Radio-Canada Serves up Chinese Fodder

To contact us Click HERE
Last Friday I featured a link to a Radio Canada video story about those in Montreal's Chinese community who have implanted themselves in suburban Brossard, a prosperous bedroom community just over the Champlain Bridge on the south shore of the St. Lawrence river.

I didn't offer much more than a link to the story and was called out in the comments section for characterizing the piece as a Radio-Canada hatchet job.

You can watch the piece in either English, French or Chinese over at the at the Grand Dossiers website at Radio Canada. English subtitles are provided when necessary. Link

The main focus of the piece was about the Chinese community's difficulty and perhaps refusal to integrate into mainstream francophone society.
The issue of ethnic communities integrating into Quebec society is a touchy subject, with French language militants generally enraged and insulted that these 'outsiders' refuse to join the great francophone society.
Although the producers tried to 'round' off the report with various human interest aspects, there was no getting away at what they were bringing to the table (not egg rolls), that is, that the Chinese community lives apart from mainstream Quebec society in a cocooned and sheltered world, something that remains an anathema to language militants who believe that immigrants are obligated, as part of the implied social contract they accepted when they immigrated, to learn the French language, adopt and assimilate Quebec culture, Marie-Mai, poutine and maple syrup, the whole kit and caboodle.

The piece includes features on several different Chinese, a chef, a mother, a real estate broker, a pastor and some elderly Chinese, each story describing their lives and how they live outside mainstream French milieu.

I'm not sure those who were interviewed understood what was going on, they innocently answered the questions as best they could and freely described that for many in their community, especially the older generation, living apart from mainstream Quebec is de rigueur.

Given the context of language in Quebec, I couldn't help but get the feeling that they were being 'set up' to make the producer's point, that the Chinese are diametrically opposed to assimilation, a poster boy community of uncooperative and recalcitrant social self-imposed isolation.
In many respects, the Chinese were used like the chumps interviewed by Jay Leno on his infamous 'Jaywalking' segment, where stupid people are made fun of without their cottoning to the fact. Take a look .

Now perhaps my interpretation of the motives of the film maker is flawed and paranoid.
If so, I apologize for that conclusion, but after screening the video there was one thing that I was dead sure of, that it wouldn't take long before an outraged response to the story would appear on vigile.net, decrying the continuing ethnic rejection and humiliation of Francophone society.

Readers, I was not to be disappointed, but more on that a bit further on.

I hope you watch the videos, if not, these screen caps sum up the piece rather succinctly.

Looking at the story in the context of the current language debate and the overriding fear that ethnics are choosing to live apart or in English, it's not a reach to conclude that the Chinese were being served up to language militants, like a red flag waved in front of a bull's nose to elicit a reaction.



 The quotes in the screen caps above pretty much summed up where the story was going.

"No speakee da Englese"

I'm writing this post in a hotel room looking down on the Manhattan bridge in New York City, on the Brooklyn side of the East river.
Crossing the bridge over to Manhattan, vehicles are deposited onto Canal Street, directly into one of the great and most famous 'Chinatowns' of the western world. The quaint and touristy neighbourhood is famous for its Chinese restaurants and knockoff Louis Vuitton purses and Rolex watches, hawked right on the curbs of Mott Street and environs, to rapacious tourists out for adventure and bargains.
The most popular Chinese restaurant with visitors is the cavernous Jim Fong, where dim sum is served up by decidedly non-English speaking waiters.
The neighbourhood is also home to a local community that lives and breathes in Chinese, a place where one can live an entire life without a word of English.

Back here in Brooklyn, just a couple of miles down the road from my hotel room, is another 'Chinatown', this one in the neighbourhood known as Sunset Park and interestingly, it's even bigger and more 'ethnic,' than its more famous cousin in Manhattan.

One thing both these Chinatowns have in common is the fact that many of its Chinese residents live, work and recreate entirely in Chinese, the same as some in the Brossard community featured in the Radio-Canada story.
I'm reliably informed by someone who works in a local hospital in Sunset Park that many, if not the majority of the local adult Chinese seeking medical help, speak no English at all.

I guess it's pretty much the same all over North America, be it San Francisco, Vancouver or Toronto, where in my favourite Chinese food restaurant on Spadina, it is a case of pointing at the English side of the menu, in order to be understood by the aging waiters, who only speak a rudimentary version of pidgeon-English.

In Sunset Park as in Brossard, it is true that one can live an entire life in Chinese, but it's important to note that the phenomenon applies exclusively to first generation immigrants, even those who have lived there for fifty years.
Come to think of it, the same applies to the Russian community of Brighton Beach, another storied Brooklyn neighbourhood nicknamed Little Odessa, because of the many resident who hail from the Ukranian city.
Here too, many first generation immigrants live their entire lives in Russian, eschewing English on every level..

Sunset Park's English-speaking next generation

It's no big deal.
Nobody in New York city is demanding that these non-English speakers become good citizens by learning English and adopting baseball, hot dogs and Lady Gaga.

Of course this aversion to English (or French in Brossard) disappears with the rise of the second and third generation, something that the Radio-Canada piece mentions, but doesn't highlight, choosing to concentrate on the first generation Chinese immigrants, who like their counterparts in Brooklyn choose to remain safely ensconced in their community.

And so the Radio-Canada story while factually correct, holds up the insular Chinese community of Brossard as some strange and isolated phenomenon, ignoring the fact that the Chinese 'experience' is pretty much the same across North America.
The story's intended or unintended consequence is to fan the flames of outrage by French language militants who whine about the injustice of it all, like a bad 'done-me-wrong' country song.

Now to the vigile.net reaction, where one of its resident xenophobe contributors Jacques Noël, lashed out indignantly at the sad state of affairs over these stubborn immigrant Chinese, who unfairly shun the French language and culture.

"In many ways, the Chinese immigrants are models. They work hard, very hard. Their children do well in school. They commit few crimes, at least few violent crimes. But as to their cultural integration into Quebec society, it is a total failure. Total. Total.

Quebec society is stuck. Wedged between immigration from the Maghreb, whose members speak French but who certainly don't fit in, are a little scary and who impoverish Quebec and the Chinese immigrants who are very productive, very enriching, but who do not fit in and do not want to speak French.
Add the Jews of Boisbriand and Côte St-Luc, Caribbeans from NDG and St-Michel and you have many failures, sometimes cultural, sometimes language, sometimes economic, sometimes everything. Link{Fr}

Hmmm......The above screed, to those unfamiliar with the separatist website, vigile.net, is not an exception, it is an example of the type of xenophobia that is published on an ongoing basis.

One of the great complaints of the sovereignty industry is the fact that not enough immigrants adopt French and francophone culture and that Bill 101 and other measures are required to redress the shocking situation, else-wise Quebec will become anglicized and/or overrun with foreign influence.

Mr Parent and others of his ilk who are opposed to immigration, advocate that these people don't integrate well and when they do, much too many choose the English side of the language equation, a sad and unintended consequence of allowing the English community to survive.

I'll delve into that subject, the assimilation of immigrants in another post.

At any rate, I stand by my conclusion that the Radio-Canada story was about as honest as Jay Leno interviewing idiots.
The story wasn't meant to honour or explore the Chinese community of Brossard, but rather to shame them and show them up for dishonouring the francophone majority.