Li - From The Ethnic To The Public

From the Ethnic to the PublicAuthor(s): Mu Li
Source: Western Folklore , Vol. 77, No. 3/4 (Summer/Fall 2018), pp. 277-312
Published by: Western States Folklore Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26864127
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From the Ethnic to the Public
The Emergence of Chinese New Year
Celebrations in Newfoundland as
Vernacular Cultural Heritage
Mu Li
ABSTRACT
Chinese New Year was brought with Chinese immigrants to
Newfoundland upon their first arrival in 1895. During the
Chinese restriction era, the celebrations were only observed
in private ethnic space. As multiculturalism has been more
recognized, celebrating Chinese New Year gradually has
become a public cultural event, practiced within and beyond
the diasporic outskirts. This paper attempts to describe and
interpret the process of how a diasporic culture emerges as a
shared local tradition and creates a new sense of belonging in
response to official multiculturalism. KEYWORDS: Chinese
diaspora, festival studies, ethnic folklore, Chinese New Year,
multiculturalism
Mu Li is Associate Professor in the School of Arts at

Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
Western Folklore 77.3/4 (Summer/Fall 2018): 277-312. Copyright © 2018. Western States Folklore Society

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278 MU LI
INTRODUCTION: THE ETHNIC AS THE VERNACULAR

December 31, 2006 was a special day for the residents of the Ca-
nadian Labrador West, because on this day Chinese New Year
was the theme of their annual First Night Celebration (Bennett
2006:5). Likewise, January 23, 2012 was another special event
in Labrador West: students and staff at St. Teresa’s School in
St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador province,
celebrated the Chinese New Year, which was acknowledged as
a holiday by the school (Maloney 2012:B4). These two events
show how the heritage of an ethnic group can be acknowledged
and accepted as a part of the host society, through the integra-
tion of an ethnic holiday into the local festive calendar.
However, despite its current recognition, Chinese New Year
celebrations were not always welcomed by the general public
in Newfoundland, most of whom are of British or Irish descent.
Chinese New Year celebrations began with the first arrival of
Chinese immigrants in Newfoundland in 1895. During the Chi-
nese restriction era (1906-1949), Chinese New Year celebra-
tions were only observed in private or ethnically-marked spaces
(Hong 1987; Sparrow 2006; K. Li 2010). With the rise of multi-
culturalism in Canada, celebrating Chinese New Year gradually
became a public cultural event, practiced now both within and
beyond the diasporic Chinese community. This article attempts
to reflexively describe and interpret the process of how this eth-
nic culture went beyond the border of its initial community and
emerged as a shared local tradition within the historic-social
context of emerging Canadian multicultural policy. Built on
ideas such as “vernacular multiculturalism” (Armstrong-Fume-
ro 2009), “everyday multiculturalism” (Moss 2011) and “local-
ized multiculturalism” (Okubo 2013), this article also provides
an understanding of the interplay between the official ideologi-
cal discourses and individual everyday cultural representations.
From 2008 to 2016, I did field research in the Chinese dia-
sporic community in Newfoundland, a relatively small popu-
lation of less than 2,000 members. Within that small group,
however, is considerable diversity in terms of their family’s

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FROM THE ETHNIC TO THE P UBLIC 279
migration history, place of origins, language, and many other

socio-cultural factors. The history of Chinese immigration to
Newfoundland can be roughly categorized into three waves.
The first wave of Chinese immigrants were those who came
to Newfoundland as unskilled laborers before Newfoundland’s
confederation to Canada in 1949. The second wave consists
mainly of the immediate families of first wave immigrants,
who came under the Canadian family reunion program before
the new immigration act came into effect in 1967. The first and
second waves of Chinese immigrants mostly came from the
coastal part of southern China, especially Guangdong province
and Hong Kong. They celebrated Chinese New Year mostly
with members of their tongs, private groups whose members
were related to each other by kinship or shared regional iden-
tity, and which were overseen by prominent community leaders.
Although many of these older generation Chinese individuals
chose not to continue their festive celebration when their work-
ing schedules conflicted with festival time, their choice not to
celebrate was still framed as a strong attachment to their sense
of Chineseness as represented by their work ethic. This fram-
ing is expressed in Chinese culture through proverbs such as “A
young idler, an old beggar.”
Since 1967, when Canada adopted a socioeconomically
determined point system to replace its former race-based stan-
dards for the admission of immigrants, newly eligible Chinese
professionals from all over the world began to arrive in New-
foundland, representing a third wave of Chinese immigrants.
Around the same time, multiculturalism became the officially
stated cultural policy of Canada. With new approval from the
government and the larger community, these newly-arriving
Chinese professionals, along with some locally born or raised
Chinese individuals, started to promote Chinese New Year cel-
ebrations in the public sphere. This new generation, recognized
as cultural in-betweeners (Pryce 1979), cultural wanderers (M.
Li 2014b) or “new ethnicity” (Nahachewsky 2002), uses Chi-
nese New Year celebrations to claim a different understanding

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280 MU LI
of Chineseness, a creolized version of ethnicity that combines

the loyalty to the ancestral culture and the adaption of vernacu-
lar understanding (Stern and Cicala 1991; Kapchan and Strong
1999; Baron and Cara 2003; Zhang 2015).
The Chinese New Year celebrations in Newfoundland pro-
vide a model for what I argue is a three stage process of devel-
opment for ethnic festivals, which is closely associated with
and shaped by larger ideological messages, such as anti-Chi-
nese sentiment and multiculturalism. The first stage is festival
for themselves because the event is exclusively designed for
members of the ethnic group, which in many cases is social-
ly and culturally isolated from the mainstream community or
other dominant groups. Early Chinese New Year celebrations
in Newfoundland provide an example of this stage. In the sec-
ond stage, the previous discriminatory hierarchy is challenged
or discarded and a new open system is established. The offi-
cial policy of multiculturalism in 1971 has largely changed the
public perception of Chinese-Canadians from a second-class
ethnic group into proud citizens with a rich cultural heritage
(P. Li 1998). Access to funding and other resources as well as
the foundation of a formalized ethnic organization moved the
Chinese New Year celebration into the second stage, a festival
for the community (Johnson 2005:225). In this stage, the fes-
tive performances of the ethnic community are consciously or
unconsciously oriented towards a mainstream gaze. Only some
aspects of ethnic heritage are maintained and reinforced (Gar-
lough 2011). These ethnic survivals are important in the transi-
tion from the second stage to the final one, which I call multi-
presented shared heritage.
In the third stage, the festival “presents ethnic differenc-
es as acceptable and indeed laudable variations on common
themes” and “all the participants are regarded as equal in
worth because all are seen as living—eating, dancing, dressing,
socializing, working, loving, and even squabbling—in essen-
tially comparable and acceptable ways” (Errington 1987:657).
In this case, the hierarchy between the ethnic group and the

