sort of suffering from cultural interactions and mobility. Overall, in a Chinese context, “shou yang zui” signifies one’s negative feelings and experiences of following unfamiliar foreign lifestyles. Grandma Wan’s use of the word “yang” clearly indicates the boundary between the Chinese and others and illustrates the suffering of elderly Chinese immigrants like her living in Vancouver. Grandma Wan was not the only one who complained about “yang zui”. Grandma Quan, a close friend of Grandma Wan, agreed with this phrase while she was talking to Grandma Wan. Grandma Quan also had a lot to complain about in her daily life, and she usually told me and 29 other seniors that she would like to go back to China after the pandemic. Being tired of language barriers, she could not bear her “lonely, exhausted, boring” (Grandma Quan said) life here. She said: “I really want to go back to China. Here, yes, I have pensions and we can access free medical services, but I must do everything with my children as my interpreters. They are always so busy that they are not available for me. Also, because of lacking English skills, I cannot understand those posters. This means that the only way for me to know about community services and goods is by gossiping. I learn about those free banquets, foods and necessities by talking to others, so I missed a lot of these welfare hand-outs and events. What a loss!” Grandma Quan continued: “I also don’t have any friends here. (Me: But you come to the centre and chat with others happily.) Yes, sweetie, but for those friends, we are not that close, so there are many things that I cannot share with them. Sweetie, I miss China. I have three sisters in Dalian and we have video calls frequently. They always say ‘come back, sister. Why are you willing to suffer in Canada?’ Yes, I have so many free meals and supplies in Downtown Eastside, but going back to China, my husband and I will not spend much on food and necessities. How much will two elders eat? And we can go to the market on our own. We can chat with vendors, our neighbours, and our friends. My husband can go to play chess or just have casual chats with his previous colleagues in a factory. Who can we talk to in Vancouver? Life can be much easier if we go back to China.” Both Grandma Wan and Grandma Quan have been in Vancouver for over 10 years. They were sponsored by their children and now both are permanent residents of Canada. The status of Permanent Resident is also called a “green-card holder”6 in Chinese seniors’ words. Grandma Wan thought she could never go back to China again. She is almost 90 years old and her old 6 It should be noted that Canada does not issue a green card, and the word “green card” might be borrowed from the name of the Permanent Residence Card of the United States. 30 friends and relatives in China have all passed away. Grandma Wan sometimes expressed her frustration in conversation with me: “I really miss the foods in China. Do you know spicy sour soup? (Me: “Yes, it is a signature food in Henan Province.”) Yes! I can never find the same flavour here. I ask my son to buy some spicy sour soup for me from a small restaurant in South Vancouver. It doesn’t have the same flavour as the one in Henan…but do you know what, after living here for such a long life, I cannot tolerate spicy foods. The soup is too spicy for me.” She laughed with a bit of bitterness. I responded: “I can empathize with you. I can always feel my bond to China when I miss the food there.” Grandma Wan said: “Yes, yes, food, my son also told me he missed Chinese food a lot when he was pursuing a Ph.D. in the U.S. The food here is not as tasty as Chinese food…to be honest, those meals offered by the women’s association are awful. But at least they are free! No one is allowed to complain about free food. We Chinese can hardly appreciate foreign food.” I asked: “Do you still consider yourself a Chinese after living here for over 10 years and being issued a green card?” Grandma Wan: “Yes, definitely. I am still a Chinese citizen since I do not have a Canadian passport, and I will not do that…a Canadian passport means nothing to me if I am too old to travel around. Also, I cannot speak yang hua (洋话, foreign languages). I don’t understand English. I am not accustomed to foreign food. I cannot adapt to yang ren’s (洋⼈的, foreigners’) lifestyles. All these issues convince me that I am Chinese from head to toe.” Like Grandma Wan, Grandma Quan also identifies as Chinese. She also explained her identification to me in a similar vein: “I can’t understand English. I don’t like the food here. I 31 don’t have any local friends either. Moreover, I can also feel the discrimination against us Chinese people here. Also, I was brought up in China and I spent most of my life there. This cannot be changed by residing in Canada. I always plan to go back to China one day. I mean, if my husband and I can live with our friends and relatives happier there, who cares about the Canadian green card? Who wants to be tortured just for pensions and social welfare benefits in Canada?” Grandma Quan’s and Grandma Wan’s narratives unpack several aspects of their everyday suffering. Their narratives show a multilayered, intersected nature of suffering in an ostensibly reliable social support system. Although some of my interlocutors did not directly refer to “shou yang zui”, they still point out that their suffering and struggle are attributed to their immigrant life in Canada. Thus, I consider all the everyday experiences illustrating the specific tribulations of immigration as a dimension of “shou yang zui”, as they are associated with an aging immigrant everydayness. Shou yang zui becomes a useful conceptualization of the everyday of Chinese immigrant elders in this sense. It provides me with more insights into how the grandmas I met understand their immigrant life and navigate the barriers they face. I witnessed an incident one day in the association that illuminated some of these issues. I was talking to Hongzhi, a relatively young woman who used to study in a college and would like to immigrate to Canada. However, she had bad luck. She was involved in fraud and was evicted by her landlord. She thus litigated a claim in court and was caught up in dense legal provisions with insufficient assistance from her lawyer. She usually sat by a pile of 5cm thick documents every time I met her and talked about her disappointment and frustration with being involved in a lawsuit. 