Whose airline is it anyway?

By Michael Riches

A president flies to a foreign country — say, the US or Guatemala — and steps off a plane that has “China” emblazoned on either side. An average citizen in one of these faraway places who witnesses the event on television or in a photograph would have to be forgiven if they thought the president of China had just arrived.

This was a concern of Taiwanese independence elder statesman Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏), who said in 2021 that foreign recipients of emergency donations from Taiwan confuse the gifts as coming from China when they arrive on a China Airlines flight.

I am aware that the countless Taiwanese companies and government institutions carrying the name “China” in their names must do so out of coercion from across the strait, or at the very least, to honor their historical roots. But that does not mean Taiwanese and their foreign supporters must voluntarily hand their money to an enterprise that advertises to the world that Taiwan is a part of China. 

I have refused to fly the airline, but I have also been puzzled why so many of my “deep green” Taiwanese friends have not thought similarly about the carrier.

One friend in particular who refuses to carry a “Republic of China” passport in favor of the one branded “Taiwan” nonetheless encouraged me to book on China Airlines for my upcoming trip to Canada for its cheap tickets and convenient schedule.

Another Taiwanese friend told me that the term “中華” (“Chinese”) is so ubiquitous in company names and institutions that no one associates it with China anymore.

However, Taiwanese don’t seem to express such indifference when it comes to their athletes being forced to compete abroad as Chinese Taipei. Why then does the same anger not carry over to other Chinese branding throughout the nation? There is nothing the public can do about “Chinese Taipei” competing at the Olympics and such, but they could boycott “Chinese” companies that exist only through the graciousness of public patronage.

Recent polls show that more than 90 percent of Taiwanese do not ever want to unify with China — regardless of whether the CCP is replaced with a democratic government —  and that number is only growing. If this portion of the population boycotted China Airlines, the company would be bankrupted, or at least rendered insignificant. Other airlines, such as EVA, would buy out its fleet and fill its schedules.

Rubbing out a major institution that forces China’s imprint on Taiwan would send a clear message to Beijing — not from the government in Taipei, but from the people of Taiwan. It would be a bold act of collective sovereign agency.

This does not just apply to Taiwanese, but to foreigners who support the nation’s plight. Consider the official foreign delegations that arrive in Taiwan on China Airlines. They often come here in defiance of China, yet many of them have China’s name plastered on their itineraries and tickets, not to mention the aircraft itself.

I briefly lived in Shanghai before ever setting foot in Taiwan. I was supportive of Taiwan then, although I had to politely listen to the local take on the Taiwanese matters when they came up in conversation. I didn't push back, as my knowledge of Taiwan and its history was only superficial at the time, so I took in the Chinese position with curiosity and a grain of salt.

Upon my first visit to Taiwan, my passport was stamped "Republic of China." It was the first time I saw that name — and the first time I thought my Chinese friends might have been right about Taiwan after all. 

Having come back around on the issue — not by any academic argument, but simply by living here and understanding the wants of the Taiwanese people — I have found any ambiguous messaging distasteful and frustrating to encounter.

This is why I hope Taiwanese take more action where their government cannot. The existence of China Airlines and the message it flies around the world could be squelched simply by refusing to use its services.

Museum's plan for Czech Republic exhibit sends the wrong message abroad

By Michael Riches

The recent breakage of a reported US$77 million in Chinese artifacts at the National Palace Museum is not just a misfortune, but an apt metaphor of the fragility of Taiwan’s relationship with China.

Not only should these treasures be handled with physical care, but with diplomatic sensitivity. Mishandling can result in fractures in more ways than one.

This fact should be heeded by the Czech Republic and the museum as both move toward an agreement to loan items for display in Prague.

“Czech people like the richness of the Chinese culture, and the treasures of the National Palace Museum are just something that is absolutely stunning,” Czech Representative to Taiwan David Steinke said in a Nov. 2 interview with CNA.

The article also referenced an agreement the museum signed with Prague in September to cooperate on a loan.

Both sides seem to be exercising poor judgment in allowing sovereign Taiwan to be represented abroad through the “richness” of artifacts that span China’s history.

My view on this matter might seem to casually disregard the long, complex history of the Republic of China, but what needs to be considered is not the local grasp of the museum’s meaning, but what messages the collection sends to foreign audiences viewing the artifacts half a world away.

Consider how the museum has been a cornerstone of my understanding of Taiwan since before I set foot here. When I worked in Shanghai, a friend there highlighted the National Palace Museum as prime evidence that Taiwan belonged to China. For him, it was a matter of pride that beautiful Taiwan was connected so meaningfully to his motherland through Taipei’s curation of a shared history.

Two years after hearing this perspective, it was bolstered in a 2009 New York Times article, in which then-Beijing Palace Museum curator Zheng Xinmiao said that the collection is "China's cultural heritage jointly owned by people across the Taiwan Strait.”

Back in my home city of Vancouver, another Chinese friend was not so diplomatic. He spoke about Taiwan with great hostility, citing the National Palace Museum as full of treasures “stolen” by Taiwan.

Upon my first visit to Taiwan in 2011, to study Mandarin, a new friend offered to take me to the museum. I got another taste of strong feelings about the collection when I flippantly told him that we were going to see the “stolen treasures.” He was outraged.

“Stolen? Those priceless artifacts would have been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution if we hadn’t rescued them,” he said.