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host society shifts and the dominant group begins to embrace

the ethnic culture by hosting ethnic events. As Shutika notes,
“Festivals and other common experiences…enable participants
to engage one another. Such experiences connect people to the
place in significant ways” (Shutika 2011:230-231). In other
words, the “foreign” and “exotic” gradually merge to “ver-
nacular” and “familiar” and a new local culture might emerge
from this interactive folkloric practice and experience (Zhang
2015).Therefore, as we see in the case of Chinese New Year
celebrations in Newfoundland, multiculturalism, which is
more than a bureaucratic ideology but something relevant to
distinct communities and individuals, does not result cultural
separation and failed acculturation as some opposing voices
have suggested. Rather, practices based in multiculturalist
thinking successfully promote effective social integration.
E A R LY C H I N E S E N E W Y E A R C E L E B R AT I O N S
IN NEWFOUNDLAND
The celebrations of Chinese New Year in Newfoundland, which

was not a part of Canada until 1949, started immediately af-
ter the first arrival of Chinese immigrants in 1895. These early
Chinese immigrants were mainly laundry workers or laborers,
attempting to make a living in the British Dominion (M. Li
2014b). A local newspaper Daily News reported the first New
Year celebration in St. John’s as follows: “The Celestials of
New Gower Street1 celebrated a special event on Wednesday.
Their novel manner of celebration—which was a noisy one—
attracted a large crowd around their places of business. The
laundry was illuminated and a display of firework was given”
(Daily News 1896). This short description reveals four impor-
tant aspects of this early Chinese New Year celebration in New-
foundland: first, the celebration was held on Wednesday, Febru-
ary 12th, 1896, which according to the traditional calendar was
the correct date of the new year; second, the celebration was a
group activity; third, the location of the festival—a laundry en-
hanced with special decorations—was both public and private.

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282 MU LI
In other passages, the report also indicates non-Chinese New-

foundlanders’ first reaction towards the celebration, which was
somewhat negative but also mixed with curiosity. While, on the
one hand, non-Chinese residents saw the celebration as a noisy
display by a mass of foreigners, they also enjoyed the colorful
festivities and fireworks.
Since then, reports with more details related to Chinese
New Year occasionally have appeared in local newspapers.
For instance, a February 28, 1907 article in the Evening Her-
ald observed:
To-day begins the Chinese New Year celebration—begins,

for with the Celestial it takes three days for the old year to
make his last kicks. During that time the joss stick burns,
the Mongolian soul rejoices itself in fatness, and the air
is rent by the unseemly noise of Oriental fire-crackers. In
these days of feasting the laundryman goes about in his
best frock, and his bland smile grows still blander as he
looks in pity upon the unhappy “fellin devil.” Moreover,
his ancestors and the other things that he worships come in
for all sorts of adoration during these days.
Although this report includes does refer to some important ritu-

alistic and customary elements of Chinese New Year, it couch-
es them using derisive, racially-charged terms such as “Mongo-
lian soul,” “unseemly noise,” “frock” and “bland smile.” The
considerable differences in the celebration of Chinese and non-
Chinese New Year in Newfoundland, including differences in
festive decoration and festival dates, served to strengthen the
exoticization of Chineseness in Newfoundland.
The date of Chinese New Year was cause for consider-
able confusion among non-Chinese people. For example, on
September 21, 1906, the Evening Herald reported, “Some 43
Chinamen, led by Kim Lee2, and all in full fig and smoking
cigars left by this morning’s train for an outing at Whitbourne.
They are celebrating the beginning of the Chinese New Year”

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(Evening Herald 1906a).3 On the following day, in another

piece in the Evening Herald, the author “revealed” that the real
reason of the departure of the Chinese, which was thought be
to “a strange proceeding”, was actually “an attempt to smuggle
them into either Canada or the United States” (Evening Her-
ald 1906b).Two days after the appearance of the above story,
an anonymous reader wrote a letter to another local newspa-
per, the Evening Telegram, to challenge the Evening Herald’s
report. The reader claimed that the report was “a huge mistake
if not something stronger” because “Kim Lee was delivering
his customers their work on Saturday night, and went to Sun-
day school at Alexander Street yesterday afternoon” (Evening
Telegram 1906). More importantly, the reader recognized that
“the opening of the Chinese New Year will not be until 15th
January, 1907” (Evening Telegram 1906).
The misunderstanding or editorial mistake made by the
Evening Herald might be attributed simply to the fact that the
majority population were not familiar with Chinese New Year;
however, the implication of the second article was that Chinese
people might have been using their heritage as an excuse for
illegal activities, especially as resistance during the Chinese
exclusion era (1906-1949). Around this same time in 1906,
following the United States and Canada, the Newfoundland
government passed the discriminatory Act Respecting the Im-
migration of Chinese Persons to restrict Chinese immigration
by imposing a $300 head tax on each Chinese who intended to
enter the island, with the exception of those in certain social
categories such as diplomats and clergymen (Hong 1987; K. Li
2010). The passage of this act exacerbated the existing racial
and cultural separation between Chinese and other Newfound-
landers and hindered their inter-group communication.
Despite their confusion about the festival date and other
relevant details, the reports do reveal that early Chinese New
Year celebrations were often celebrated under the leadership
of community leaders such as Au Kim Lee. In the pre-con-
federation period in Newfoundland, the Chinese community

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284 MU LI
consisted exclusively of males who were all Cantonese,4 relat-

ing to each other either by kinship or shared regional identity.
In this type of bachelor community, which was widely found
in early Chinese settlements in North America, men relied on
each other for mutual assistance and social support (Marshall
2011). Community leaders not only played important roles in
everyday commercial and social life, but also in the mainte-
nance of ethnic traditions, cultural practices which bound co-
ethnics together and created a sense of Chinese community in
the face of a hostile socio-cultural environment.
In the decades before Confederation, under the leadership
of some more educated Chinese residents (e.g. Au Kim Lee and
William Ping) and with the formation of clan associations such
as the Tai Mei Club and the Hong Hang Society,5 Chinese cul-
tural gatherings like New Year celebrations were held in private
business buildings or in rented/purchased community centers.6
These ethnic celebrations, at least for the first few decades of
Chinese presence in Newfoundland, were restricted to the pri-
vate/ethnic level.
The economic pressure in Newfoundland also drove early
Chinese settlers away from celebrating the New Year in the
same way it had been done in China. In order to make more
income to support their families back home, Chinese laundry
workers worked long hours, with little time for leisure. When
William Ping was working at the Sing Lee Laundry in the 1930s,
he barely had enough time to sleep during workdays: “You got
to wash, to starch, to dry, to damp, to iron and to wrap the laun-
dry. Sometimes I had supper at four o’clock in the next morn-
ing. I wash my laundry with tears” (Quoted in Hoe 2003:35).
In the late 1950s, many Chinese laundries were closed and
a majority of these Chinese who retired from the laundry busi-
ness began to set up restaurants. In comparison with their laun-
dry work, the new economic lives of Chinese were even more
occupied by the work. Their restaurants were open seven days
a week, leaving very little available time to celebrate festivals
like Chinese New Year. George Au, who at the age of 84 is still