32 As usual, we began our conversation by talking about “Canada’s disappointing legal system” (as Hongzhi called it). The association staff member came by with a thermos. She stopped by our table and asked a white transgender female if she would like to keep the thermos. The trans woman refused the offer. Hongzhi asked the staff if she could keep it. The staff member glanced at her indifferently, held the thermos in her arms more tightly, and left, without saying anything. Hongzhi was irritated: “See, she is being racist. She can give that thermos to anyone, especially a white person, except not to a Chinese.” Hongzhi was not the only one upset by these unfair, and seemingly racist behaviours. Ashley, a 70-year-old woman from Beijing, complained about the racist behaviours of a worker named Cici (a pseudonym) in the association. Ashley said Cici always prevented her from receiving good stuff. Ashley once wanted to have a box of tofu from the food bank, and she asked Cici if she could take the better box which was less damaged. Cici patted the back of her hand and swiped her hand away from the desk. Later, Ashley noticed that Cici gave the box of tofu to an Indigenous woman. Ashley was irritated and she argued with Cici furiously, but nobody attended to her complaint. Grandma Quan also told me that there were always distinctions between the stuff given to Chinese and non-Chinese. The distinctions also depended on whether receivers had a good relationship with the staff. The visible minority status of the Chinese appeared to be a source of inequality in the social welfare system, at least in terms of how staff decided to bestow favours on their clientele. The women’s association sometimes gave out some necessities such as toothpaste and soaps to those who were in need. Technically, every self-identified woman can drop in and get a share unless all the stuff has been given out. Grandma Quan said: “I noticed some toothpaste with good qualities, and I would like to get it. However, the staff gave a large 33 tube of Colgate to a white person and then gave a tiny tube, this length” -she used her fingers to gesture 5-centimetre length – to me. She leaves those good tubes of toothpaste for the white and maybe her other friends. I couldn’t speak English but I was frustrated. I know they will never give any good things to us just because we are Chinese.” Grandma Quan also emphasized the importance of a good relationship with the staff. She said: “For me, I have friendships with them. They then care more about me and give me something that I need.” However, when I asked my colleague in the English Conversation Class that I volunteered for about the relations between the receivers and the staff, she answered: “Yes, I know, it happens. When we become closer, we know more about them personally. I mean, of course, they line up at our tables to get food aid, but once we know them personally, we learn more about their specific needs. Then we can help them.” She thus provided me with a new perspective to interpret the inequality that my interlocutors faced. I see the inequality as rooted in unequal access to informal social support, and clearly, this stratified access will further reproduce inequality (Faist et al 2015). 3.2 Everydayness in the Social Support System: Being Chinese, Being Elderly From the idiom of “shou yang zui”, my interlocutors demonstrated their concerns and obstacles to living in a foreign country and navigating the social support system in Vancouver. Foreignness, an abstract and broad concept, is thus specified in their everyday lives by reference to food, language, hometowns/original birthplaces, medical systems, pensions, and networks. While talking about foreignness, they are constructing the binary of “us” and “others”, rendering an identity of Chinese and a sense of otherness. What makes these accounts noteworthy is their relationship to issues of social support and social security. The stories of shou yang zui hinted at an intersection of family, race, ethnicity, 34 age and (perhaps) gender that positions these seniors in Canada, and more specifically, in the social support system. My field site, the community centre, is an organization providing women with social assistance. Therefore, my interlocutors are exposed to a key dimension of Canadian systems of social support—albeit a charitable organization, not a government agency— when they come to the association. It inevitably becomes a symbol of or a pathway to making a life in Canada. As Grandma Wan summarized, the association served as “the connective bridge” between Canadian society and her, even though she “mainly interacted with female Chinese elders there.” Meanwhile, as a part of the social support system, Chinese-speaking outreach workers in the centre aided the Chinese elders to solve their issues by translating documents, applying for necessary financial/housing aid, and filing taxes. These elders consider the assistance as a part of the support and protection provided by the Canadian government. Therefore, despite experiencing hard times and expressing negative feelings about living in Canada, most of my interlocutors still praised the Canadian government and attempted to make full use of welfare resources. I would like to highlight the embeddedness of Chinese senior women in the formal social security system of their host society, and how they experience a sense of foreignness as they take part in it. Social security and non-governmental social support services are culturally specific, and thus may manifest cultural and societal distinctions, ideologies, and specificities (de Bruijin 2000: 48, cited in Caldwell 2007: 69). It is thus a cluster of ideologies and practices that can be experienced differently by people from varied cultural backgrounds (Caldwell 2007: 69). The foreignness my interlocutors experienced can be viewed as a subjective experience of social security in Vancouver. My interlocutors said they felt social security services here were 35 primarily geared toward locals because of the foreign foods offered and the frequently-used English. As a result of this inclination and cultural difference, immigrants are likely to have a hard time adapting to certain aspects of foods, medical services, languages, and so on. As a result, several seniors argue that “beggars can’t be choosers” which becomes a rationalization for the inconvenience: “you must overcome this inconvenience since we are living on other people’s land”. Seniors reflected