E-Book, Englisch, 250 Seiten
Chan This City Is a Minefield
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-988-77949-5-0
Verlag: Signal 8 Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
E-Book, Englisch, 250 Seiten
ISBN: 978-988-77949-5-0
Verlag: Signal 8 Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
This City
Maybe it’s just the way everyone grows up, but I never thought of my city as a particularly different or special place. I didn’t feel lucky or privileged or complacent. Vancouver was just what it was. Full disclosure: I was born in Burnaby, a suburb just outside of Vancouver, but I tell everyone I’m from Vancouver because it’s where my family moved shortly after I was born and where I grew up. I think part of my feeling like Vancouver was the way it was for me was that I was a kid growing up on the West Side—in the snobby, middle-upper-class district of Kerrisdale, to be specific—and the little bubble I inhabited. My limited knowledge of the world consisted of buildings and the rooms and spaces within them. My elementary school, Maple Grove Elementary, was a mere half block away from my family’s three-story house. I also walked to the local community centre often, where I learned to swim; I scoured bookstacks for tiny, hidden pictures in the library downstairs for prizes during their Summer Reading Club program; and I began my very first piano lessons with a young woman named Monique. Particularly exciting and always surprising because we never paid attention to them until they were happening were Kerrisdale Days: all along the cobblestoned sidewalk of 41st Avenue, tents and tables were set out from storefronts offering free popcorn and cotton candy, balloons with company logos printed on them, and for the adults, various sales. Sidewalks were abuzz with families, children, and strollers; there was a lot of squeezing, careful maneuvering, and side-stepping involved. Ponies shouldered giggling children on the trails adjacent to the railroad tracks along East Boulevard (though I never got to ride on a pony because my parents feared animals and contact was forbidden, much to my dismay). To me, my city was pretty neat (I mean, ponies and candy! Come on!). On Saturday mornings, my parents drove me and my two older sisters to Chinese school, which was held at a high school. Classes were taught in Cantonese by teachers who spoke little to no English, which made for fantastic learning and communication when I often could only phrase questions in English. To signal recess, a student walked up and down the halls clanging a metal bell—I assumed that was what Chinese schools in Hong Kong and China were like because the high school did have a PA system. For the most part, I loathed going to Chinese School. I found it tedious and boring, the stories we read so bland and bluntly moralistic, not to mention rewriting passages from memory was utterly useless in learning the language. And because the classes gave writing and reading formal Chinese priority over conversational speaking, it was probably the reason why my oral skills barely developed. Mostly, I just sat at my desk and tried my best to look inconspicuous and somewhat attentive so I wouldn’t be called on to answer questions. In all honesty, I probably picked up most of my Cantonese at home, talking with and listening to my Chinese parents (i.e. all the insults that were yelled at me and my siblings). When I think about my time studying Chinese, it triggers conflicting emotions: nostalgia mixed with disgust. Three long hours later, my parents awaited us around the corner in my dad’s dull-grey ’88 Honda—bought the same year my twin sister Maggie and I were born. Sometimes, we had noodles and congee for lunch at a Chinese restaurant, though I have fond memories of my mother making instant noodles for us at home while we set the table. The kitchen windows fogged up from the combination of rain outside and steamy food inside (it was probably days like these that eventually conditioned me to enjoy staying home warm and cozy when it rained, which was often). In addition to schools and sidewalks, there were a few other landmarks in my world: my grandparents’ house in East Van off Broadway, where Grandpa always offered me and my twin sister a can of seasoned peanuts, and my paternal grandparents’ house in Renfrew where I would gleefully punch in imaginary transactions on an old cash register in the basement; grocery shopping and getting my hair cut in noisy, bustling Chinatown; and nestled in Strathcona, Great-Grandma and her retirement home, where she sometimes literally threw money at me to keep when we visited. If you had asked me when I was young to draw you a map of Vancouver, it would have looked like a sparse collection of tiny circles on a blank page, dotted stars amidst the otherwise black of the unknown universe. I am kind of embarrassed to admit it, but it took me a while to acquaint myself with my own town. My three-story house and former