Don Tai (Canada) Blog

By destiny, luck or fate, I live in a Toronto neighbourhood that has a high percentage of Chinese families. I have often wondered, like many families, if by neighbourhood is safe, relative to other Toronto neighbourhoods. As well, if a friend from China was about to migrate to Toronto and wanted to live in a safe Chinese neighbourhood, where would I recommend? This blog post tries to answer these questions.

Eye opening was my new job as an IT recruiter here in Toronto, Canada. As a North American born and Canadian raised and educated, I knew something was askew. Reading hundreds of resumes per week I wondered why it took so long for me to find work, though it is not exactly in my job stream. Why where there so many newly immigrated foreigners out of work? Why where there so many second generation immigrants, fluent in English and Canadian educated, having such a difficult time finding work, in our ethnically diverse Toronto?

It has been a long time since I have talked to him, but I still clearly recall going to school with Mark Rowswell. In China he is much more commonly known as “Da Shan”, or Big Mountain. Mark is not only Canadian, like myself, but also comes from Toronto, my home town.

I met Mark while attending classes at Beijing University. As fellow Canadians in a place with many more Americans and other foreigners, we, of course, got to know each other. It turns out that his parents lived near lived near my parents, in the quiet suburb of North York, around Don Mills and Finch.

Browsing through Walmart here in Toronto, Canada, I stumbled upon some LED light bulbs on sale. From a company named “Lights of America”, they have a smaller base for use in a chandelier. Regularly $5.50CAD, they were going for $2.00CAD. Labeled “Made in China”, I hesitated. I could buy them, research them, and if necessary, return them if I was not happy. The results of research were that these LED light bulbs are junk and should be returned. They not only do not live up to brightness claims, but also only last a max of 1,000 of their claimed 30,000 hours of use.

With much eye rolling and jaw dropping I studied the photos of 2011 student dorm rooms from Beijing University, where I used to study. The article explained that there is a huge difference between foreign and Chinese student dorms. The Chinese students were complaining about discrimination. I would like to put some perspective on this subject.

In the late 1980s the Beijing University foreign student’s dorm was called Shao Yuan. It was a “U” shaped structure with 3 sections, 6 floors, each housing about 100 students. Each building had a guard on the first floor. The guard asked all Chinese to sign in. He also manned the single telephone for 100 students.

Anyone who has recently visited China and Beijing knows that there are too many cars on the streets, thus clogging the free flow of traffic. Gone are the days of riding a bicycle. Public transit is the only way to get around, but buses are just as slow as cars. Beijing has started a lottery for potential new car buyers, which helps. The solution may lie in a scarcity of parking spaces. If you have no parking space you have no place to park your car.

It has been a long time coming, but Chinese fugitive Lai Changxing has finally been deported from Canada. His case took 12 years and went right to the Supreme Court of Canada, the highest court of the land. The twists and turns in this case are numerous. The conclusion of this case is also interesting. The Canadian Consulate in Beijing posted the court results in English on Sina Weibo, a Twitter equivalent in China, but was deleted two days later, presumably not by the original posters. A link was posted to direct readers to the court ruling, and this was also deleted. Here is the court ruling, in full. This court ruling was somewhat difficult to find for me, being inconveniently not indexed by Google. Still I was able to find this Federal Court decision online and in full. The contrast between the Chinese and Canadian legal systems has never been more striking.

In yet another display of cross cultural friendliness the Canadian Government has officially approved the coat of arms for the surname “Wong” in Cantonese, or “Huang” in Mandarin. These are cultural displays of affection that bring Canada and China together. I wholeheartedly approve.

Wong or Huang is the seventh most common Chinese surname according to the 2006 census. There are a lot of Huangs in the world, and not they have a legitimate Canadian coat of arms or family crest.