From the Other to the Enemy

Representations of Chinese New Year and Anti-Chinese Sentiment in British Columbia, 1885-1907

Abstract

Anti-Chinese racism is embedded in the history of British Columbia, stretching back to colonial settlement and the first major wave of Chinese immigration in the region in the mid-nineteenth century. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, animosity towards Chinese populations became firmly entrenched. By 1907, anti-Chinese and broader anti-Asian racism was so pronounced that it propelled racial violence of unprecedented severity in Vancouver, with riots against Asian communities. To illuminate how anti-Chinese sentiment took hold in BC and reached this crisis point, this essay analyzes how BC newspapers represented Chinese people and culture and how these representations changed from 1885 to 1907. Employing critical close readings of newspapers from Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster, this essay focuses on representations of Chinese New Year. Prejudice was a pervasive component in articles across the period; however, overtime, newspapers approached the celebration with less openness and greater negativity. Later sources framed the celebration as a “contaminant”, incorporated fewer expressions of admiration and interest, and employed sharper exclusionary rhetoric. Therefore, these articles, available for everyday consumption, reflected and fed rising anti-Chinese sentiment. This research showcases the significance of seemingly “mundane” small-scale iterations of prejudice in the dynamics of racism in Canadian history.