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working at his Sun Luck Restaurant in Stephenville in western

Newfoundland, says: “When I was working at Newfoundland
Laundry in St. John’s in late 1940s and early 1950s, I saw all
people got one day off per week. But when I started my own
restaurant, I never got a day off. The motto to us is that you
never close your restaurant.”7
In 1947, Canada repealed its Chinese Exclusion Act under
the human rights guideline of the United Nations and enacted
the Canadian Citizenship Act, granting all residents in Canada
equal rights in citizenship applications. When Newfoundland
confederated to Canada in 1949, its Chinese Immigration Act
was subsequently abolished so that many Chinese residents
became naturalized. Thanks to the Canadian post-war fam-
ily reunion program, Chinese settlers’ long-separated families
began to come to Newfoundland to join them, contributing to
the rapid increase of the local Chinese population. Many Chi-
nese families remained involved in mom-and-pop restaurant
businesses and could not afford to spare time for celebrations
of Chinese New Year. Therefore, although the local Chinese
population increased to a historical peak in the early 1970s,
the festival remained marginalized, even within the Chinese
community. As, Wallace Hong, a former restaurant owner in
St. John’s who came to Newfoundland in 1949, notes, “We
had only two days off annually which one was Christmas Day
and the other was New Year’s Day. We never closed for the
Chinese New Year.”8
The early history of Chinese New Year celebrations in
Newfoundland shows a shift in the attitude of these mainly
Cantonese migrants towards the festive tradition: at first they
continued to practice the tradition in private for a considerable
time, but gradually downplayed it as their workload increased.
FROM THE ETHNIC TO THE PUBLIC

In the early decades of the Chinese ethnic community in New-
foundland, a strong anti-Chinese cultural bias shaped the politi-
cal and economic woes endured by Chinese immigrants, but it

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286 MU LI
also bolstered the view that Chinese traditions were pagan and
uncivilized. As in many places, even in San Francisco where
a much bigger Chinese community existed, non-Chinese indi-
viduals were often hesitant to approach Chinese cultural events,
which were mainly observed privately by small groups of Chi-
nese at ethnic establishments (Yeh 2008).
Krista Li points out that the geographic distance from
China, the political separation from Canada and the United
States due to the Chinese exclusion laws, and the small popu-
lation made the Chinese in Newfoundland more isolated than
their counterparts in larger metropolitan centers. As a result,
Chinese traditions were “often neglected” by them (K. Li
2010:231). The limited access to social and cultural resources
to maintain traditional festivals accentuated the lack of con-
nection to their ancestral country because, “these old world
rituals served as a link between immigrants and their home
countries” (Yeh 2008:15).
At the same time, spatial restrictions around Chinese cul-
tural events, such as the celebrations of Chinese New Year, in-
hibited Chinese residents’ sense of belonging in the host com-
munity, since ethnic festivals celebrated in public can provide
an occasion for newcomers to “begin the process of incorpo-
ration and shape the sense of place” in their new settlements
(Shutika 2011:205). The celebration of Chinese New Year in
private places such as Chinese-owned restaurants and laun-
dries turned everyday work spaces into an exclusive Chinese
celebratory space which was “reclaimed, cleared, delimit-
ed, blessed, adorned, forbidden to normal activities” (Falassi
1987:4). However, this festival space could be invaded by un-
suspecting individuals from the host community and festivities
interrupted by inter-ethnic business interactions. Customers
who entered the celebratory space and festive time were imme-
diately transformed into unexpected festival visitors and expe-
rienced an alteration to what Falassi describes as “the usual and
daily function and meaning of time and space” (4). These kinds
of cultural interactions between Chinese and non-Chinese

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residents may have contributed to improvements in inter-group

understanding and to the acceptance of Chinese culture.
As the most important part of Chinese festival culture, Yeh
(2008) suggests that Chinese New Year, which is often linked
to the wider political, sociological, and economic contexts,
serves as a convenient window for outsiders to look into the
Chinese community. Before the 1960s, Canada favored an as-
similationist approach to immigration, but after the change of
the immigration law in 1967, more immigrants from non-Eu-
ropean countries joined an increasingly multicultural Cana-
dian society. At the same time, with resurgent Quebec nation-
alism in the 1960s, the Royal Commission on Biculturalism
and Bilingualism was established in 1963 to study the binary
Francophone/Anglophone tension in Canadian society. In
1969, commissioners concluded instead that there were more
than two cultures in Canada and therefore suggested an inte-
gration mode in replacement of the former assimilation ideol-
ogy. The recommendation led to the introduction of Canadian
multiculturalism, which was first officially announced by the
then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in his speech at the House
of Commons on October 8, 1971. In the following years, mul-
ticulturalist ideology has been enshrined in the Constitution
in the 1984 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and
has become a legal framework with the passage of The Multi-
culturalism Act in 1988. Over the years, multiculturalism and
diversity have been described as fundamental characteristics
of Canada and as core to Canadian life. Today, multicultural-
ism in Canada is perceived descriptively as a sociological fact,
prescriptively as ideology, and politically as policy (Dewing
2013:1).
As a policy, since its inception in 1970s, the Canadian
government promised to 1) “assist all Canadian cultural
groups that have demonstrated a desire and effort to continue
to develop a capacity to grow and contribute to Canada”; 2)
“assist members of all cultural groups to overcome cultural
barriers to full participation in Canadian society”; 3)”promote

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288 MU LI
creative encounters and interchange among all Canadian cul-

tural groups in the interest of national unity”; and 4) “assist
immigrants to acquire at least one of Canada’s official lan-
guages in order to become full participants in Canadian soci-
ety” (Trudeau 1971:8546).
Under the national guideline, the Chinese in Newfound-
land have been encouraged by local multicultural policies
not only to preserve their culture on a private or ethnic level,
but also to showcase their traditions and educate the general
public. The Secretary of State for Canada (head of what is
now the Department of Canadian Heritage) and the Gower
Street United Church congregation in St. John’s were among
the advocates who were willing to provide some financial
support or other kinds of assistance.9 As part of an outreach
program, a United Church committee, which included main-
ly non-Chinese members such as Marion Pitt, the author of
“Chinese Community” in Encyclopedia of Newfoundland
and Labrador, was formed to organize social activities for
all Chinese in St. John’s. Under the leadership of this com-
mittee, various functions including Chinese New Year cel-
ebrations were organized to provide more opportunities for
Chinese and non-Chinese residents of the city to interact
with each other.
A voluntary organization, the Chinese Association of
Newfoundland and Labrador (CANL), was founded by some
Chinese professionals such as Kim Hong who came to New-
foundland to join his grandfather in 1950 at the age of 13 and
eventually became a medical doctor. These professionals were
often employed at non-Chinese owned institutions, and had ex-
panded social circles, which included non-Chinese friends and
acquaintances. Because of this, CANL members were often
able to secure financial support and recognition from the out-
side of the Chinese community. It was in this context that the
first public celebration of Chinese New Year in Newfoundland
became a reality in 1977.