Since that part of history was long in the past, I wondered if now would be an apt time to return what belongs to China. No, my friend said — the items should remain in Taiwan for safekeeping as long as the Chinese Communist Party was in power.

All of these stances made sense to me at the time, having had little understanding of Taiwanese history and culture. I eventually accepted my Taipei friend’s assertion on face value, but when I finally visited the museum myself, I had to wonder: If the collection was in Taipei merely for safekeeping, why was it being proudly displayed on ornate grounds as though it belongs to Taiwan?

As a foreigner, I realize that it is not possible for me to intuitively comprehend all the contradictions transmitted by the National Palace Museum’s existence in Taiwan. Even now, after having studied and worked in Taiwan for six years, with three visits to the museum and countless conversations on these issues with local professors and friends who hold a variety of political views, I still find it highly inappropriate for Taiwan to be putting China’s history on proud display while officially denying its historical ties with China.

If my stance demonstrates ignorance, then perhaps that should be taken as my point: Imagine what kind of naive conclusions other foreigners might reach when viewing parts of the collection half a world away.

Presenting what China calls a “jointly owned heritage” to the Czech Republic, or anywhere else, only amplifies an ambiguous message about Taiwan’s sovereignty, much to Beijing’s advantage.

Only Taiwanese can innately understand the complexities of the Republic of China’s history in Taiwan. These issues should not be exported for foreign consumption, as doing so sends a simplified and contradictory message when removed from a local context.

Outsiders should be required to view this collection from within Taiwan, where the possibility exists that they might hear differing viewpoints from locals about what the museum means to them. 

Additionally, given this year's heightened tensions with China, it would be wise to not move the collection in ways that could be considered provocative. The museum has recognized this possibility by its insistence that Prague enact an anti-seizure law before hosting the museum’s collection. Such a request only highlights to the Czech people that the collection’s ownership is contentious, and one must wonder why the government in Prague would want to move this argument onto their soil.

If the Czech Republic wants to promote the “richness of Chinese culture,” as its local envoy claims, then perhaps a loan from the Palace Museum in Beijing might be more appropriate. If the goal is to promote Taiwanese culture, there are countless local galleries that might be pleased to loan works that better represent this nation’s history.

Hanyu Pinyin as a public relations tool

By Michael Riches

I lived in China for three months before coming to Taiwan. I have now been here for six years. Considering that I quickly turned my back on a good career opportunity in Shanghai and have lasted so long in Taipei should make obvious where my allegiance lies.

Although China was not my cup of tea, some aspects of the culture rubbed me the right way. One was its universal use of Hanyu Pinyin. Having an effective, consistent pronunciation system helped me sound like an ace to those who listened to my basic Mandarin. It also helped locals teach me new words on the back of a napkin.

If someone told me to meet them on Zhongbei Lu, I knew what to look for on a street sign or a map. I would not look at Chung Pei Lu and think I was in the wrong place — a phenomenon not uncommon in Taiwan.

Despite feeling pushed away from China by other factors, the positive interactions within the language environment boosted my confidence and drew me into the culture. The fondness that remains demonstrates how Hanyu Pinyin can be an incredible public relations tool for Mandarin-speaking cultures.

Taiwanese have been warm and welcoming in all the ways that match their reputation, but this society’s refusal to use a standardized system for romanizing Mandarin has been a mild insult to foreigners. It has forced me on occasion to mispronounce names of people, places, political parties and historical events, to the point where listeners doubted my ability to speak their language.

Conflict was not unusual in my first months in Taiwan. In one instance, I explained to a friend that I wanted to visit a place I pronounced as kow-see-ung.

“No such place exists,” he said.

I kept repeating the name more slowly and with different syllable stresses. When the penny dropped, he told me I was trying to say gow-shee-ong (Kaohsiung). I then told him he was pronouncing “k” incorrectly, which did not soothe our frayed nerves.

I chose to study the effects of Chinese romanization on cultural interactions for my postgraduate research in Taiwan from 2016 to 2018. I looked at the way functional transliteration welcomes a person into the language culture, while haphazard use has the opposite effect.

I approached my research through Marshall McLuhan’s media theory, popularized by the maxim “The medium is the message.” In this case, transliteration systems such as Hanyu Pinyin and Wade-Giles, or the “mixed spellings” used in Taiwan, are media that convey a number of linguistic and cultural messages to listeners, speakers and language learners.

Some of those messages, though, can be political. When Taiwan began discussing the need for a universal transliteration system about 20 years ago, unresolved debates erupted between those who recognized the benefits of adopting the globally recognized Hanyu Pinyin system, and those who found Hanyu’s “look and feel” objectionable based on its origins in communist China.

The government in 2002 proposed a Taiwan-made compromise called Tongyong Pinyin, which eliminated the supposedly Maoist-looking “x” and “q” from its order, but was officially discontinued in 2009.

The transliteration debate partly occurred within the pages of the Taipei Times, whose editorial board in 2008 was in favor of Taiwan adopting Hanyu Pinyin, but today continues to change Hanyu-spelled place names to Tongyong. Disentangling romanization’s communicative effects from its political associations was tortuous for many, and today the establishment would rather leave the topic buried.

I return to it, though, because I was struck in my research that the pundit class fighting Hanyu Pinyin did not seem to ask foreigners — the people who need to read signs and understand that “Sindian” and “Xindian” are not two separate places — which system would best facilitate their ability to function in the national language.
 