that they must adjust to the inconvenience and strangeness of a foreign country to survive. Meanwhile, as my interlocutors opened their everyday worlds to me, I could feel the inseparable combination of being Chinese and being elderly. For example, if Grandma Wan was still in her 30s, she would be able to “memorize English vocabularies better” and “live more independently”, and thus “live an easier life in Canada”, as Grandma Wan explained. If Grandma Quan was “not an old woman” (Grandma Quan’s words), she would not suffer from severe knee pain, and thus would be able to take better care of herself. Some of my popos also frequently complained about their bad memories. Grandma Chen once told me she forgot how to write my name in Chinese characters and sometimes she would forget her way back home. Her husband, Grandpa Pan, also suffered from memory problems. One time he went for a walk and got lost. Grandma Chen could not get in touch with him since he did not have a smartphone. Finally, Grandpa Pan managed to figure out his way back by himself. He could not turn to police officers since he cannot understand English. Another woman, Grandma Lee, always used “hun ri zi” (混⽇⼦, dawdling) to describe her life. She came to my English class on Wednesday afternoons, but she seldom reviewed the lesson after class, nor did she engage in the class actively. I asked her for the reason, she said: “Maybe I’ll die tomorrow. I am just coming to pass time. Why should I study hard? Why are 36 those old women studying so hard? We cannot grasp English at such an old age! Are they going to be a head teacher in front of Yan-Wang-Yeh (King of Hell)?” I made fun of her: “But maybe you can say hello to your neighbours! They will be happy to receive such a big surprise.” Grandma Lee laughed and patted me: “You quirky girl! I can say hello and thank you, to be honest, I am ok with these basic expressions. I want to be polite to foreigners. But for my age, there’s no way for me to grasp English. It is too late and too hard for me to do so.” Therefore, the combination of being Chinese and being elderly constructs unique worlds for my interlocutors to live in and experience. The everydayness in these mundane worlds privatizes the social security system in the sense that it creates clusters of individual experiences of the formal, regulated social security system from a particular position. On one hand, as Chinese, these seniors experience ethnic, racial, and cultural foreignness in everyday life. They partly rationalize foreignness as inevitable as they are living in another country, and they expect themselves to adapt to it gradually. On the other hand, as elders, they might suffer from declining physical and mental functions, and they rely on the social security system. Also, they might not accommodate foreignness as smoothly as their children or grandchildren do. Being Chinese elders thus becomes a series of embodied experiences and a combined identity tangible in everyday life and daily interactions (Devi, Hurd and Samanta 2021; Heinrichsmeier 2020; Pilcher and Martin 2020). 3.3 Intersectionality and Elders as Ethnic Minority The stories above indicate that race, ethnicity, ability, and age intersect and produce a nexus of intersectionality in Chinese elders’ immigrant life. This nexus is greatly entwined with a lack of life opportunities. First introduced by Crenshaw (1989), intersectionality applies to a comprehensive understanding of the cumulative effects of multiple structural disadvantages on 37 the lives of minorities. Scholars studying intersectionality share the viewpoint that stratifications and structural disadvantages operate reciprocally instead of being mutually exclusive, to produce intersected and cumulative social inequalities, and all these categories are equal (Collins 2015; Crenshaw 1989; MacCall 2005; Walby et al. 2012). Although facing a definitional dilemma (Collins 2015: 3), intersectionality offers critical insights into the combined forces of inequalities and the lives of minorities under hegemonic structural violence by highlighting the interconnectedness of social stratifications and categories that are historically often analyzed in isolation (Staunaes 2003). The intersectional approach in migration studies thus contributes to balancing structure and human agency while it avoids the promotion of cultural reductionism and cultural essentialism (Bürkner 2012). For the Chinese seniors, their intersectionality directly influences their daily lives and life opportunities. On one hand, these seniors are greatly blocked from job markets as they are aging, immigrants, non-English speakers, and Chinese. Most of them are living independently as their children are busy working and raising their families. Their desire to live independent lives away from families is another key aspect of their agency. Seniors’ independence from their children requires them to seek support from social welfare systems, including heavily relying on food banks, social workers, and community services. This reliance engenders power asymmetry in which they have “no right to choose”, as Georgia explained. Georgia usually wanders around and picks up a lot of food packages from nearby food banks. Apparently, she cannot finish all of them, so she gives them to her friends. I asked her why she always took so much from the food banks. She answered: “You know, these foods are donated by nearby businesses, and they are free. We are low-income, and we cannot predict what we can get every day. We are not rich enough to purchase our meals, so reasonably we are not allowed to be picky. What I can do is 38 just bet. More tries, more choices. See, today I went to five food banks and finally I got some cake and beef rice that I like. I wouldn’t get these tasty foods if I just stopped by one food bank.” As Georgia’s comments show, social support systems guarantee their survival at the expense of individual preferences and choices, though a limited level of human agency is guaranteed. On the other hand, community organizers, volunteers, and social workers with resources are important to the seniors to support themselves. This situation exacerbates the asymmetry of power. After knowing someone personally, the staff may intentionally share something extra for the person to fulfill his/her individual needs. Thus, those who are emotionally and relationally close to the staff are relatively prioritized. As Grandma Quan illustrated, a girl working in the centre