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Figure 1
On February 8, 1977, the newly-founded CANL sent out a

newsletter to invite all members to a series of activities to cel-
ebrate the Chinese New Year. In this newsletter, members and
friends of the association were notified that New Year’s Day
was February 18, 1977. The program included a cultural ex-
hibition, a slide show, movies, and speakers, which took place

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290 MU LI
on February 17-18 in the Engineering Building of nearby Me-

morial University of Newfoundland. There was also a cultural
exhibition on February 19 at the local Avalon Mall Shopping
Center, and a variety show and Chinese buffet supper on the
February 20 at the Auditorium Annex Building of the College
of Fisheries. On the same day, they held a New Year’s dance
with Orchestra Ed Goff at the E.B. Foran Room of the City Hall.
The activities held on February 20 were the main events of
the festival. The first event was the variety show, which consist-
ed of some traditional Chinese performances such as the moon-
light flower dance, a kung fu demonstration, traditional songs,
and a fan dance. It also included some presentations of non-
Chinese culture, such as a violin solo and Thai classical dance.
The performers were not all Chinese, but rather were from di-
verse ethnicities. The Chinese performers also represented a
broad spectrum of ages, countries of birth, and immigration
statuses. After the variety show, there were greetings from the
chief guest, the Honourable Tom Hickey, Minister of Tourism
of Newfoundland and Labrador. In addition to him, other non-
Chinese guests who attended free of charge also included:
Rev. George LeDrew and wife of the Gower Street United

Church, Rev. Levi Mehaney and wife, Rupert Greene, John
Murphy and Willer Ayre from St. John’s City Council, John
Pike and Paul McDonald of the Provincial Immigration
Department, Dr. F.N. Firme and wife of the Filipino Asso-
ciation, Dr. C.M. Pujara and wife of the Indian Association,
Gary Gray of Y.M.C.A., Don Knight, Robert Butler and Dr.
Barrett of the College of Fisheries, Ken Duggan and “Neil
or Mike O’Brian” of the Trades College, Food inspectors
D.A. Strong and D. Martin, Mr. and Mrs. John Browne of
the Police Department and the Fire Chief Cecil Sooley.10
The variety show started with the national anthem O Canada,

and ended with Ode to Newfoundland, the official provincial
anthem sung by all attendees. A buffet-style supper started at

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around 4:00 or 4:30 consisting of food that was mainly donated

by local Chinese restaurants, whose owners and workers were
CANL members. Dishes included “spring rolls, barbecued
pork, chicken fried rice, chicken guy ding, beef and broccoli
and lemon chicken” as well as desserts which were cookies and
cakes, made by female CANL executive members or by spous-
es of male executive members such as Jeannie Aue, Bernice
Gin and Kim Hong’s wife Mely.11 At the end of the evening, a
ball was held, attracting many attendees.
At the 1977 Chinese New Year celebration, two locations
chosen to host the main events were the Auditorium Annex
Building of the College of Fisheries and the E.B. Foran Room
of the City Hall, instead of any Chinese restaurants or the Tai
Mei Club which still existed in the mid-1990s. Shutika (2011)
observes that the celebration of ethnic festivals at popular sites
indicates a recognition and acceptance of ethnic cultural heri-
tage on the part of the majority population. Chinese residents
were gradually being absorbed into Newfoundland society and
now able to lease space for their cultural activities. In the later
years, owners of popular venues such as the Colony Club or the
Royal Canadian Legion allowed Chinese to alter their space for
Figure 2

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292 MU LI
the New Year festivities. In this way, a secular and public loca-
tion was temporarily transformed into a sacred and traditional
space through the use of symbolic decorations such as decora-
tive lanterns, paper cuttings, the banner of the CANL, and signs
displaying traditional Chinese couplets with special New Year’s
greetings, created a decidedly Chinese festive atmosphere.
Nevertheless, any ethnic transformation was temporary be-
cause an ethnic festival is only “a single socio-cultural space
for a limited period of time” (Turner 1982:21). The relocation
of Chinese New Year celebrations from Chinese-owned estab-
lishments to rental public spaces actually turned the festival
into a placeless event that had little or no specific cultural at-
tachment to a particular place (MacLeod 2006). Even if the se-
miotic signs helped vouch for the authenticity of Chineseness
during New Year’s celebrations, throughout the event guests
and attendees would have been reminded constantly of who
really owned the space by the presence of western furniture set-
ting (e.g. long tables), cutlery (no chopsticks), kitchen cookers,
and a bar. In addition, all wait staff were non-Chinese. Edward
Relph (1976) has referred to this kind of cultural configura-
tion as placelessness, spaces where people have less distinctive
sense of place and little emotional attachment.
In this sense, at the same time a “mainstream” place is
transformed into an ethnic space creating a new sense of be-
longing and memory in the new location (Shutika 2011), the
reverse process is also in play: the ethnic is absorbed into the
non-ethnic. Margaret Chan’s findings concerning traditional
Chinese festivals in Toronto apply here. Chan explores how
non-ethnic public venues like The Royal Ontario Museum
transform ethnic performers into “a live prop and an object
of display … fitting in with whatever mandate and image the
venue presents” for more general and public purposes (Chan
2001:242). When an ethnic festival is advertised to attract the
general public in a wider society, it shares some characteristics
with “event tourism” or “festival tourism” (Getz 2008). Festi-
vals or events become “the venues for tourism experiences, the

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context for social-psychological interaction, and the phenom-

ena by which this behaviour can be described, explained and
predicted” (Snepenger et al. 2007:310). As a touristic event,
CANL’s Chinese New Year celebrations are creolized by the
organizers to combine the Chinese individuals’ perspectives
on Chineseness with the multicultural expectations of non-
Chinese attendees. Therefore, during Chinese New Year cele-
brations, rental celebratory places actually become multi-local
spaces (Rodman 1992) which are concurrently claimed by dif-
ferent groups as their cultural and social terrains.
THE HYBRIDITY AS ROUTINE

The 1977 Chinese New Year celebrations were organized by
the executive members of the CANL and some active Chinese
families such as those of Chan Chau Tam and Daniel Wong. Of
these organizers, Jeannie Tom and Rita Au were locally born;
Margaret Chang was a British Newfoundlander who married a
Chinese man; Kim Hong, Sing Lang Au and Ted Hong came
to Newfoundland as teenagers and attended the local school
Bishop Field College; Brian Winn was from a Chinese commu-
nity in formerly British-ruled Burma; and Chan Chau Tam and
Daniel Wong came from British-ruled Hong Kong. They were
all attached to Chinese culture in some way, although some like
Chan Chau Tam and Daniel Wong had more experience with it
than the others. However, they were all also educated either in
local Newfoundland culture or western (British) culture in gen-
eral. Some of them, like Jeannie Tom and Rita Au, also often
claimed to have a different understanding of what it meant to
be Chinese than the older generations. The 1977 celebrations
produced by this team presented these new definitions of Chi-
neseness in the context of Newfoundland where both Chinese
and Western cultures were located simultaneously.
In the following years, many of the individuals, such as
Melvin Hong (who was born to an intermarried family), Ar-
thur Leung (from Hong Kong), Dean Hong (Kim Hong’s son),
Mary Gin (locally born), Tzu-Hao Hsu (from Taiwan at the age