One part of my research was to discover if Hanyu Pinyin’s supposed Maoist message was shared by average Taiwanese.

I drafted a survey, completely in Chinese, that presented a list of Taiwanese place names along with their Hanyu Pinyin equivalents — Kaohsiung/Gaoxiong, Taitung/Taidong and so on. Without mentioning the phrase “Hanyu Pinyin,” I proposed a hypothetical situation in which the government adopts these “new” spellings. I presented a list of 16 positive, negative and neutral adjectives to associate with the change.

The 30 Taiwanese undergraduate participants most commonly chose “confusing” and “unnecessary” (they could select as many options as they saw fit). About half as many chose “friendly” and “modern,” but only one selected “communist” (presented as 共產黨人 in the survey).
 
When asked why such a change would take place, the written comments emphasized standardization and foreigners’ needs. None mentioned Chinese influence.

The result seems to show that the anxiety over Hanyu’s association with China simply belongs to establishment elites.

Another survey, which had 88 respondents and five follow-up interviews, showed that about 45 percent of Chinese were comfortable using Chinese names in Western communities, mostly based on pronunciation issues, but also because Hanyu Pinyin would mentally map to Chinese characters.

Even when mispronunciations occurred, the survey participants identified the misspoken name as being generated from within the Chinese language culture. As with a respondent named Qing, after years of being called king with no complaint, he decided to teach people the pronunciation of the “Chinese Q,” helping draw local Canadians toward his culture.

Only 7.4 percent of Taiwanese survey respondents — two — said they used Chinese names among foreigners, and one used a Hanyu Pinyin spelling.

I conclude from this that a lack of Hanyu Pinyin pushes locals away from their language culture when interacting with foreigners, as when places such as Taipei or Taichung are intentionally mispronounced to be understood.

The heart of my research, though, was an experiment in which I recorded five Canadians speaking Mandarin from Hanyu Pinyin and Wade-Giles text. The participants were based in Canada and had no prior Chinese-language experience. The three native Mandarin speakers who evaluated the recordings in Taiwan found 73 percent of the Hanyu Pinyin pronunciations were intelligible, while Wade-Giles scored 52 percent.

The raters looked uncomfortable hearing certain words mispronounced, while the speakers developed positive impressions of Chinese when associating articulation with Hanyu Pinyin.

Another survey presented a similar group of participants with Hanyu and Wade-Giles text, categorized by each system, along with a pronunciation chart. The words selected focused on each system’s most unique phonetic aspects. When asked which system they believed would elicit the most accurate pronunciation, 11 of the 12 participants chose Hanyu Pinyin.

The benefits of the system extend beyond foreigners being able to read signs. Locals also would likely enjoy hearing place names and personal names spoken correctly, and perhaps Taiwanese would have fun teaching newcomers new words using the alphabet.

Using Hanyu Pinyin is not akin to bowing to China. It is bowing to the rest of the world and welcoming newcomers into the local culture, creating lasting first impressions for foreigners and locals alike.

China’s Scotland analogy supports Taiwanese sovereignty

By Michael Riches

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin on Aug. 11 compared Taiwanese independence efforts with Scotland’s attempts to split from the UK.

Scotland held a referendum on independence in 2014, and the result was close. About 45 percent of voters checked the “yes” box to split from the UK. Hoping that the tide has turned in favor of independence, the Scots are angling for a second try.

The Canadian province of Quebec went through two independence votes as well. The first, in 1980, saw the “yes” camp garner about 40 percent of the votes. In 1995, the share climbed to 49.5 percent — although in that case, the "new strategic partnership" described on the ballot left some voters confused about whether an actual split from Canada was on the cards. The Canadian government accepted the ambiguity and campaigned against independence on Quebec's terms.

If Scotland "split itself from the UK, would the UK remain calm, show restraint, sit by and watch the situation deteriorate?” Wang asked.

I have heard a similar argument from Chinese who evoked Quebec’s struggle when discussing Taiwanese sovereignty.

“How would you feel if Quebec separated?” they asked.

Sad, I would reply, but respectful of their decision.

Wang and others in China do not realize how much they are defeating their own claims to Taiwan when they make such comparisons. If they want to draw parallels between Taiwan, Scotland and Quebec, then the Chinese would do as the British and Canadians do, and offer Taiwan a vote on independence — and then be willing to honor the result if (and when) it does not go in their favor. 

Given that the CCP believes Taiwan is Chinese territory, then it should be able to swallow its own analogy and provide its so-called "province" with the same peaceful territorial dispute mechanism that the UK grants Scotland.

Wang asked if the British would show "restraint" and "calm" in the face of losing Scotland. In fact, restraint and calm is exactly what they and the Canadian government did during independence campaigns. Instead of sending in their militaries, the central governments conducted measured campaigns to persuade residents to vote “no” and made their arguments with confidence. 

The UK and Canada may not have “sat by,” to use Wang's words, when faced with separatist campaigns, but they did work to convince their territories to remain united. Neither did they consider sovereignty movements a “deterioration.” Rather, the calls for independence were treated as good-faith appeals for self determination.

In fact, Canada passed a post-referendum law in 2000 that outlined how negotiations should take place if any province voted to separate. They do not use anti-secession laws, which would be abhorrent to Canadian and British values.

Wang should realize that Canada and the UK have indeed demonstrated how to “remain calm” in the face of separatist campaigns. Granting the privilege to leave is in fact what fosters goodwill and makes the population feel valued. The hostility shown toward Taiwan, on the other hand, has not exactly cultivated much love. 

