In both the United States and Canada, geopolitical tensions with China have given rise to domestic suspicions and even legal restrictions on Chinese communities. Both nations have a history of discriminatory laws and policies that excluded Chinese communities, leaving a legacy of anti-Asian sentiment that persists today. Recent events, including the spike in anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic and laws prohibiting Chinese nationals from purchasing property in some U.S. states, echo these historical patterns of exclusion and discrimination.
In an interview recorded on August 13, 2024, Henry Yu explores the relevance of historic Chinese migration on the Pacific coast to contemporary geopolitics, and how acknowledging this shared past can help foster more informed discussions on race and immigration in North America.
Henry Yu
Dr. Henry Yu was born in Vancouver, B.C., and grew up in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island. He received his BA in Honours History from UBC and an MA and PhD in History from Princeton University. After teaching at UCLA for over a decade, Yu returned to UBC as a Professor of History to help build programs focused on trans-Pacific Canada. Yu himself is both a second and fourth generation Canadian. His parents were first generation immigrants from China, joining a grandfather who had spent almost his entire life in Canada. His great-grandfather was also an early Chinese pioneer in British Columbia, part of a larger networks of migrants who left Zhongshan county in Guangdong province in South China and settled around the Pacific in places such as Australia, New Zealand, Hawai’i, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, the United States, and Canada.
Prof. Yu’s book, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2001) won the Norris and Carol Hundley Prize as the Most Distinguished Book of 2001. He is also the author of Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination and Building Upon Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies (2018) and was the co-recipient with Denise Fong and Vivienne Gosselin of the Canadian Historical Association Public History Prize (2021) and the Canadian Museums Association Outstanding Achievement in Exhibitions Prize (2022) for the community historical research project and exhibition “A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia,” the inaugural exhibition of the Chinese Canadian Museum. Currently, he serves as the Principal of St. John’s College at UBC, as well as a Board Member of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia (CCHSBC), the Lingnan Foundation (US), and the Pacific Canada Heritage Centre and Museum of Migration Society (PCHC-MoM)