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of 11) and Shirley Hong (who is a white Newfoundlander who

married to a Chinese man), who served as CANL executive
members also had the similar backgrounds to the 1977 execu-
tive board. Thus, the format established in 1977 was adopted in
later years as well. However, over the years some aspects of the
format have been altered to adapt to new social changes, and the
format itself has often been the subject of a debate over whether
it is an authentic and effective way to present Chineseness.
T H E D AT E OF THE NEW YEAR

According to the traditional Chinese calendar, the date of New
Year’s Day varies every year, falling between January 22 and
February 20 in the western Gregorian calendar. However, the
public celebration of Chinese New Year rarely takes place on
the exact date, but more often is observed on a weekend during
or sometimes after the traditional holiday season.12 This modi-
fication is often attributed to the fact that Chinese New Year is
neither a national nor a provincial statutory holiday.
Based on Emile Durkheim’s (1915 [1912]:47) classification
of the sacred and the profane, festival time is often perceived as
a different temporal dimension from the ordinary time. Terms
like “time out of time” are widely used to refer to this liminal
temporal zone (van Gennep 1960; Turner 1982; Falassi 1987).
In the festival period, “daily time is modified by a gradual or
sudden interruption that introduces ‘time out of time,’ a spe-
cial temporal dimension devoted to special activities” (Falassi
1987:4). Just as many other festivals create a sense of time that
is different from everyday routine, Chinese New Year reflects
“Chinese definitions of time and the world upon which such so-
cial phenomena are based” (Chan 2001:62). The modification
of a pre-set sacred time to fit into a secular or leisure slot of the
mainstream society is seen by some more traditional Chinese
as the compromise that festival organizers often make.
Notwithstanding their goal of compromise, festival orga-
nizers also attempt to keep the celebrations within the tradi-
tional Chinese definition of time. Kim Hong recalls:

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We were discussing if we needed to celebrate the New Year

on this weekend, which was before the real date or next
weekend, which was after, then a member of the associ-
ation Paul Ho came in and said, “You fellows are crazy.
How can you celebrate the New Year in the old year?” His
words ended the debate and after that, we always had our
celebrations after instead of before.13
The shifting “from the actual holiday to a more convenient date”

(Thomson 1993:401) is a successful strategy to satisfy the re-
quirements of tradition and also accommodate attendees who
can only dedicate their time to celebration on the weekends.
In the first few years, the major events of the festival in-
cluding a variety show, dinner and dance were all scheduled
on Sundays. This schedule reflected the fact that a major-
ity of Chinese residents in Newfoundland were involved in
the restaurant business, and restaurants were normally closed
on Sunday or at least did not open until 5 p.m.14 In 1983,
the new CANL president Daniel Wong rescheduled the main
New Year’s celebration from Sunday afternoon to Saturday
night and extended the dance to 1 a.m. He explained that the
change was due to the increasing number of Chinese profes-
sionals and non-Chinese guests who could not stay late at
Sunday events because of work on Monday.15 However, an
unexpected result of the new schedule was a decline in the
participation of Chinese members who worked in the restau-
rant industry. Those Chinese, who constituted the majority
of the Chinese community in early 1980s, now had to decide
whether or not to close their businesses to attend the New
Year’s party. Many of them chose to stay away from the cele-
brations in favor of working. At the time, some CANL senior
members received complaints regarding the new schedule
from owners and workers at Chinese restaurants: “Saturday
night…is usually a busy night for our restaurant people. We
don’t want to close business to attend the function. Why
doesn’t the association think about us?”16

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296 MU LI
The dilemma presented by scheduling Chinese New Year

on Saturday created an internal tension within the community
between preserving tradition and pursuing business. Yet, in of-
ten choosing to keep their businesses open, restaurant workers
did not necessarily see themselves as rejecting tradition. They
saw themselves, as Daniel Wong put it, as celebrating an alter-
native Chinese tradition of “working hard and earning more
money for their children.”17
Therefore, the different attitudes towards the scheduling of
CANL’s Chinese New Year celebrations revealed contradictory
perspectives toward the expression of Chineseness between the
restaurant people, most of whom were first and second wave
Chinese immigrants, and the newer mostly professional genera-
tions. For the former group, cultural preservation had less to do
with the celebration of ethnic holidays than the practice of tra-
ditional principles. For the latter group, celebrating the ethnic
festival with local adaptions was the best way to present their
understanding of ethnicity as both traditional and multicultural.
MAKING UP THE LIST OF INVITED GUESTS

The 1977 Chinese New Year included many non-Chinese
guests such as politicians, members of the clergy, governmental
officials, and leaders of other ethnic groups. These guests were
invited because of their importance to the political, social and
economic well-being of Chinese in that period.18 Since 1977, in-
viting guests from the wider community has itself become a tra-
dition in the Chinese New Year celebrations in Newfoundland.
Besides the special guests, before 1983 most attendees of
Chinese New Year celebrations were Chinese residents in the
St. John’s area.19 Because of the large number of expected Chi-
nese guests in 1978, the CANL secretary Margaret Chang told
the reporter of the Evening Telegram that the event was “closed
to the general public with the exception of a select few” who
would receive special invitations (Carter 1978).
In recent years, Chinese New Year celebrations are still
the biggest Chinese public gatherings in Newfoundland,

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serving as an important social event for Chinese people to

socialize with co-ethnic acquaintances who they might see
only once a year. In this sense, for many Chinese individuals
who are highly acculturated into local society and have little
communication with other Chinese people in their everyday
lives, it is the festival that brings them together and reminds
them of their Chinese identity.
Many Chinese attendees also observe that, while Chinese
New Year celebrations draw in a larger number of Chinese at-
tendees than other gatherings, they are still outnumbered by
non-Chinese guests. The increase in the percentage of non-Chi-
nese at the event was likely a consequence of the 1983 creation
of an adults-only party on Saturday that was separate from the
family celebration on Sunday. After 1983, small children and
some of their parents stopped attending the main celebration
as did some of the restaurant workers. These spots were soon
filled by Chinese professionals and non-Chinese guests, who
are often the friends or acquaintances of active CANL mem-
bers. These two groups gradually became the main participants
in the celebration.
Figure 3