Not that Taiwan needs China's permission to be independent, but if Beijing wants to make such comparisons, then by their own argument they should show the same goodwill to Taiwanese and stop making claims on a nation that would overwhelmingly reject Chinese control in a hypothetical referendum.

Perhaps I am naive to say that if China truly cared about the people of this nation, it would put its ego aside and offer Taiwanese the same dignity that the UK and Canada offer its people. 

Of course, I understand why that would never happen, and I am aware of the multitude historical and cultural issues that emerge when that surface is scratched.

But any time a Chinese leader or pundit compares Taiwan with Scotland or Quebec, they sound ridiculous. Canada and the UK learned long ago how to settle nationhood disputes peacefully, an approach China has yet to attempt with Taiwan.

US only after its own interests in Taiwan

By Michael Riches

Like a bull in a china shop, the second in line to the US presidency barreled through the nation, departing as suddenly as she arrived, expecting Taiwan to deal with the aftermath.

The US has called China’s response to the visit “provocative” and “irresponsible.” One could have said the same about the Aug. 2 drop-in by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. China’s simulated blockade and missile firings over Taipei, rather than being “provocative,” would be better described as “entirely predictable.”

Pelosi’s overnight layover had no stated purpose. It was left for Taiwanese to read between the lines and view the visit as symbolic, a way of letting China know “who’s boss.” It was an extravagant game of “I dare you to knock this chip off my shoulder,” except Pelosi put the chip on Taiwan’s shoulder and fled.

At a news conference with President Tsai Ing-wen at the Legislative Yuan on Aug. 3, Samson Ellis of Bloomberg News told Pelosi that Taiwan has paid a cost for her visit, and “is likely to continue to do so over the coming days and weeks.”

Ellis asked: “What concrete, tangible benefits can you promise Taiwan to offset the cost of your trip?”

Pelosi could name none in her rambling answer. The most she could muster at the beginning of her response was that the US “has just passed the chips and science act,” something not contingent on her visit, implying that the “good economic exchanges” she continually referred to in the remainder of her reply could be undone if Taiwan becomes difficult in its relationship with the superpower.

Anyone who views the US as Taiwan’s friend should remember that partnership with a world power is always conditional. Taiwan supplies its protector with much-needed semiconductor chips and buys its weapons in return. That is the gist of Taiwan’s meaning to the US.

More than that, keeping Taiwan out of the hands of China is essential to US interests in the Indo-Pacific region. If it were not, Taiwan’s “freedom and democracy” would be of no significance. Witness Iran in 1953, Brazil in 1964, Indonesia in 1965, Chile in 1970, Argentina in 1976, Ukraine in 2014 — each having a democratically elected government overthrown with US involvement simply because they stopped playing ball with the West.

Even Western allies are not immune from US meddling. The Australian Financial Review uncovered covert CIA participation in successful efforts in 1975 to remove Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam from power. Former CIA contractor Christopher Boyce later supported the claim, saying that Whitlam’s plans to close US military bases threatened US interests in the region.

The pieces being played on this board have nothing to do with Washington's concern for Taiwan’s freedom, democracy or human rights, or Beijing's fond regard for Taiwan’s historical significance to the motherland. The game is all about the US and China preventing each other from establishing military outposts in Taiwan.

Hawaii provides a comparative example. The US annexed the country in 1898 for the islands’ strategic importance in the Spanish-American War. US business stakes in Hawaii aided efforts to oust the royal family, who by all accounts were providing well for their people, but were also curbing foreign capitalist influence on the nation’s values.

The illegal US takeover was all about money and military might, not freedom or democracy.

Annexation of Hawaii has given the US — and the West by extension — invaluable influence and jurisdiction throughout the Pacific. “Occupation” of Taiwan would extend that domination right up to China’s doorstep.

I do not support China’s claim to Taiwan, but it takes a certain degree of blindness to think that Beijing would not do its utmost to prevent an enemy superpower from establishing bases 180km away across the strait — something that would surely follow from Taiwanese independence.

Being a vassal state of the US would certainly be a more favorable situation for Taiwan than being absorbed by China. However, Taiwanese should not be naive about what the US wants.

Washington is beating the drums of war in the strait as loudly as Beijing, and Taiwan is simply a pawn. Pelosi, as a rook on this chessboard, engaged in a selfish ploy to burnish her legacy by demonstrating that she alone could goad China into encircling Taiwan and setting off thousands of tonnes of gunpowder.

Washington might try to pass off the fireworks as a celebration of freedom and democracy, but those watching the missiles fly over their homeland should at least be skeptical of US intentions.

Scenes from the new class struggle in Lotusland

Moving to Vancouver changed me and my family in immeasurably good ways. We came here from Toronto when I was 11 years old, in 1979. We also had a couple of memorable family vacations in B.C. before that. My parents seemed enchanted with the place. When my mom was a little girl in London, Ontario, her brother told her about the special place on the west coast where people played tennis in February. Then there was the shoeshine guy in my dad's Toronto office tower, who took a holiday to Vancouver and was never heard from again. The allure turned Vancouver into Canada's mythical hidden gem. The city was a joke to the more serious folks back east, who thought of it as an empty place where life stopped. But that was also the appeal. You could fill the emptiness with the personality of your choice and live at your own pace.

