Some Aspects of Chinese Communities in British Columbia Towns

Abstract

Most students of overseas Chinese have limited their attention to Chinese communities in large cities. Studies have been made of the Chinese in Bangkok, Singapore, Manila, Semarang, Tokyo, Liverpool, London, San Francisco, and Vancouver, among others. Not so much attention has been paid to the overseas Chinese communities outside the major urban centres, although in many countries, as in Canada, the Chinese have settled in small towns as well as in the cities. The result of this concentration of interest has been a picture of overseas Chinese society as one organized through a great number of associations with complex links between them. The relationships between these urban associations and the smaller communities have not been examined. In this paper, I discuss Chinese communities in the small towns of British Columbia and their relationship to the Chinese associations in Vancouver and Victoria. During the year 1961-62,1 visited over twenty towns which