It’s Asian Heritage Month and groups across UBC campus have planned events for this month, and year-round, to celebrate.
Asian Heritage Month has been celebrated in Canada since the 1990s, but 20 years ago, the federal government officially designated May for the month-long celebration.
UBC has officially celebrated the month since 2004 when the school became a title sponsor of explorAsian. The explorAsian festival is put on annually by the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society to highlight Asian Canadian artists and culture.
In a video about the significance of Asian Heritage Month produced by UBC, Dr. Henry Yu, history professor and principal of St. John’s College, said this month is important to celebrate given the recent large increase in anti-Asian racism in Vancouver.
“The celebration is a way of recognizing [our ancestors’] struggles to belong; to be given the opportunity to be able to achieve,” said Yu. “We’re celebrating how far we’ve come in Canada and British Columbia, but we are also acknowledging with this month that there has been a long history of anti-Asian racism.”
Even as Asian Canadians and immigrants now have many of the same rights or experience the same opportunities as white, European Canadians, anti-Asian racism continues — and has increased amid racially-charged scapegoating during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the same video, UBC President Santa Ono reflected on the importance of celebrating this month at UBC, as over 50 per cent of students identify as having Asian heritage.
“They’re a very diverse group and it’s a little moment to really celebrate what they bring to the institution,” said Ono.
Some of these events are hosted with the Asian studies department, such as the online webinar titled “The Hong Kong and Taiwanese Diaspora in the Literary Imagination.”
Connie Yuchun Wu, the communications and event coordinator for the Asian studies department, encouraged students to attend these events in hopes that it might give them a new perspective on Asian culture or help those of Asian heritage connect with their roots.
“There are so many diverse stories to be told and to be heard,” said Wu. “We hope that by celebrating Asian Heritage Month, we can spread more diverse words to more people in the world about Asian heritage and the beauty of it.”
She also said she hopes UBC will have an in-person celebration for Asian Heritage Month next year to help showcase the different aspects of Asian Heritage and the cultures associated with it.
Outside of Asian Heritage Month, student clubs like the UBC Mahjong Club offer students of all backgrounds a chance to learn more about their own heritage or about East Asian culture more broadly — like learning to interpret the symbols on the tiles or going for dim sum.
“It’s very funny to think that millions of people from before my time have played this game — [my] ancestors have played this game,” said Nathaniel Ming Ki, the external social coordinator for the UBC Mahjong Club, who learned to play mahjong from his grandparents.
“It’s a very fun way of connecting with your culture ... It offers you the opportunity to engage with something that not only your parents but potentially your grandparents and your family prior to that have all done for years.”
Amanda Ho, the club’s social coordinator, echoed Ming Ki’s comments in a separate interview.
This year, the hope is that celebrating Asian Heritage Month and continuing to encourage engagement with cultural clubs and groups on campus — despite the rise in anti-Asian racism — will help uplift students with Asian backgrounds and reduce the misconceptions about what it means to be Asian.
“I understand that some people have [misconceptions] because they don’t know the culture,” said Wu. “I think by having [Asian Canadians] develop a voice and spread the diversity of Asian culture, it would maybe give them a new perspective of Asian language and culture.”
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