The Vancouver I remember from those times was a modest place filled with laid-back artsy types. My dad opened his own law practice and wore jeans to work just because he could, a fashion choice that didn’t impede his success. He took up cooking, preparing family meals on the balcony barbecue, and did his own landscaping and gardening around the house. Mom had more free time. My brother took me on spontaneous hiking trips up Grouse Mountain, before there was a Grind. Deer would scavenge through our backyard for food, and we had to shush raccoons away from the cat dish we left on the patio. We all seemed so much more relaxed, and I developed a tangible, spiritual connection with the surrounding nature, which I never took for granted.

I know for certain my life would have been more sterile and perhaps more threatened had our family not left Toronto. While some of the kids I knew back in the Ontario suburbs were getting into cocaine and LSD at age 13, I was being left alone by the bullies in my North Van high school because I made them laugh. I was a passive, easily intimidated kid, and I credit Vancouver for helping me let go of my inhibitions and feel liberated and engaged with people from a variety of backgrounds.

I had always wanted to know what it was like to live abroad, though. Just for a few years. Vancouver was my home, it was where I wanted to permanently settle, but I also knew that working overseas, whether the Pacific side or the Atlantic side, or south of the equator, would make me a better, stronger person. An education you don’t get at school. So, since  early 2008, I've had some good stays in China, Singapore, and Taiwan, not to mention some lengthy excursions to Japan before and during those times.

When it was time to come back, some of my friends warned me not to. There were also the rafts of “I’m-breaking-up-with-you-Vancouver” op-eds you’d see in the press. The griping about Vancouver didn’t all start with the housing crisis, though. As far back as 1989, when I got my first apartment at age 21, co-workers were shaking their heads at the $400 a month I was paying for a bachelor suite. “You could get a 2-bedroom apartment in Calgary for that!” Cost of living has been the most favored of the perennial gripes of West Coasters, and after a while I simply tuned out. I loved it here. You get what you pay for.

Then there was the era in the 1990s when journalists went on a roll trying to paint Vancouver as “No Fun City.” This at a time when we had five nights of summer fireworks at English Bay, Pride weekend, the Indy, the Jazz Festival, Lollapalooza, Bard on the Beach, the Children’s Festival, Folk Festival, Writer’s Festival… but of course, these had to be Dickensian times because drinking in the park was forbidden. I wondered what happened to friendly, laid back, “hike in the morning, beach in the afternoon” Vancouver everyone bragged about a decade earlier.

In the early aughts, the complaints shifted to Vancouver’s flakiness. I’d hear people mutter about wanting to move to Alberta or anywhere because the city was full of indecisive half-wits who wouldn’t return phone calls. As if you had to be best friends with everybody – you can’t just find five decent friends in a city of three million people?

While I was away in the 2010s, the whinging turned to affordability. Back to that old “you can get a two-bedroom in Calgary for that” trope.

Vancouverites, throughout my entire life here, have been crying wolf. The thing about crying wolf, though, is that the wolf eventually arrives.

THE CRISIS: A SLOW PROCESS OF DISCOVERY

This is my second attempt at relocating back to my home city. The first time, between 2011 and 2015, I returned from working in Asia to rent a large one-bedroom apartment west of Denman Street. I happily paid the $1,400 rent on an average income of $25,000 a year, helped out by taking in a foreign student who took my room while I slept in a well-partitioned dining area. Granted, two people sharing a one-bedroom apartment isn’t ideal, but I chalked up my underemployment woes not to Vancouver’s “supposed” housing crisis, but to a corruption of capitalism that has been festering away in Western cities the world over. Any griping about Vancouver’s housing problems, as if we were unique, struck me as arrogant and giving the city more credit than it was worth.

I eventually went back to Asia because that $25,000 a year was mostly coming from my RRSPs, and three years of dwindling savings, plus many hundreds of unanswered, soul-crushing job applications, made life unsustainable. The crisis in Vancouver didn’t seem to be about housing. For me, it was a lousy job market coupled with byzantine HR practices that were reliant on technology and personality tests, something that was foreign to this aging job aspirant. But I didn’t expect it to be any different elsewhere in North America. These were changing times, not a Vancouver phenomenon, I thought.

I couldn’t bear to update my resume or sell myself to dismissive HR reps one more time, so I went for a linguistics masters degree in Taiwan.

In January this year, upon graduation, I planned to head back to Vancouver with better hopes of employment. This is when I started to hear the warnings. “Don’t.” “This city has changed.” “It’s way too unaffordable.” But I’d heard it all before.

In a Tyee article that went viral last year, Jessica Barrett laid out quite a gripping diatribe on her way out the door. Although I couldn’t argue with many of the facts she laid out about disappearing neighborhoods and skeezy landlords ripping off the most desperate citizens, it struck me as more of what I’d been hearing for 30 years. What offended me at the time was that she and her boyfriend, given a conservative estimate of their incomes (she as editor of Vancouver’s largest monthly magazine, he as a graphic designer), should have been able to afford quite a comfortable life here beyond the one she described.

I have now learned that her story is one that must be experienced to be authentically understood. So here I want to look at Vancouver’s “housing problem” not from the point of view of affordability, but how the situation here corrodes friendships, causes us to view community members with suspicion, and diminishes us as people.

