Chinese Immigrants: Denise Chong

Denise Chong: Why did Chinese migrants move to Ottawa, a city as far from their homeland as one can imagine?, according to The Star. The Chinese also found that the further east they went in Canada, the less they encountered discrimination. This was to their surprise. In Vancouver and San Francisco, where there was a concentration of Chinese on the West Coast, there was much more fear of Chinese immigrants. The Yellow Peril and the head tax. So you came to Toronto and you d be shocked at how little discrimination there was and you could even date a white girl. Once you came to the smaller centres, like Ottawa, there was no discrimination and that was the attraction and Denise Chong has made it her m tier to write about the Asian experience in Canada. Her first book, The Concubines Children, was about her own familys move to this country. Next she wrote The Girl in the Picture, about the Canadian-Vietnamese woman who, as a young girl, was documented in the famous war photograph running naked, her flesh burned by napalm. Chongs third book, Egg on Mao, was about human rights in China. Her latest effort, Lives of the Family , concentrates on the Chinese who immigrated to Ottawa, Chongs hometown. Our conversation with Chong has been edited for length. It comes right down to family connections. Invariably there would be someone with the same surname, an uncle or a brother, who could give you work and give you a bunk in the back of the laundry, who could give you a meal and help you learn English. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.