27. DIASPORA: BEYOND CHINATOWN



Diaspora can refer to both a people scattered from their homeland and the place where they settle.

In the case of my parents, they left China and eventually arrived and stayed in Niagara Falls.

While making a home within an ethnic enclave such as Chinatown makes sense for linguistic, social, and economic reasons, some Chinese came to Niagara Falls and did not choose Chinatown.

As a child, I likely believed that the Chinese who lived outside Chinatown did so because they had more money and could afford to live somewhere nicer. I certainly believed that to be true about the Lew family (Post #23) because they had a beautiful house and two restaurants on Victoria Avenue (Rose Garden & Jade Garden). However, my long-time friend, Randall Robertson, challenges me to consider other perspectives.

Randall grew up on Eastwood Crescent – two properties up from Jade Gardens – where he could see the two sides of the property.
He saw a “decorative, illusionistic front” to the restaurant and a “functional back . . . crates and pails waiting to be picked up and the dishwashers smoking, all by the back door.”

As I was growing up, I only saw the street view – a faux Chinese elegance that was absent from my parents’ restaurant.


In other instances, not settling in Chinatown may have been due to different factors: proximity to work place or the convenience of a combined working-living arrangement in a high tourist traffic area.

One such place may have been the Oriental Gift Shop, a curio shop located at 1002 Victoria Avenue. At the time, it was across the street from the old public library (corner of Victoria Ave. & Armoury St.)

The first city directory listing for it occurs in 1969 and the last is 2005. LAU KING (Laichee) is the name associated with the shop.

Having attended high school at NFCVI, I would have passed by frequently.

I was free to stop and look at its pretty window display: cutwork tablecloths, porcelain vases, ceramic figurines, and embroidered silks.

I do not recall ever going inside nor having the desire to do so.

If anything, the fineries on display intimidated me.

Although I associated the items as being Chinese, they were Chinese in a way that was beyond my reach; they were beyond the means and lifestyle of my parents. I would have also guessed the same was true for other people whom I knew in Chinatown.

About the gift shop, friend Randall felt no such timidity. He relates: “when you went in, you felt completely shut off from the outside world.”

I should ask him if in my case would I have felt inside when inside the store; that is, a part of that seemingly foreign Chinese world.

I doubt it.

Randall, ever pensive, questions if the shop owner experienced feelings of trauma knowing the Cultural Revolution was raging in China.

As if in response, I suggest the shop owner would have been more pre-occupied by the number of customers for Chinese curios: enough to support his family, if there was one?

Even though my father had actively supported the Kuomingtang (Post #9), I saw that with a family, his attention was kept on the immediate.


Until someone more knowing informs me, my Chinese world did not intersect with that of created by Oriental Gift Shop owners/residents.

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