THE NEW SUB-DIVISION OF CLASSES

Before I moved to Asia (the first time) in early 2008, I considered myself to be lower-middle-class. Not middle-class enough to own property, but enough to have a comfortable apartment downtown, travel to Tokyo or Singapore every year (with free digs from family and friends), tuck away some RRSPs, and enjoy a cheap meal out a few times a week. Since coming back to Vancouver (the second time), I find that I can no longer consider myself anywhere in the middle-class spectrum.

It’s not the high rents that are the barrier. Since coming back with my master’s degree, I now get work. I’m employed and pulling in enough, technically, to live in a nice apartment in one of the neighborhoods I love. The problem now is that landlords won’t rent to me.

Building managers these days ask for bank statements. Whether it’s legal or not isn’t the point. It’s probably illegal, but they do it and without consequence. There are so many newly minted millionaires who sold their houses for a fortune, who are now happy to rent a small place on a tree-lined street, that it’s most enticing for landlords to rent to whomever has the fattest bank balance. Why? Let me dig into this a bit. 

The thing Vancouverites don’t understand about government-regulated rent increases is that the set amount – say, 2% – only gives the tenant the right to challenge a higher increase. If the landlord raises rent by 3% and the tenant pays it, that increase becomes legal as soon as the first cheque is written because the tenant signaled agreement to it. Someone with $5,000 in the bank is highly likely to take a day off work to haul it out to New Westminster and fight the increase at a tribunal. Someone with $30,000, well, maybe, maybe not. Someone with $5 million in the bank, though, is far less likely to do something as “working class” as to attend a tribunal to save $20 a month. This is what probably goes through landlords’ minds. The richer the tenants, the more the landlord can get away with.

The plethora of vacancy signs is deceiving. There was a day when renting an apartment was as simple as calling the number on a vacancy sign and the place was yours if you were the first to write a deposit cheque and pass a reasonable credit check. Now, landlords use the vacancy signs to collect applications. You might like a suite, but so did about 10 other people in the past week, and the landlord will leisurely pick their favourite from the pile of collected bank statements.

Renoviction: When an entire building is evicted so the landlord can upgrade the building to luxury status and charge premium rents

There is a much broader, big-picture problem here, though. Even if I were able to secure my own pad, the housing problems here have caused new divisions in class. I’m going to relate a few common “Vancouver shitshow” tales, but what I’ll examine among them are the deeper social problems that become trickle-down issues even for those who are well housed.

Upon returning here this past February, I was invited to crash with a friend in his guest room. I started a part-time teaching job a couple of days after landing, and I paid my friend what I could afford. As I took on more work through a second job, I began to look for apartments. Then the rejections rolled in, which extended the time I stayed in my friend’s home.

So I took to looking at furnished rooms for rent. This is where I noticed how class structures were stratifying. Up until recently, Vancouver’s lower middle classes and the upper classes seemed to blend in and share civic spaces without getting in each other’s hair. In my social groups, some friends and acquaintances had condos and impressive professional careers while others struggled as coffee baristas or such. All of us were in our varied jobs and living situations based on our goals, our needs, and our wants. We didn’t consciously or unconsciously divide each other into separate social classes. We’d all have interesting things to talk about and stories to share, and viewed each other with a measure of equality.

That is less and less the case now. When someone today is renting a room from another renter, or is one of multiple people crammed into a shared house, it’s not because of a life choice, but a desperate necessity. It is not a temporary stage of life as it once was, but quicksand trap. As a result, such people feel ghettoized and fit in less with those who cashed in on the property boom. I now avoid social situations with old friends who “got it made” because I’m a bundle of anxiety with nothing positive or interesting to say about being back in Vancouver. I don’t particularly want to indulge home-owning friends in talk of their redecorating woes, something I once would have enjoyed as casual banter. There are a few well-off friends who remain genuine, warm people, but in general I witness how class groups are isolating themselves more within their own bubbles, simply to stay sane.

What’s even worse now than a few years ago are the rifts within the lower-middle-class spectrum. A few weeks ago, I watched a homeless man steal the last cigarette from another homeless guy as he slept on the curb. Likewise, the lower-middle classes, in their own desperation, are taking advantage of anyone within their own spectrum when one is more vulnerable than the other. Particularly, I’m referring to renters who have their own apartments and sublet space to those like me who don’t qualify for a lease. These individuals are not unlike the upper-middle classes who bought property at the right time – it’s just that these folks rented at the right time and don’t dare leave the market. As their rents rise and incomes flatline, they try to squeeze another body into the apartment. Nothing wrong with this – I did exactly the same thing a few years ago.

The room I prepared for a student in 2012

However, I unloaded possessions and made proper modifications for a private living space before showing the apartment to prospective tenants. This summer, in my own search for a similar situation with the roles reversed, I found that Vancouverites are trying to have it both ways – not wanting to give up any part of their lifestyle, not dispose of any mildly treasured knick-knack, show their “suites” unmodified with vague promises of what it will look like by move-in, all the while asking for the maximum amount of cash they can squeeze out of someone in a desperate situation. The archetypal “cat lady” is now hoarding tenants instead of pets.

The housing crisis has turned these renters into rentiers – a class of people who gain income from access to property. Up until recently, the rentier class would have been the owners of rental buildings, or homeowners who leased out their property. Now, those who were squeezed out of the rental market – those like myself who left the city temporarily, or perhaps others who got renovicted – are no longer dependent on landlords, but on people who were once equals within our social class. Leaseholders with a few extra square feet of space now have something of great value (something that had little value ten years ago) making them into a new sub-rentier class.