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298 MU LI
According to Alick Tsui, a Hong Kong native and optometrist,

the withdrawal of the Chinese population from this important
Chinese festival can be interpreted as the result of the shifting
of the association’s goals for the festival from celebrating with
co-ethnics to introducing ethnic cultural heritage to the larger
community.20
Some people are more in favor of the changes than oth-
ers. An Indonesian-born Chinese otorhinolaryngologist E. T.
Tjan comments: “I look at the Chinese New Year celebration
as an effective way for intercultural communication.”21 A lo-
cally-born certified cook Francis Tam shares the same point
as Tjan: “I would like to have more Caucasians at our par-
ties. That will expand our culture and let people know more
about it.”22 As a Caucasian spouse of a person of Chinese
descent, Violet Ryan-Ping also feels satisfied “because years
ago, we were not well mixed and right now the association
brings us together.”23
In contrast, some Chinese, such as Shinn Jia Hwang, a Tai-
wanese Chinese and retired Ocean-technology researcher, have
reservations about the changes in the Association’s mandate:
“The event didn’t look like a celebration of Chinese New Year,
rather, a common local gathering. It is not supposed to be a
multicultural event but it is our event.”24
As an inseparable part of the new festival format, the Fam-
ily Fun Day on the day after the dinner and dance events seems
to attract more Chinese. This day is intended to allow Chinese
families to show respect to elders, as well as to the family val-
ues which “are the core of Chinese culture and tradition.”25
Nowadays, the population of Chinese seniors and children
is rapidly declining due to the fading-out of the older genera-
tion, emigration, and low birth rates. The size of the Family
Fun Day is shrinking remarkably.26 Currently, a majority of the
attendees of the Family Fun Day are Chinese children adopted
by local non-Chinese families who “want to make sure their
children won’t lose any of their cultural roots.”27 It seems that
the Family Fun Day, which was first organized as a celebratory

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event within the Chinese community, has now gradually trans-

formed into an educational event to reconnect younger people
of Chinese descent with an ancestral culture which is frequent-
ly absent in their daily lives.
Figure 4
I would suggest that the shifting of these events’ goals and the
withdrawal of the Chinese population from them reflects the
way in which the newer CANL organizers hold views different
from older generations of Chinese Canadians, especially those
who immigrated before confederation. Instead of considering
Chinese New Year to be an ethnic festival that highlights their
collective Chineseness in order to secure social recognition and
assistance, newer generations observe it as a personal event. As
a response to multiculturalism on the personal level, festival or-
ganizers prefer not to engage their co-ethnics with whom they
may not be familiar, but instead bring their non-Chinese friends
with whom they can share their understanding of Chinese an-
cestral culture.

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D E T E R M I N I N G E N T E R TA I N M E N T
The entertainment portion of each year’s celebration is of-
ficially titled “a variety show” or “a multicultural show.” As
first highlighted in the program from 1977, this includes not
only the presentation of Chinese traditions but also various
performances from other cultures. For example, in addition to
the Chinese sword dance performed by Christopher and Joyce
Hong, the celebration in 1984 featured Portuguese folk dances
by the Association of Friends of Portugal, modern American
dance by the local Judy Knee Dancers, Binasuan (glass bal-
ancing) by the Filipino Association of Newfoundland and Lab-
rador, and the traditional capers of Newfoundland folk dance
by the Newfoundland Mummers (Evening Telegram 1984). On
top of this, Shirley Newhook, an announcer on CBC Televi-
sion, was the master of ceremonies for the night. Given this
line-up, many people might ask if the event still constitutes a
Chinese celebration. A related question would be: why are per-
formances of other cultural groups brought to the Chinese New
Year celebration?
A direct answer for the popularity of non-Chinese perfor-
mances at annual Chinese New Year celebrations is “the lack
of local talents.”28 Apart from the shortage of human capital,
the presentation of Chinese New Year celebrations as a multi-
cultural variety show can be also attributed to organizers’ aim
to promote multiculturalism instead of solely highlighting Chi-
neseness “because, obviously, we were in the Canadian mul-
ticultural setting.”29 English as the working language used in
Chinese New Year celebrations also reveals its distinct mul-
ticultural trait, although it is awkward for some Chinese who
might expect to hear more Chinese languages.30
On the one hand, Chinese New Year celebrations have
been North Americanized as a multicultural event; but, on
the other hand, festival organizers still attempt to present the
event with Chinese cultural elements. Alick Tsui notes, “We
always try our best to get Chinese to perform at our parties
and we also encourage all performers to sing in Chinese, play

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Chinese musical instruments and perform traditional danc-

es.”31 Since some performers have not been trained specifi-
cally to play Chinese instruments, they are frequently asked
to learn and perform “Chinese” for the events.32
Sometimes, when Chinese performers or performances are
not locally accessible, organizers turn to governmental or non-
profit organizations for financial support to invite performers
from outside of Newfoundland.33 For example, in 1982, spon-
sored by the Department of Secretary of State of Canada, CANL
invited the Montreal Society of Chinese Performing Arts to
present various classical Chinese dances, such as the Feather
Fan Dance, the Butterfly Dance, and other pieces, as a part of
the Chinese New Year celebration.
In recent years, although the overall length of the entertain-
ment section has been shortened to around four performances,
with a marked preference for Chinese rather than non-Chinese
performances. In addition, organizers like Alick Tsui have tried
to introduce Chinese elements to non-Chinese portions of the
celebration, such his introduction of Chinese music to the ball-
room dancing event.34
It seems that after the multiculturalization of the Chinese
New Year celebrations in earlier years, the current trend tends
more toward the restoration of “traditional” Chinese elements.
Earlier, through multicultural presentation, Chinese Canadians
were transformed from the foreign to the ethnic, which Yeh de-
fines as “a cultural group whose mere difference from” white
society was culture, “so that they could assimilate into the dom-
inant society” (Yeh 2008:6). The New Year’s variety shows of-
fer a reassurance that all groups have culture and it places those
cultures on the same footing. Yeh’s interpretation echoes El-
len Litwicki’s (2000) idea of “ethnic Americanism.” Litwicki
challenges the classic sense of assimilation, the confirming of
immigrant groups to dominant cultural norms, as the primary
strategy for immigrant groups to achieve acceptance in society.
She argues that many groups have instead pursued a strategy of
“ethnic Americanism,” of demonstrating to the general public

