Educational Media Reviews Online

The bittersweet nature of immigration is portrayed here with sensitivity and depth despite the brevity of this well-organized, well-executed documentary. The immigrants who describe their lives through interviews interspersed with clips of the events of daily life are Hong Kong Chinese who relocated to Vancouver in contemporary times, but their stories echo universal themes that viewers of documentaries such as PBS's The American Experience and others in the genre will recognize have affected all kinds of immigrants in all places and times.

Focusing on a diverse group of individuals from three generations, the producers succeed in framing the broad outlines of conflict and resolution among the immigrants themselves as well as between them and their new community. The narrator, Rose Lam Waddell, is attractive and poised. She came to Canada as a child and speaks of her life thoughtfully in excellent Canadian-accented English. She and her husband, who is white, play with their toddler son, toss a ball for their golden retriever in the park, feed ducks and geese with Rose's elderly Chinese father, and share celebrations with other Chinese families and her husband's parents, and participate in interviews with other immigrants. Of all portrayed here, Rose appears to have integrated her early life in Hong Kong with her changed life as a Canadian, not only by marrying a man of a different race, but by accepting her differences without perceiving them as inferior and appreciating her differences as enriching the lives of all whom she touches.

Other portraits vary widely in the degree of comfort with which the individuals carry both earlier, Chinese traditions and newer, Canadian ones. A few men are included, but the focus is mainly on women. A couple discuss the changes wrought by living in Canada's more relaxed society. The husband is positive about their experiences, but it is clear the wife's life has blossomed differently than it could have in China. Another young woman describes a failed marriage to a white Canadian, but she continues finding partners outside the Chinese community. Nearly all the women mention that once freed from the family circle, beyond which no woman may stray in China, they may no longer behave as Chinese men expect and find it hard to cope with those expectations.

In addition to being freed from the severely limited lifestyle that Chinese tradition dictates for women, the young immigrants anticipate greater economic opportunity and more lively and varied social interactions than they might have had in Hong Kong. Clips of British Columbia's Hong Kong-born lieutenant governor leave no doubt about how high immigrants can aspire and achieve. At the same time, many, including the lieutenant governor, relate their brushes with racism and the pain it causes. Young immigrants feel responsible for helping their parents adjust, because the young people tend to function better in their new homeland, absorbing the new language and customs more readily than their parents. For their part, the parents try hard to maintain familiar lifestyles, but eventually most come to terms with the reality that their children will not have the same lives in Canada they would have had in China.

Embracing Canadian attitudes and lifestyles has not meant discarding Chinese traditions entirely. Rites are observed, but this is by choice, to demonstrate respect for and pride in their origins. In spite of the calculated break with those origins and sacrifice of the feeling of total belonging they would have enjoyed had they stayed in Hong Kong, these immigrants express no regrets.

Recommended.