These sub-rentiers have their own landlords to answer to while becoming landlords themselves. The problem is that the sub-tenants don’t have access to modes of recourse that normal renters have when promises are not met. And this new rentier class takes full advantage of that.

While I was searching for my own corner of the city to lay my head, every basement-suite and “room-for-rent” leaseholder uttered the phrase, “This stuff will be gone by the time you move in.” Piles of books on the stove (“feel free to cook, but, uh, I’ll find a place for these later”), living rooms and hallways cluttered with boxes of things, sofas covered in someone’s entire CD collection, or in one case, a room that was advertised as furnished was completely empty, with a promise that a bed and such would arrive before move-in. I knew full well that I was being sold a bill of goods, but some desperate soul was certainly going to take each of these places.

Before: Arranging my apartment for two people in 2012. This took a few hours. After: I slept behind this partition of bookshelves. Leaseholders today are trying to rent out parts of their apartment in the "Before" state, hoping the new tenant will figure out what to do. 

I eventually took a room in a one-bedroom West End apartment, trusting that the dubious circumstances presented to me would be rectified by the time of my move-in. My July 1st move-in date was delayed by three days, on short notice, because the leaseholder wanted to pop into the Jazz Festival and didn’t have time to get the room ready (so much for No Fun City). When I moved in, the promised modifications weren’t done. I was paying $1,000 for a room while the leaseholder slept on a couch outside of my door because she couldn’t decide how she wanted to arrange her own living space. There were promises of her new bed arriving tomorrow or the day after, but each day she changed her mind about how she wanted to divide the living room or what kind of bed she wanted to buy. This went on for weeks. As a result, the living room was a shambles of various junk unearthed from re-arrangements – a chandelier on the floor surrounded by boxes of records, empty planters, a giant exercise ball – while I couldn’t cook because the stove, sink, and counters were jammed tight with unwashed pots and pans and gadgets that left no room to manoeuvre.

While one might be tempted to say “Welcome to the new Vancouver,” here’s what I found especially sad about the situation. A few years ago, this woman and I were in the same social class as downtown renters. If we had met each other at work or through shared hobbies, I would have really enjoyed her company. She was artsy, a little bit offbeat, loved all sorts of music, had a deep appreciation of the natural environment.

But because of this city’s new realities, we found ourselves in a transactional relationship where one of us had power over the other. How do you tell the landlord you live with to clean her own kitchen or get rid of possessions? How do you risk conflict with a “boss” of sorts who is sleeping outside your door? It was an abnormal situation that we had to pretend was ordinary. Not long ago, we simply would have been two equal, like-minded people sharing a community and minding our own business while living independent lives.

I had some sympathy for her situation, and I could understand why she didn’t want to part with the 20 teacups and multiple stacks of dishes she would never use. These possessions probably followed her through various homes for most of her life, maybe even handed down by her own mother, just as my apartment was once filled with things that were virtually useless but nonetheless spoke to some part of my identity and family history. While materialism isn’t a great thing in excess, we should still be able to fill our homes with things that give us comfort. Having said that, I’ve had to make the hard choice to put my collection of books, records, art, and family china into a storage locker, so I harbour some resentment toward a “landlord” who isn’t willing to do the same to make room for me beyond the bare necessities. This situation wasn’t unique; all the rooms I looked at before and after living there hinted at the same cake-and-eat-it-too attitudes from the new sub-rentier class.

I had to walk away from that living situation because of some boundary issues and the precarious nature of living in a home that I wasn’t supposed to be in (she instructed me not to tell the building manager I was living there, despite it being legal to share an apartment). In the process, though, my friendships have been altered. While true friends should help each other in hard times, I feel that I have needed more help than any employable, well-educated professional should ask for. Which leaves me feeling guilty and awkward about asking for such help, calculating who I can ask to stay with month to month and which friendship will be damaged the least by such a request. A couple of friendships have actually been lost along the way, while the strong friendships have been unnecessarily tested. Even when I pay market value for a friend’s room, this turns a healthy social friendship in a transactional one. My own literal and metaphorical baggage has darkened the doorsteps of five households (two of them twice) of friends who I would have rather not burdened.

Living elsewhere in the world, even when sharing a home with strangers, I was living a purposeful, independent life. In Vancouver, I am a problem that my friends are handling with grace on their part, with embarrassment on mine.

And that is the proverbial straw that breaks me.

My urge to escape this place is not spurred by the cost of living per se, but the way our new reality has negatively affected the way we relate to both friends and strangers in our communities, and the way we perceive ourselves in return. The new class structures have poisoned our relationships and tinged our personalities with ugly hues. I can see how I’ve become the type of person I once would have looked on with disdain. I would have said to another person in my situation, “You’re the common denominator in these stories. What are you doing to bring all this drama into your life?” It’s something I wonder if my more well-off acquaintances have thought about me, so now I avoid them out of shame.

The ironic thing is that my social relationships in Vancouver seemed to be more functional when I wasn’t here. Overseas, I was in charge of my own life and had far fewer things to whinge about. My friends and I had interesting things to share with each other, even if those chats were by WhatsApp or Facebook.

