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Chinatown East: Zhong Hua Men Gate
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zeister
New Member
China Town
As a kid in the 1950s all I remember is a few square blocks around Dundas and Elizabeth. Spadina was mostly Jewish & Portuguese. Torontonians must decide if this arch money was well spent at a time of rising gang crime, city owned slums and crumbling infrastructure. 2010 can't come too soon for most voters!
As a kid in the 1950s all I remember is a few square blocks around Dundas and Elizabeth. Spadina was mostly Jewish & Portuguese. Torontonians must decide if this arch money was well spent at a time of rising gang crime, city owned slums and crumbling infrastructure. 2010 can't come too soon for most voters!
bleeepbluuup
Active Member
Believe it or not, there exist Canadians who are interested in their ethnic heritage and want to build these things as an expression of their culture, based on actual history and actual traditions, nothing that Walt Disney ever dreamed up or appropriated. This gate may remind you of Epcot Centre, but rest assured there are many who do not share those connotations.
wyliepoon
Senior Member
As a Chinese, I am a supporter of the Chinatown gate. I don't see any tackiness or Disney-fication in the idea of the gate itself- it is a symbol of Chinatown that I think the majority of the Chinese in this city have nothing against. The only way that the gate can look tacky is through design- such the proposal to add clocks to the gate.
I think the majority of us know where to draw the line between tacky and authentic Chinese architecture. This gate is authentic (or pretty close to authentic)...
... this, on the other hand, is tacky.
I think the majority of us know where to draw the line between tacky and authentic Chinese architecture. This gate is authentic (or pretty close to authentic)...
... this, on the other hand, is tacky.
junctionist
Senior Member
Think of all the problems we could have solved if we had just not devoted that money for the arch. We'll just have to solve all our problems before we may even spend the slightest amounts on aesthetics
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Tewder
Senior Member
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TKTKTK
Senior Member
I don't understand what that barb was meant to prove. How individual neighbourhoods wish to celebrate themselves has no bearing on how other neighbourhoods wish to do it.
3Dementia
Senior Member
^ditto.
Tewder, what's with the hate-on for a project envisioned by a neighbourhood, mostly funded by its BIA and finally u/c after 15 years... supposedly with a design that references Chinese architecture (not Disney)?
Do street signs with English + one language showcasing a neighbourhood's ethnic majority also offend? Chinese characters on a vendor's sign?
Can't believe there is a debate about this, especially in Toronto. Reminds me a bit of some asinine comments I read somewhere that called the glorious BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in n/w Toronto... tacky.
Tewder, what's with the hate-on for a project envisioned by a neighbourhood, mostly funded by its BIA and finally u/c after 15 years... supposedly with a design that references Chinese architecture (not Disney)?
Do street signs with English + one language showcasing a neighbourhood's ethnic majority also offend? Chinese characters on a vendor's sign?
Can't believe there is a debate about this, especially in Toronto. Reminds me a bit of some asinine comments I read somewhere that called the glorious BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in n/w Toronto... tacky.
exstasie
Active Member
So Who, is this gate out front of Mississauga's Chinese Cultural Centre tacky?
I like it and it looks great there. I frenquent the restaurants in there all the time and it just adds to the appeal!
But each there own!
paraone
Active Member
I've eaten at Ka Ka Lucky many times, great take out.... best BBQ around, on a bed of rice for under $5, can't even eat at McDick's for that price.
Mimi's on Gerrard @ Degrassi is another fav. Great Pho soup!
Mimi's on Gerrard @ Degrassi is another fav. Great Pho soup!
Tewder
Senior Member
^ditto.
Tewder, what's with the hate-on for a project envisioned by a neighbourhood, mostly funded by its BIA and finally u/c after 15 years... supposedly with a design that references Chinese architecture (not Disney)?
Do street signs with English + one language showcasing a neighbourhood's ethnic majority also offend? Chinese characters on a vendor's sign?
Can't believe there is a debate about this, especially in Toronto. Reminds me a bit of some asinine comments I read somewhere that called the glorious BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in n/w Toronto... tacky.
I wouldn't say I hate the arch, it's quite stunning actually, and I don't think it 'offends' me. I merely say we can do better than simply aping the culture/history/art forms of other places in our landscape. That to me is Disney no matter how you like to spin it. I'm also not saying it's worse for the Chinese to do this than for any other cultural group (hence my snarky comment about the Italian arch)...
I don't think it's wrong for us to be inspired by other cultures, but it's extremely unimaginative and tacky, quite frankly, in my opinion to do so in such a literal way. The experience of Chinese Canadians here in Canada, or of any other Canadians for that matter, is enormously different from that of those in China. Why not use that difference of reality and experience to find or develop a language of design and expression that represents that community/neighbourhood honestly, fairly and creatively and that thereby offers something new and unique for the city?
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3Dementia
Senior Member
Sorry but your comments don't make sense at all where I'm sitting... in Toronto, Ontario, Canada... for longer than I'd like to admit.