saved some herbal ointment for her after knowing about her knee injury. Some social workers also reserve some clothes for their friends in the community. Relationships and networks thus become crucial in improving life opportunities. However, immigrant elders are partially hindered by intersected barriers from getting close to staff. According to the social workers in the centre, they had few opportunities to know Chinese seniors personally, so they could hardly learn about their hometowns and families. Grandmas indicated that they could not build up relations with the staff as easily as “locals” because of language barriers. Language barriers are simply one of the factors that impede their ability to establish strong networks. Other factors such as race, ethnicity and class also exacerbate the isolated reality and disempowerment of these Chinese seniors. They can hardly be “known personally” because of these intersected social disadvantages. Therefore, these seniors’ pathways to opportunities and choices are doubly limited. Their marginalized positions in Vancouver’s social hierarchy further prevent them from increasing their life opportunities, which reproduces inequality (Faist et al. 2015). 39 Chapter 4 Hugging and Making Friends: To Give or to Keep During my fieldwork, I came to know Grandma Quan, a seventy-six-year-old woman, who was originally brought up in Weihai, Shandong province. She was a kind, warm-hearted woman who always talked to me as if I were her granddaughter. She came to the dining hall every day. We quickly established our friendship as she learnt that I completed my bachelor’s degree from Shandong University, a top university in her hometown. We chatted a lot about different cities in Shandong when we first met each other. She also told me about her family in Shenyang, another city in Northeastern China. Grandma Quan had been in Vancouver for almost 15 years. She had two daughters, one of them was in Vancouver, and the other one was living in the U.S. When we met she was living on a variety of welfare benefits7, and she assisted her elder daughter’s family by cooking, cleaning and providing childcare. She was living with her husband, but they dis not have a good relationship. Sometimes Grandma Quan complained to me and her other friends about her husband’s cowardliness. Grandma Quan was a popular figure in the dining hall, and everyone around loved her. They usually told me how friendly and polite she was, and even the staff member who Grandma Quan thought was being racist towards her praised Grandma Quan. I sometimes saw Grandma Quan stretching with the staff in late afternoons and they seemed to build up intercultural 7 Benefits here generally include Canada Pension Plan (CPP), Old Age Security (OAS), Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), Allowance, and other plans for the elders issued by the Canadian government.. 40 friendships with one another. Grandma Quan always came to the centre, put down her bag and cart, and then hugged those frontline workers to show her kindness and friendship toward them. One day, when Grandma Quan finished her daily hugging ritual, Jane reminded her: “We are still in the middle of the pandemic! Perhaps we should keep a social distance and it’s not good for you to hug them.” Grandma Quan said: “Yes, I know! I have my mask on as you see. They enjoy hugging and that’s the only way I can greet them.” I was interested in the reason behind her hugs. So, when we went for a walk together, I asked: “Grandma, why do you always hug them?” Grandma Quan answered with a slightly embarrassed smile: “I know it’s still a pandemic and I shouldn’t have done that.” I said: “No, no, grandma, I’m not judging you at all. Don’t worry about it. I am just curious about the reason. Could you please tell me?” Grandma Quan said: “For sure. We Chinese seldom hug when we meet. We just shake hands or say ‘hello’ to greet. But those yang ren (foreigners) love to hug when they meet each other. They love hugging. Therefore, if I hug them, they know that I want to be a friend with them. They know my kindness and politeness, and finally, they will recognize and remember me. Then they will understand my needs so in the future perhaps I can get some more things that I need from them.” I was surprised: “That is smart!” Grandma Quan smiled: “So don’t laugh at me for trying to flatter people. As the saying goes, one depends on one’s parents when at home, and on friends when away from home. I want to be friends rather than enemies with them. Being friends, I can rely on them sometimes, and I don’t need to worry about being disadvantaged that much. It is like what I did when I was 41 working in a factory in China. I asked myself to ‘behave well’ since once I behaved well, my colleagues would remember me and treat me as well as my family, or better. Before, I could achieve it by chatting and being friendly with my leaders and my colleagues. Now, I cannot communicate with them smoothly, so what can I do except for hugging?” Grandma Quan also hae many friends among Chinese elders. She was good friends with Grandma Wan, who always thought of her and asked me how she was doing when we met each other. Grandma Wan called her “The sister from Shandong” and remembered her for she always shared vegetables with her. Grandma Quan also won Georgia’s affection as she protected Georgia from being bullied by one of the “troublemakers”, as Georgia called them. During one conflict, Grandma Quan was shoved in the back by a troublemaker. However, when Georgia tried to persuade Grandma Quan to call the police, Grandma Quan refused. Georgia asked me to translate her Cantonese into Mandarin to persuade Grandma Quan to call the police, but Grandma Quan gently patted my lap under the dining table and shook her head “no” in firmly responding to Georgia. When Georgia was talking to another elder, Grandma Quan whispered to me and explained her reasons: “I don’t want to be involved in their controversies. This is their issue, and it is none of my business. I don’t want to annoy anyone of them. I know Georgia wants me to help her fight back, but why should I do it? Who am I? That woman was not attacking me. Why should I go against her on behalf of Georgia?” Later, Georgia said she would leave for a while and asked us to watch over her bag for her. Grandma Quan offered to do so, and Georgia said “thank you”. Grandma Quan replied: “No, you don’t need to say thank you to me. We are friends, and to be honest, I