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UBC Theses and Dissertations

Preservation through performance : self-organization and self-sustaining of Vancouver and Victoria Chinatown communities beyond the Cantonese opera stage (1920-1939) Liang, Emily Jia Ying

Abstract

Cantonese opera once flourished in early twentieth-century North America, sustaining numerous theatres and gaining prominence beyond Chinese borders. Scholarship has emerged in recent decades, focusing on the genre’s rise from a rural tradition to transpacific phenomenon. Particularly noteworthy is Nancy Rao’s framework of a transpacific, musical migration network spanning across North and South American port cities in the early twentieth century. While Rao presents a broad framework in her 2017 book, there have been few published scholarly works providing an in-depth examination of Cantonese opera’s multifaceted role in British Columbia’s localized conditions. Rao’s discussion is also limited to the period between the mid-nineteenth century and 1920s. To date, few scholars have engaged exclusively with the genre in its early twentieth-century, British Columbian context in Canada when Chinese communities faced structural discrimination. I further Rao’s research in the Vancouver and Victoria context by analyzing Cantonese opera’s reception history, print and material culture in the 1920s and 1930s. I systematically examine the Chinese Times, a Chinese newspaper published daily in Vancouver from 1914 to 1992. The newspaper encapsulates the genre’s reception history and Vancouver and Victoria Chinatown communities’ attitudes toward social issues that no one has analyzed methodically. In Chapter Two, I examine the 1920s issues of the newspaper because the decade saw the proposal and passing of the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act (also known as Chinese Exclusion Act) in Canada, which stopped virtually all Chinese immigration. I argue that Cantonese opera theatres in 1920s Vancouver significantly contributed to the sustaining of the Chinatown community by collaborating in charity initiatives and aiding local and global Chinese communities, such as those in Japan and Mandarin-speaking Northern China. In Chapter Three, I review the 1930s as Chinatown residents faced the Great Depression occurring from 1929-1939. I argue that the decade was characterized by a quiet professional Cantonese opera scene but the rise of amateur performances and organizations sustained Vancouver and Victoria’s Chinatown communities. This thesis provides an anti-victimizing view of Chinatown communities in early twentieth-century British Columbia, where Cantonese opera played a significant sociopolitical role and facilitated Chinatown community formation against legalized racism.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International