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Hansheng or Voice of the Chinese: The Chinese Times’ Strategies of Self Positioning

Sun, June 26, 5:00 to 6:50pm, Shikokan (SK), Floor: 1F, 108

Abstract

Ta hon kong bo or The Chinese Times, circulating between 1907 and 1992 in Vancouver, was the earliest and longest running Chinese language daily newspaper in Canada, and also one of the newspapers of the longest history in the Chinese diasporic communities around the world. During its existence of 85 years, it was the dominating, if not the sole, voice of the Chinese community in Vancouver for many years and it certainly saw itself as the spokesperson for the local Chinese people. This paper aims at examining how The Chinese Times positioned itself as the voice of the Chinese by investigating the writings in two important columns of the newspaper, the Editorials and Literary Supplements. It will look into the newspaper’s formal, linguistic, and stylistic features in the two chosen columns and in other columns (e.g., columns of news story reporting). Also my study will focus on the responses of The Chinese Times to discriminative stances and acts the “mainstream” White society adopted towards the Chinese during its first 50 years or so, that is, the newspaper’s responses to important historical events and moments like the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1923, the 1907 ransack of the Vancouver Chinatown, WW II, the abolishment of the anti-Chinese act in 1947, etc. This paper will scrutinize how The Chinese Times represented, instructed, chastised, mobilized, and united the Chinese community in forming a Chinese voice.

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