know what you mean. 42 We both have been here for a long time. It is no problem for me to look after your stuff.” She also passed some bread and pasta to Georgia: “You can also take mine! I know you like them.” Georgia smiled shyly and was somewhat embarrassed. After Georgia left, Grandma Quan said: “These two women fight with each other every time they meet. I know they will be enemies again next time and there will be another conflict. I understand what she meant to do, but I will not realize her wish. I never want to be a part of that rivalry.” I responded: “Of course not. Don’t get yourself involved in a bad relationship.” Grandma Quan nodded: “No.” A key component of Grandma Quan’s story is how she illustrates the importance she, like other Chinese elders, places on personal relationships as a means of accessing and circulating goods, services, and information, and also as a means for expressing friendship, support and care for each other. As relations between Grandma Quan, the staff, and Georgia show, their friendships were both emotional and instrumental. These elders took initiative to improve their lives through friendships, and thus strategically coped with the intersectionality shaping their lives. In the centre, Chinese elders always talked about their families, friends, and lives. Their conversations were always about their families, free food distribution centres nearby, government benefit plans, community service resources, how to find and buy certain items at a relatively lower price, and how to apply for extra benefits. They kindly offered suggestions to each other and introduced resources to one another. Meanwhile, they shared their goods through some informal exchanges as I noted at the beginning of chapter 1. They also introduced me to other friends who needed help reading letters, using WeChat and translating apps for smartphones, etc. 43 This chapter describes how these seniors engaged in reciprocity and gift-giving to alleviate negative feelings and improve their lives. Reciprocity was an essential part of their everydayness, but this does not mean they were merely being utilitarian. As I will illustrate in the next section, having a reciprocal relationship is more of a surprise than fulfilling an obligation. I also draw attention to how giving and reciprocating mark interpersonal relations in immigrant life. Reciprocity is in turn a critical part of everydayness and contributes to the establishment of both affective and utilitarian communities of mutual support. In this chapter, I will probe the following questions: how are friendships and relations mediated, mobilized and maintained through giving and receiving (and therefore reciprocating)? What are people keeping while giving? 4.1 Grandma Quan’s Secret Social Life Grandma Quan is always friendly and sweet to everyone. One day in March, Grandma Quan and I were passing time in the dining hall. After chatting about everything we could talk over, Grandma Quan invited me to go for a walk with her. Before we stood up, Garcia came and told us that there would be a charity banquet at a pub across the street. She learned about this from some advertisements on the street, and she was spreading the news. We thanked Garcia and left. Grandma Quan knew Garcia, perhaps not very well, but they were familiar with one another and would greet each other and chat sometimes. At that time, Grandma Quan was confused why she had not come across the advertisement. Then it turned out that the advertisement was written in English. Grandma Quan shook her head: “Now I know it, that’s why I always miss so many food distribution events and banquets! Thanks to Garcia, I know about it [this opportunity] this time. Those Hong Kongese like Garcia are so well-informed. They 44 know English so they can read those flyers and announcements and communicate with the staff. Then they come to tell us. But if I was not here today, I would not know about it.” When we were walking down the street and chatting casually, Grandma Quan started to collect cans on the street. Grandma Quan explained to me that these discarded bottles could be recycled for ten cents each. She collected them to earn some money. She took me to a small square nearby. Another old woman was collecting cans in a garbage bin. She put her left arm into the bin to look for those that may be of use. Grandma Quan said: “See, she is doing it.” I asked: “Grandma, I know most of the seniors in this area are not that financially disadvantaged. Could you please tell me why you collect bottles here? I think you are not doing it to earn a living.” Grandma Quan answered: “That’s a no, no, no. As you mentioned, most of us seniors here are not poor, and our children and pensions provide us with income8. I do it because, first, it is a source of income. We Chinese are very frugal and don’t like to waste anything. We want to use everything up. You shouldn’t waste anything that can be exchanged for money. In addition, I eat for free all day here, in this area. Without paying a penny, I can get everything I need. Nevertheless, I still want to do something. Picking up these cans will give me exercise and earn me some money at the same time.” I laughed: “You want to work. You are a diligent ‘lao dong zhe’ 9” 8 Most of my interlocutors are generally satisfied with their current financial situation, although some may complain about their offspring’s extravagant lifestyles or terrible gambling habits. They perceive themselves as better off than those who are homeless or with mental health problems. There are also non-Chinese elders in the centre who are financially supported by their families, pensions, and part-time jobs, and volunteer for several community organizations so receive coupons and cash rewards from them. Chinese elders who can speak some English also volunteer for some organizations to financially support themselves. 9 This phrase means ‘labourer’ in English. Specific terms of labour and labourer are frequently used in the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda. A diligent labourer who works hard to improve their life quality and make contributions to the nation’s productivity is always desired and praised. 