farm was the common denominator for most of my memories: Maggie and I fighting one minute, and the next, me yelling down the hall, asking if she wanted to play again; combing through the plastic-covered, dry-cleaned dresses and jackets hanging in our cramped little attic/storage room before concealing myself behind them during a game of hide and seek; my other, older sister Florence and I sneaking pretzels and chips in her locked basement bedroom and chatting and laughing about school; digging out old boxes of Christmas decorations and holiday VHS movies in the laundry room (that I now wonder why we even possessed at all); practicing scales and triad chords on the Yamaha upright piano; sprinting up the mustard-yellow, woolly carpeted stairs to the safety of my parents’ locked room when Florence threatened to strike me with the long bamboo handle of the rainbow-feathered duster, our family’s disciplinary weapon; helping my dad sweep up fresh grass trimmings and gazing up in awe at the towering rows of beanstalks in our backyard. I frequently had dreams about the house, in which I usually ran away from someone or something (I still do). I thought our house would be around forever. We kids always complained about the house—the sub-zero basement year-round was our main gripe—but when I was twelve, my parents returned one night from the realtor’s office to announce they had sold the house, it stunned me. Despite it having been on the market for a while, I never imagined they would really be able to sell our home. I thought it was a plot to appease us whining kids for a while before calling the whole thing off. A joke. But they had done it, and it wasn’t funny. I couldn’t conceive of what not living in that house would mean. Where would we live? How would we live? I was afraid of expanding my bubble into the other parts of a city I wasn’t familiar with, not to mention parting with my childhood home and potentially, my neighbourhood. Shortly following the sale of my childhood home, my parents announced that they were separating. After years of estrangement despite living under the same roof, no one was surprised by this. I think I wasn’t quite sure how to process this news. I felt like there was an expectation to be devastated and melodramatic the way I had seen kids react on television when their parents announced their decision. I’m sure I did feel some sort of remorse that my family was now officially broken, but there was a stoic acceptance of the fact. Plus, my sisters both seemed indifferent as well. While my father moved in with his parents in Renfrew, my sisters and I stayed with Mom, whom we were much closer with. After briefly renting a haunted basement suite further south in Kerrisdale (seriously, I’m pretty sure it was haunted; just ask my mom about the voice singing opera in the middle of the night), we occasionally visited a giant mound of dirt on the other side of town, in East Van, and over some months watched as it progressively transformed itself into a real house. I was vaguely aware of the neighbourhood, as my maternal grandparents had moved nearby a few years back. Upon my first ventures, the neighborhood appeared to be blocks of Chinese bakeries, Chinese markets, and Chinese herbs and dried goods shops. And lots of old Chinese people. It definitely wasn’t as glamorous (and white) as Kerrisdale, but there was something about it that felt familiar, safe. I loved the quirky, obliviously unironic sense of humour it had: a cafe that was also a pharmacy; a small grocery store that sold cigarettes and tea next to aquarium supplies; a handwritten sign at a walk-in clinic that read, “Free ‘flu’ shots.” The neighbourhood felt down to earth, modest, and unpretentious. Needless to say, I adjusted quickly after we moved in. Kerrisdale became a faint but fond memory not too long after. Our house also had the advantage of being somewhat central and easily accessible to the rest of the city. Taking the #20 bus, I wound my way to Commercial Drive—dubbed The Drive by Vancouverites—and was intrigued by young rebels with neon hair and leather jackets with faithful street dogs at their sides. During my high school years, I wandered downtown on weekends for hours where I eagerly flipped through sheet music at Tom Lee Music or scouted out the latest deals at the HMV megastore. The more I explored the city, the more amazed I was; I loved what it had to offer: my high school friends; many different parks; tasty cuisine from all over the world; places where I could get music; petrichor, the unmistakable soft scent of rain as it began to fall. Vancouver was a place where you could find everything you could find elsewhere and yet nowhere else, like a special trading card with unique abilities. I was proud to say that I was from here. As everyone started to prepare their university applications in the months leading up to high school graduation, I found myself suddenly wondering what I was going to do with my life. I really...