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302 MU LI
how their heritage and values “were congruent with American

culture and so need not be discarded” (2000:115).
If we apply Litwicki’s notion of “ethnic Americanism” to
the current public Chinese New Year celebrations in New-
foundland, we can see that the festivities are not attempting
to encourage Chinese residents to stick to Old World tradi-
tions, but rather to help assure the city-at-large that the Chi-
nese and their culture are a contribution rather than a threat
to the broader Newfoundland community. The variety shows
present Chinese culture as part of a local multicultural mo-
saic, which includes a range of ethnic groups who align with
the Chinese on the stage to celebrate the same festival. In
this sense, participation in the Chinese New Year event is an
expression of support for national and provincial policies of
multiculturalism.
Litwicki writes, “If loyalty to one’s homeland made one
a better citizen, then perpetuating the traditions and culture
of the homeland became an imperative of good…citizenship”
of the host country (2000:142). Therefore, the return to more
“traditional” performances in the New Year celebrations is not
intended as a challenge the larger social order, but rather as a
way to present Chinese culture as an analogue to the cultures
of other groups. Kim Hong says, “We organize Chinese New
Year celebrations for the purpose to promote multiculturalism
and to present Chinese ideas to be good neighbors, to be good
citizens … who appreciate Canada.”35 Hong’s words perfectly
present the newer CANL members’ ideas of Chineseness and
their response to multiculturalism, which keenly encourages
the ideal of “unity in diversity” (Howard-Hassmann 1999;
Dewing 2013).
As mentioned previously, the main celebration in 1977
started with the national anthem O Canada and ended with the
provincial anthem Ode to Newfoundland. Kim Hong claims
that the reason they did not sing either Chinese national an-
them was because they wanted to avoid any connection to the
political conflict between mainland China and Taiwan. How-

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ever, he points out that “more importantly, it was a Canadian

multicultural setting.”36 I would argue that the choice reflects
the new creolized Chineseness of the organizers, through
which they seek to express their social and political affiliation
to Newfoundland and Canada. Singing anthems along with
other non-Chinese Canadian citizens is a confirmation that
the Chinese have equal Canadian citizenship.
In the entertainment section of Chinese New Year celebra-
tions, the variety shows and anthem singing can be classified
as a formal or semi-formal part of the whole event, which also
includes an informal dance afterwards. Owe Ronström (1993)
distinguishes two modes of inter-racial interaction in a multicul-
turalism-themed event: representative mosaic and dancing for
everybody. In the first mode, ethnicity is enacted and displayed
through pre-designed ethnic markers for stage performance
including “physical attributes, clothing, instruments, sounds,
melodies, bearing, movements, and symbols” (1993:80). The
majority of these markers such as lion dancing costumes, festi-
val gowns, and traditional Chinese instruments presented in the
variety show section are removed in the second mode. During
the ballroom dancing, “ethnic differences were subdued” and a
common identity for all attendees is temporally constructed to
reach a “cultural truce” (1993:81).
SELECTING FOOD
Food is frequently described as the first attraction of a festi-
val or other social gathering (Humphrey and Humphrey 1991
[1988]:10). Sharing food and drink is an effective way for
people to “acknowledge our commitment and relationship with
each other” (1991 [1988]:xi). As an important aspect of Chi-
nese New Year celebrations, food is elaborately prepared and
presented by CANL and other food providers to cater to po-
tential festival attendees with various taste preferences and di-
etary restrictions. Kim Hong recalls, “We had barbecued pork,
chicken fried rice, sweet and sour pork and some noodles. We
also had Caesar salad.”37 Of these dishes, the salad has a clear

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304 MU LI
western origin; the others are all North American style Chinese
food instead of other versions of Chinese cuisine (M. Li 2014a).
Compared with the banquets hosted by CANL, festival go-
ers at the 1979 Chinese New Year celebration organized by the
Chinese Student Society enjoyed a more elaborate meal, con-
sisting of “roast duck, spiced chicken Jai doo Guy, B.B.Q pork
served with a traditional bean cake, broccoli and beef, Canton-
ese Chop Suey, Yeung Chow fried rice and Chinese style sweet
and sour pork” (Evening Telegram 1979). These entrees were
not served in buffet-style, but family-style with dishes shared
by diners at the same table. This serving style, along with the
more conventional Chinese-flavored dishes, was seldom adopt-
ed by the CANL organizers.
Chinese New Year dinners have been dominated by North
American Chinese food such as lemon chicken, chicken guy
ding, fried noodles, and fried rice, as well as some locally ac-
cepted Chinese foods like B.B.Q pork and deep-fried dim sum.
More traditional Chinese festival specialties such as whole fish,
which may be eaten by Chinese Canadians at home, are rarely
served in public. The choice of catering indicates a continuous
negotiation between patrons of different traditions of Chinese
foodways. However, the North American version is more domi-
nant in the public event.
Some Chinese like Simon Tam, an engineer, argue that the
presentation of Chinese foodways at the New Year’s parties
is unable to achieve the goal of cross-cultural communication
because “they are not special and, to some degree, not even
Chinese. They are North American Chinese food.”38 Some like
Alick Tsui even consider the quality of food to be one of the
reasons that Chinese people are reluctant to attend the CANL’s
New Year celebrations.
Theodore and Lin Humphrey describe the food served at
festivals as a performance of the community’s “values, as-
sumptions, world views and prescriptive behaviors,” which are
constantly adjusted in various celebratory contexts, and which
determine how food is prepared and presented (1991 [1988]:3).

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The dominance of North American Chinese style food at the

Chinese New Year celebrations is often seen as the result of the
presence of outsiders who might be afraid to try exotic cuisines.
I would argue that the choice of food at the Chinese New Year
celebrations reflects the festival organizers’ views on ethnic-
ity. As current Chinese New Year celebrations are organized to
promote a creolized and multicultural Chineseness, presenting
traditional Chinese foodways is no longer a priority. The con-
sumption of North American style Chinese food which presents
a sense of both the local and the Chinese, to some degree, pro-
vides Chinese festival organizers and attendees with an oppor-
tunity to express their versions of Chineseness.
CONCLUSION
Geographic, occupational, and other differences mean that Chi-
nese individuals living in Newfoundland have different experi-
ences of the New Year festival. This contributes to the diversity
among Chinese residents in Newfoundland in terms of how
they look at the festival, both in regards to their expectations for
how Chinese New Year should be observed and what meanings
it embodies. Chiou-ling Yeh argues that the “expression of nos-
talgia might evoke the memories of some viewers and affirm
their Chinese diasporic identity, but risk [s] alienating others
who [can] not identify with the cultural references” (2008:169).
She concludes that the competing versions of memories engen-
der a “fluid, contested and heterogeneous” rather than “fixed
and stable” Chinese diasporic identity (172).
In Newfoundland, due to the change of the mainstream
ideology from a nativist, anti-Chinese view to a multicultural-
ist one, the celebration of Chinese New Year has been moved
from the private to the public, and in doing so has become a
cultural medium to express multiple voices, understandings of
identity, and senses of belonging. In this sense, public celebra-
tions and personal observances are compatible within a mul-
ticultural Canadian context, even though Chinese individuals
and sub-groups rely on different cultural means to define their