45 Grandma Quan also laughed: “Yes, I am eager to work! My goal is not to stay here, eat and drink for free. Our seniors do not lack money, and even if we do, we do not have to earn it by selling cans. We just want to do something.” We walked slowly in the park. Then, Grandma Quan rummaged through the trash bin to see if any plastic bottles were left. There was a homeless man who seemed to know Grandma Quan. The two of them smiled at each other and said hello. Grandma Quan told me: “This homeless man has been here for a long time. He walks here every day. I sometimes see him and he says hello to me. We slowly get to know each other. There are many homeless people around him. Despite being homeless, they are quite friendly and won’t attack me.” We approached a small slope. Grandma Yang looked up and saw a couple drinking at the top of the slope. Another girl was sitting alone on the steps beside them, with her bike parked beside her. She seemed to be eating something. Grandma Quan told me to stand there and stay still, because my knee was badly hurt at that time, and Grandma Quan did not want me to climb the slope. I saw her go to the couple first. The couple knew her. They greeted her with “hello, hello”, and then pointed her to the trash can, indicating that there were some bottles in it. Grandma Quan went over to check, then she hugged the couple and went to find the girl. The girl hugged her too, but the girl didn’t seem to give her any bottles. However, Grandma Quan pulled a piece of cardboard out of the trash can and approached the girl again. She handed the cardboard to her and instructed her to sit on the cardboard because the step was damp after heavy rain in the morning. The girl seemed very grateful and delighted. After sitting down, she merrily sang a sweet song, and Grandma Quan gave her a thumbs up. After doing this, Grandma Quan went back to the couple. The couple had finished the beer they had in their hands. They put the cans neatly on the lid of the trash bin and invited 46 Grandma Quan to get them. Grandma Quan thanked them, and they hugged again. After picking up those cans, she got back to me. She said that the couple was always around. In summer, they would drink and dance with other homeless people, and she would go around them to collect their cans. After two visits, they got used to having her accompany them, and left all the bottles for her. As Grandma Quan explained, those people often drank and danced from afternoon to dusk with Grandma Quan collecting bottles beside them. Unleashing kindness was as easy as having a meal for Grandma Quan. The staff described her as “always being so polite and sweet”, and other seniors loved her. On our way back to the dining hall, Grandma Quan asked me if I would like to have some hand-made buns. I was surprised since I really love those Shandong-style homemade pastries. Grandma Quan was encouraged by my happiness, she said: “A woman living next door to me suddenly knocked at my door last week and gave me some bottles. We didn’t really know each other but she met me outside sometimes. I thought I shouldn’t take them for granted, so I asked her whether she would like to have some homemade pastries. She said she was not really into pastries, but she loves buns! Yesterday, I made some buns with pumpkins and wheat, and I passed her some. If you’re also interested in my buns, I’ll bring some to you tomorrow.” Grandma Quan’s kindness results in friendship, care, and support. On another sunny day, I had an interview with her to learn more about her thoughts on her hugs and friendships. After confirming her previous thoughts on hugs—for example, Westerners love being hugged and if she behaves well to them, they will remember her and care more about her—we started to talk about whether she expected special treatment before hugging others. She said she did not expect it. 47 I said: “So you knew they love hugs, but you were not sure whether you would be given extra attention.” Grandma answered: “No. I know they love hugs, and if they don’t, how can I force them to hug me? I also know that if I go to hug them, it seems as if I am flattering them, but what else can I do? You come here, and you live here. They like hugs and feel that hugs express friendliness to them. Then I should be friendly to them in their ways. Isn’t it the same for everyone no matter which country they are from? You see, I’m nice to you, I think you’re nice, so I think about you. And you’ll be nice too, at least not bad to me, right? Of course, there are exceptions, and sometimes there will be one or two bad guys, but most people are nice.” I asked: “How did you realize that they love hugs?” Grandma Quan: “First, when I went to food banks, some people looked at me and I could feel that they liked me a lot. Maybe it’s because I always say words like ‘Thank you’, ‘Hi’, ‘Bye’ and ‘Sorry’, they think I’m friendly and polite. I can feel their affection from the look in their eyes. Also, I can usually see some people hugging them when they are in line, or when they have taken something or been helped, and those staffs seem very happy. These Westerners are different from us Chinese. We Chinese don’t hug, whereas they like to hug. I’m living here so I have no other choices. I just go and hug them and be nice to them. In turn, they take care of me so I can live better.” Me: “So you will choose whom to hug, and there are some people that you don’t want to hug.” Grandma Quan: “Yes, I only hug those who are very nice to me. I think they can accept my hugs, and I will not go to those who don’t accept them. I mean, why should I be so cheap?” Me: “So you had never expected to be prioritized before hugging them.” 48 Grandma Quan: “Haha, no, never. But sweetie, even if they take extra care of me, they still discriminate against us, Chinese people. They always give priority to Westerners. If a Westerner and a Chinese hug them, their goods will first flow to the Westerner. We are always ranked lower than them. I am still eating the leftovers. But of course, the more they can take care of me, the better my life will be.” Me: “And it is like your homeless friends on the streets. You are nice to each other, and they leave those bottles for you.” Grandma Quan: “That’s right. I’m very familiar with the people here. Many of those homeless people are clear-headed and very friendly. They all know me. They greet me when they see me and collect their cans for me. I also hug them and treat them well. I once walked into an alley to pick up a bottle by the wall. There was a homeless man behind me. I didn’t even see him. He saw me, recognized me, came to pat me, and had a fist bump with me to say hello. They are all good people. But of course, for those who are shouting and excreting on the street, you’d