At risk of opening the "melting pot" (yer an American now, but not a real American, yer kinda American) versus Pierre's "multicultural" fabric (vive la difference!) debate... here goes.
I always thought it delightfully redundant that one of the world's most multi-cultural cities (where you can eat, shop et al in many countries without a real passport or a plane ticket)... anually staged a charming, clumsy and amateurish, but always entertaining "festival" called Caravan.
In a city where you could sample good international cuisine from dozens of countries any month in the year, locals (and some tourists) annually purchased "passports" so they could enter a pavillion (some found space), line up for luke-warm channa or dim sum, and clap for somebody's 12 year old who learned a few steps of the tango, Bharatnatyum, Thai classical or polka.
And it was still fun. Vive le/la difference.
BTW, I can't source them but I've read qualititive surveys that have reported anecdotally that immigrants to Toronto specifically (and Canada generally) are often more civically and federally "patriotic" (my quotes) than those of us born and bred with a hockey stick shoved up our butts.
So it's no big deal bringing any part of the world to Toronto (food, architecture, street signs, festivals) because the world has made Toronto home.
Really have no idea what your Toronto is... do you go to Taste of the Danforth?
At risk of opening the "melting pot" (yer an American now, but not a real American, yer kinda American) versus Pierre's "multicultural" fabric (vive la difference!) debate... here goes.
I always thought it delightfully redundant that one of the world's most multi-cultural cities (where you can eat, shop et al in many countries without a real passport or a plane ticket)... anually staged a charming, clumsy and amateurish, but always entertaining "festival" called Caravan.
In a city where you could sample good international cuisine from dozens of countries any month in the year, locals (and some tourists) annually purchased "passports" so they could enter a pavillion (some found space), line up for luke-warm channa or dim sum, and clap for somebody's 12 year old who learned a few steps of the tango, Bharatnatyum, Thai classical or polka.
And it was still fun. Vive le/la difference.
BTW, I can't source them but I've read qualititive surveys that have reported anecdotally that immigrants to Toronto specifically (and Canada generally) are often more civically and federally "patriotic" (my quotes) than those of us born and bred with a hockey stick shoved up our butts.
So it's no big deal bringing any part of the world to Toronto (food, architecture, street signs, festivals) because the world has made Toronto home.
Really have no idea what your Toronto is... do you go to Taste of the Danforth?
adma
Superstar
Though admittedly, when Caravan was in its prime back in the 60s/70s, Toronto *didn't* yet have the thoroughgoing multicultural retail/restaurant infrastructure it has now. But once that matured, yes, it spelled doom for Caravan. (Though, yes, arguably Taste Of The XXX-type festivals are its heirs.)
Time-travel back a scant quarter century, to the intersection of Albion + Islington. Its strip malls were still humdrum blue-collar white-trash, Radio Shack and all--maybe as multicultural as it got was an Italian bakery or two. Now it's a Little India to the bone...
wyliepoon
Senior Member
It's interesting to note that this gate is proposed by Chinatown East, which is probably the most Chinese-Canadian neighbourhood in the GTA, as opposed to just being "Chinese". That neighbourhood is probably the opposite of strip malls up here in Scarborough, Markham and Richmond Hill, which tend to identify themselves as catering only to the Chinese population.
Curiously, Chinese people in Markham or Scarborough or even Spadina and Dundas really don't care about the Chinatown gate, which I think is because there are so many reminders of Chinese culture in these areas that a gate isn't really necessary. Chinatown East, on the other hand, is fighting a battle to keep its identity as a Chinese community (it has frequently been seen as a dying Chinatown). I see the Chinatown gate, in a way, as a reminder to the Chinese-Canadians in that neighbourhood of their Chinese heritage.
This idea seems to be common in just about every 'dying' Chinatown in Canada. Chinatowns in Victoria BC, downtown Vancouver, Winnipeg and Montreal also have Chinatown gates. With the exception of Vancouver, these Chinatowns are struggling to survive because few Chinese immigrants choose to live in those cities. On the other hand, newer Chinese communities in Canada, like Richmond BC, Scarborough and Markham have absolutely no gates to speak of. It's actually the more 'Canadian' Chinese communities that are building the gates, not the ones that are more 'Chinese'.
BobBob
Senior Member
It does seem like these sorts of things happen when a neighbourhood's authentic culture feels it's on the way out, or has been out for some time already and needs to be memorialized by a physical monument. Hopefully such kitchy gates aren't necessarily always tombstones commemorating what once was, but that's certainly been my experience in London, San Fran, Yokohama and many other cities with prominent historic chinatowns. It seems the real, living chinatowns are too busy existing to be bothered to worry about mythologizing themselves.
Having said that, I don't feel it's inappropriate to commemorate a historic chinatown with an appropriate physical monument, of course.
Having said that, I don't feel it's inappropriate to commemorate a historic chinatown with an appropriate physical monument, of course.
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