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306 MU LI
cultural heritage. Yeh writes that these kinds of events bring

people together; they help create commonality and a sense of
community (2008:170). In fact, this sense of community is not
only confined to the Chinese organizers, but also shared by all
attendees with the same festive experience. As public events,
Chinese New Year celebrations in Newfoundland serve not
only as practical strategies in response to shifting of political
ideologies, but also as cultural ties that create shared experienc-
es among individuals of different ethnic/cultural backgrounds.
It is a folkloric practice that, at least temporarily, blurs and con-
nects various personal/group differences so that a united com-
munity can be built when a festival is celebrated together. In the
more open socio-cultural setting in post-war Canada, especially
after 1967, the newer generations of Chinese Canadians have
opened up the possibility of cultural creolization and the emer-
gence of a more inclusive hybrid identity as Newfoundlaners
and Canadians.
Over the years aspects of Chinese culture were promoted to
both Chinese descendants and outsiders. Especially in the early
years of CANL, when multiculturalism began to be officially
taken as a national ideology and policy in Canada, educational
programs aimed at the general public were organized as part
of Chinese New Year celebrations in order to gain more social
acceptance and cultural recognition for the Chinese communi-
ty. In more recent years, Chinese immigrants are no longer the
cheap labor force they once were, but instead are more often
educated professionals. As a result, Chinese New Year is not
only “a more conscious part of cultural expression and identity
brought to” their new settlements with the migrants, but also
welcomed by the host country “as part of a consciously main-
tained multiculturalism” (Johnson 2005:229). To a large degree,
promoting one’s heritage in the neighborhood or broader com-
munity nowadays highlights one’s affiliation and belonging to
place, rather than as an assimilative strategy for gaining recog-
nition and acceptance from the dominant group in society. The

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Chinese and their festive heritage have become an inseparable

part of the everyday multicultural practice in Newfoundland.
In this sense, as an ethnic tradition, Chinese New Year,
which is locally reformatted, gradually emerges as a vernac-
ularly-celebrated heritage shared by the general public who
are mostly individuals of non-Chinese descent. This shift re-
flects Stephen Stern’s idea of ethnic festival as an event which
“blends ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ expressive activities
and the ethnic thereby asserts his right to make contemporary
concerns relevant to his own ethnicity” (1977:29). Alain To-
uraine (2000) raises the question “Can we live together with
differences and being equal?” The Newfoundland case of Chi-
nese New Year celebrations provides a positive answer to this
question. More importantly, as “meeting the challenge of rein-
venting the mosaic will not be an easy task,” the success of the
case in Newfoundland “may restore a national pride in which
all Canadians can share” (Roy 1995:209).
NOTES
1 The term “Celestial” was a sarcastic word which was often used to
refer to Chinese in the early days, in reference to their queue hair-
style. New Gower Street is a street located in downtown St. John’s,
Newfoundland. Special thanks to Glenda M. Dawe at the Center for
Newfoundland Studies of the Queen Elizabeth II Library at Memo-
rial University of Newfoundland for her assistance in locating news-
paper articles.
2 Au Kim Lee, who was the owner of Kim Lee Laundry in St. John’s,
came to Newfoundland in 1899 and was the first naturalized Chinese
locally.
3 On the following day (September 22, 1906), another piece appeared
in the Evening Herald to endorse the former information. In the first
piece, the number of Chinese was 43, but for some reason, it was 31
in the second one.
4 According to my fieldwork and archival investigation, there was only
one Chinese female in the community, the wife of Kim Lee Au, the
first naturalized Chinese on the island. She stayed only temporarily in
Newfoundland for several months during 1927-1928.

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308 MU LI
5 William Ping, whose last name was Seto and whose occupation in
China was a school teacher, came to Newfoundland in 1931. The Tai
Mei Club was founded in 1928 and it was associated with Chinese
whose last names were Au. The Hong Hang Society was founded
in 1932 which was associated with people from Toisan County in
Guangdong.
6 Interview with Kim Hong. St. John’s, NL. April 18, 2011.
7 Interview with George Au. Stephenville, NL. May 5, 2014.
8 Interview with Wallace Hong. St. John’s, NL. September 16, 2013.
9 Gower Street United Church has a long time relationship with the
Chinese community in Newfoundland, especially in St. John’s area
due to their outreach programs after Confederation when Chinese
started to bring their families to Newfoundland in early 1950s.
10 Interview with Kim Hong. St. John’s, NL. July 9, 2009.
12 Interview with Lili Wang. St. John’s, NL January 25, 2012.
15 Interview with Daniel Wong. St. John’s, NL. August 29, 2013.
17 Interview with Daniel Wong. St. John’s, NL. August 29, 2013.
20 Interview with Alick Tsui. St. John’s, NL. January 20, 2012.
21 Interview with E. T. Tjan. St. John’s, NL May 5, 2012.
22 Interview with Francis Tam. St. John’s, NL. July 28, 2013.
23 Interview with Violet Ryan-Ping and William Ping Jr. St. John’s, NL.
April 16, 2011.
24 Interview with Shinn Jia Hwang and Ching Hsiang Lin. St. John’s,
NL. March 29, 2012.
27 Interview with Violet Ryan-Ping and William Ping Jr. St. John’s, NL.
April 16, 2011.

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32 Interview with Lili Wang. St. John’s, NL January 25, 2012.
33 Conversation with Arthur Leung. St. John’s, NL. December 15, 2012;
Interview with Lili Wang. St. John’s, NL January 25, 2012.
38 Interview with Simon Tam, St. John’s, NL. February 15, 2012.
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From the Ethnic to the PublicAuthor(s): Mu Li

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26864127

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Mu Li is Associate Professor in the School of Arts at

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INTRODUCTION: THE ETHNIC AS THE VERNACULAR

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migration history, place of origins, language, and many other

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of Chineseness, a creolized version of ethnicity that combines

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host society shifts and the dominant group begins to embrace

The celebrations of Chinese New Year in Newfoundland, which

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In other passages, the report also indicates non-Chinese New-

To-day begins the Chinese New Year celebration—begins,

Although this report includes does refer to some important ritu-

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(Evening Herald 1906a).3 On the following day, in another

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consisted exclusively of males who were all Cantonese,4 relat-

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working at his Sun Luck Restaurant in Stephenville in western

FROM THE ETHNIC TO THE PUBLIC

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residents may have contributed to improvements in inter-group

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creative encounters and interchange among all Canadian cul-

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On February 8, 1977, the newly-founded CANL sent out a

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on February 17-18 in the Engineering Building of nearby Me-

Rev. George LeDrew and wife of the Gower Street United

The variety show started with the national anthem O Canada,

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around 4:00 or 4:30 consisting of food that was mainly donated

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context for social-psychological interaction, and the phenom-

THE HYBRIDITY AS ROUTINE

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of 11) and Shirley Hong (who is a white Newfoundlander who

T H E D AT E OF THE NEW YEAR

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We were discussing if we needed to celebrate the New Year

The shifting “from the actual holiday to a more convenient date”

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The dilemma presented by scheduling Chinese New Year

MAKING UP THE LIST OF INVITED GUESTS

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serving as an important social event for Chinese people to

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According to Alick Tsui, a Hong Kong native and optometrist,

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event within the Chinese community, has now gradually trans-

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