better keep away from them.” “Maybe my personality is like this. I worked in the factory back in the 1970s. All my colleagues are still in contact with me. They even sent me a video and asked me why I didn’t go back to China. They told me to go back to China to have dinner together. Making friends is like this, we go out to dine together and I bring some gifts to them. Isn’t that the case in China? Eat together, chat, exchange our feelings, and bring some gifts. This is how we make friends. This person seems good to you, and you think he would be a good friend. Once he sees your kindness, he will respond to you.” Me: “If you feel like you want to befriend this person, be nice to him. If he wants to make friends with you, he will naturally care about you.” 49 Grandma Quan responded: “Yes, that’s it. Making friends is not barter. Making friends is, I think of you, I’m friendly to you, and vice versa. (Me: It’s not like “okay we are square now.”) No, not be even or square. It is a kind of emotional sacrifice and exchange that can’t be calculated clearly. Think of those homeless people, what do I want from them? I don’t want their money or properties, and they don’t have any either. I’m living alone outside now, so one more friend means more ways to go. Friends are always better than enemies, right? I have these friends, and if I need help in the future, they may be able to help me. I must rely on friends outside.” Me: “So it is like a network.” Grandma Quan agreed: “Yes, yes, a network. We do the same back in China. Chinese people are like this. We make friends and turn to friends when needed. It is a kind of network.” I replied: “My grandmothers taught me that reciprocity does not mean we return what we give each other, but rather that we support each other at all times.” Grandma Quan said contentedly: “Exactly, sweetie, you must learn by heart that friendship is not about giving and rewarding equally, but about feeling affected. It’s like if you think I’m nice, you’re nice to me; I think you’re nice and humorous, and I’m nice to you too.” I said: “Will you call what you give out presents or gifts?” Grandma Quan shook her head: “No, they are not gifts. It is too solemn to call them gifts. For you, I just want to take care of you since I know how hard it is for a girl to survive and study abroad. Gifts are like, I will prepare something seriously and exclusively for you if you get married one day. But here, it sounds more like I cook something good, and I ask if someone would like to have a share. It’s like, yes, I have something, and I want to know if others need them.” 50 4.2 Giving? Keeping? Grandma Quan’s thoughts are common among these seniors. They can receive support and resources by reciprocating, and reciprocity also confirms and reflects the position they hold within certain social protection systems. For Grandma Quan, reciprocity through hugs and informal exchanges reflects her intersectionality of being Chinese and being an elder; hugging became her coping strategy for her marginalized position. In a similar vein, Popo Jane who is almost 90 years old, was volunteering for the association when I was conducting my fieldwork. She helped the association with cleaning and tidying. She told me she volunteered to “exercise, entertain herself, and reward those who have her back.” When she was capable, she also gave away some clothes and food to other seniors, since she was helped before and now she wanted to help others. Meanwhile, some previous volunteers at the food bank told me that they also tried to give priority to Chinese elders. These volunteers are Chinese seniors. They asked specifically what their Chinese clients needed and turned to the staff to fulfill their demands. They also allowed some Chinese seniors to pick up food packages of relatively higher quality. One of these elderly volunteers, Rose, explained her thoughts to me: “I want to help them since people here helped me a lot when I first arrived in Vancouver 15 years ago. I didn’t know anything then, and I came here for help whenever I was confused. Now I have settled down and I’m willing to take care of them. Those goods will never flow to us Chinese, so I try my best to improve our lives. Sometimes you see me collect a lot of things and give them to others. Well, technically, I am not giving. I asked others, such as my old friends and neighbours, if they need them. If so, I brought food packs back to them. I just want to help them because this association helped me a lot and I want to help back.” 51 Me: “You are helping Chinese seniors with scarce resources.” Rose: “Yes. We all should learn to support each other. It is an ethic.” For the seniors I met, reciprocating is not a matter of direct or immediate exchange. They may give out anything, both physically and mentally, while receiving mainly material, but also immaterial care and support from potentially everyone around them. Reciprocity and gift-giving in this case should be analyzed from the perspective of an inalienable possession (Weiner 1992) based on the exchange of absolute value rather than the exchange value of the gifts, no matter tangible or intangible. Ownership of such possessions, such as food, bottles, care, et al. acknowledges differences in authority and hierarchy rather than testifying to the equivalence of these exchanges. Thus, to give these possessions is to present and maintain one’s position within social relations and social structures. Reciprocal activities in this sense are a means of expressing relations and affiliation, like many informal economies and interpersonal support systems in other communities of scarcity (See, for example, Caldwell 2005; Robertson and Culhane 2005: 1-14). I suggest that what differentiates reciprocity in the case of female Chinese seniors from other kinds of informal economies and reciprocal activities is the unique economic class that practitioners are from. The reciprocal activities themselves are to some extent shaped by class. My reflections on Chinese seniors, the analysis of their intersectionality, and their words show that these seniors are relatively well-off though still disadvantaged. As a result, they have a lower level of vulnerability and precariousness than other residents in the Downtown Eastside. Therefore, compared with other forms of informal economies, such as the drug trade or sex work (Robertson and Culhane 2005: 9-10), exchanges among Chinese seniors are less about exchange 52 but more about social support. Instead of being critical for physical survival, the exchanges act to make life easier. Consequently, reciprocity in this case is relatively easy and obligation-free. In my interlocutors’ words, to give and to make friends does not mean to be even with one another, but rather to maintain possibly long-term relationships based on support. Giving, receiving, and reciprocating work to claim one’s membership in certain relationships and communities. As my interlocutors give something to their friends, they are claiming to “keep their friends in mind” or “keep those who have helped us before in mind” rather than directly rewarding the gifts, and therefore demonstrate their willingness to establish or maintain friendships and communities. In return, their friends experience positive attitudes toward them, leading to greater reciprocity and mutual support. Investing in relationships and the possibility of mutual support is a significant aspect of these seniors’ reciprocal activities. Weiner (1992: 1-19) argues that inalienable possessions authenticate their absolute value by being kept symbolically and exclusively by someone, whereas in my case, gifts from these seniors are authenticated by being given to others to confirm positions and relations. The exchange of gifts and reciprocity facilitates solidarity, as earlier scholars have asserted (Mauss 2002[1990, 1954]; Sahlins 1972: 171), yet they are also contextual indicators of intimacy, non-economic ties, and emotional affection in migration. By reciprocating and exchanging, my interlocutors retain the absolute value of their gifts. Their willingness to engage in reciprocity, which allows them to receive additional support and assistance, demonstrates the value of the gifts. Thus, reciprocity among Chinese seniors does not always involve the same two persons who previously exchanged gifts. Reciprocity represents a commitment to a community, an expression of positive feelings, and a willingness to give support and mutual assistance. In this sense, gift-giving is an expression of one’s personal feelings and emotional responses toward 53 others (Yan 1996: 141). These expressions and potential responses comprise the absolute value of these gifts as inalienable possessions. Nonetheless, without forming an obligation to reciprocate between the exact same persons, relationships between these seniors in the dining hall are quite transient. Grandma Quan’s previous words about her lonely life with a very limited number of true friends testify to this sense of alienation. Reciprocal and supportive relations are thus not equivalent to true friendship in some of my interlocutors’ minds. The finding that my interlocutors seldom denounce those Chinese seniors who are reluctant to share or reciprocate further underpins an interaction between reciprocity, class and migration. A lot of seniors told me that even though they met each other every day, they were not sure whether they would meet again the next day, or whether some of them would leave the place tomorrow. As Georgia, and other grandmas said, sometimes they would be apart the next day and would never see each other again. Some of the seniors may move to nursing homes or move to live with their children, while some others may go back to China. Therefore, reciprocity itself is shaped by class and migration. Constant but flexible gift-giving here is more a way to sustain friendships than an obligation. None of my interlocutors’ lives contained any deliberate constructions of “debt” (Couacaud 2017), and therefore no forceful obligations of reciprocating existed. Reciprocity and reciprocal activities thus construct a sense of “diasporic intimacy” that is characterized by “a precarious affection–- no less deep, while aware of its transience” (Boym 1998: 499-500). It is a product of immigrant life, intersectionality, and especially economic class. 54 Chapter 5 Conclusion: Presenting the Buddha with Borrowed Flowers One day, a grandma from Shanghai gave me some cracklings (lard dregs), her favourite snacks. As she gave me a pack of cracklings, she said: “I want to share this with you as I have more. I am Jie Hua Xian Fo (借花献佛, presenting the Buddha with borrowed flowers).” Her words point to an indispensable nature of the exchanges that I have studied, namely that all the gifts and goods are charitable resources given out to fulfill a defined “need”. Jie Hua Xian Fo, meaning to gift something borrowed from others, underlies the context of social support that the gift economy among these seniors is rooted in. This kind of social support is always need-based, and the staff, as well as many social workers at my field site, have clearly stated that all the giveaways are intended for those who are in need. The definition of need is clearly reworked among these seniors. There was sometimes tension between social workers and the seniors when the seniors insisted that the social workers receive their gifts. The social workers might refuse to do so since they believed that those goods are prepared for needy people, but the workers themselves are not in need of the goods. For at least some social workers, “needs” are simply defined as lacking something indispensable. The seniors, nonetheless, define their needs as caring about someone, showing gratitude and support, reciprocating, and fostering longer term relationships. Complex forms of moral economy and nuanced obligations grow to fulfill this kind of need. Similar to other kinds of underground economies and reciprocity in the Downtown Eastside, there are culturally specific answers to the question of “what do people need to survive” 55 and “what do people need to attain well-being”. I suggest that these seniors form a special economic class in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and this economic class exhibits particular forms of reciprocity and moral economy. This group of people is characterized by a paradoxical positionality of being both privileged and disadvantaged. While they are relatively well off, they still suffer from structural discrimination and other kinds of intersectionality. 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Thesis/Dissertation
Downtown-Eastside (Vancouver, B.C.)
eng
Anthropology
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Bloch, Alexia
Two sides of everydayness : suffering from foreignness (shou yang zui) and affirmations via hugging among senior Chinese women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside
Text