Embers of resentment are also burning a small hole in my soul. Where I once enjoyed cycling through wealthy Kerrisdale neighbourhoods, admiring the beautiful old houses of the rich, their money as old as the trees cloaking their boulevards; where I once had no problem hearing about a friend’s inheritance or property investments; where I once lived vicariously through the stories of acquaintances who had more fun with more money that I’d ever know – now I’ve become the bitter, envious person I would have once avoided. Instead of walking through a West End farmer’s market and seeing it as colourful part of my community, I now just see “privileged” middle-class people fussing over expensive artisanal jam.

In this respect, I empathize much more with the actual poor and homeless. If something were to tragically happen to me now, I would be listed in the papers as one of those people “of no fixed address.” I am fortunate that I have savings and can afford to start again somewhere else. Unfortunately, that has become my only option, because actual homelessness feels as though it’s just around the corner.

THE MYTH OF THE “LEFT COAST”

Vancouver is a victim of what some are calling the death-throes of capitalism – the playing out of Marx’s observation that well-regulated capitalism gets gradually deregulated and corrupted when those with the most money gain control of political systems. In some ways our problems are no different from what is happening elsewhere (San Francisco, Sydney, New York) and what has happened elsewhere in the past (London or Hong Kong in the 1970s). The thing is, I naïvely felt that there was something special about this place that would make the culture immune to the social effects of neoliberalism. Perhaps because those aforementioned cities have well-established economies and professional classes that are at more dramatic risk when rapid change occurs. What’s the worst an economic shift could do to a bunch of West Coast hippies? Is all this our own fault for clamouring to be a “world class city”?

Artist's depiction of a riot on the East Side street that is right outside the shopping complex it adorns

Vancouver would be worth fighting for, high rents and all, if the money virus that infected us hadn’t changed the way we all think about each other and how we view our places in the community. If we were all the “Left Coast” hippies we are reputed to be, we’d be calling for more socialist remedies to our housing crisis. Perhaps the city could take away the right of landlords to choose their own tenants, and leave the applicant selection process to independent bureaucrats. An extreme measure to be sure, but this is what landlords should get for illegally demanding unredacted bank statements and only renting to the rich. We could also insist that most (not just some) new developments be rental properties, and not the luxury sort with granite countertops and in-suite laundry that seem to be the new norm. Or how’s this for a mind-blowing idea: the province could regulate house and rental prices, telling property owners that they cannot sell or rent for more than the government-assessed value.

Of course, these ideas are full of flaws and there are massive loopholes that could be exploited. But crisis-proportion problems need creative brainstorming to ultimately find a workable solution. Some radical idea, no matter how imperfect, must be put on the table, if only to show landlords that they must start regulating their own greed before someone else does it for them. However, when I present my ideas to other suffering Vancouverites, they tend to defend the neoliberal capitalist systems that created this mess in the first place. Even those who suffer and complain will say, "Landlords are business-people, they have a right to make money." There is no substantive urge for change, no recognition that the systems that caused the crisis aren’t going to provide a solution. Likewise, talk of banning foreign property ownership is met with gaslighting charges of racism, ignoring the fact that Permanent Residents – the immigrants who come from a variety of social classes and contribute to our communities – would not be included in such a ban.

What I find particularly odious is when I hear young people venting about how they will never be able to own property, as if that was ever the norm. My parents were renters from 1984 until the day they died 10 years ago. My grandparents on both sides likewise died as renters. We weren’t exactly a working-class family either; my dad and his father were both prominent lawyers with their name on the door.

Vancouver’s rental-heavy West End has traditionally been home to pensioners, and regardless of whether they rent by choice or not, I have never heard a Vancouver senior in a rental apartment complain about being cheated out of a life of privilege the way some young people do here. If we could all accept that there is some economic sense and no shame in renting, perhaps we’d fight harder for that right – the right to simply have a home throughout our lifetimes, not the right for each and every one of us to own land and profit off the next generation. The Ponzi scheme of property investment is partly why are in this mess now.

BE THE CHANGE YOU CAN’T?

I wanted to come back to Vancouver full of optimism – “be the change you want,” “the grass is greener where you water it” – but at a certain point, dime-store philosophy doesn’t cut it. Telling a middle-class person to meditate or keep a gratitude journal to deal with depression might be good counsel, as it was for me at one point, but I'm at a place on the social ladder where yoga and positive affirmations are not going to put a roof over my head. I now realize how bourgeois my old life was, viewing the homeless with a distanced liberal guilt. Now that I cannot choose what part of town I live in, I cannot choose to live away from the "undesireables," commuting amongst them frequently. My liberal guilt has been replaced by a panicked sense of foreshadowing.

Vancouver's world-renowned Ovaltine Cafe. Seriously, it's world renowned.

A friend of mine who tried immigrating here from Taiwan but moved back once said, “Vancouver shrinks people.” I thought he was just being cynical or looking for a reason to move back home. But now I see how true that is. I left an editing career in Singapore in 2011 to find myself unemployable in Vancouver and eventually working in a warehouse (a job I loved; they were the most “real” colleagues I’ve ever had). Then this year I turned down a university teaching job in Taiwan because I thought the sacrifice was worth it for the luxury of what I believed Vancouver’s healthy environment to be, only to find myself too riddled with housing anxiety to enjoy much of anything, including other people’s company. While in Taiwan, I longed for fluid conversations in unbroken English, without having to simplify my vocabulary for my English-challenged friends. Now that I’m back, I wonder what the point is of sophisticated verbal repartee when conversations get stuck in a feedback loop of property hardships and property successes – neither of which are pleasant or intellectually engaging in my current state. As linguistically strained as some of my discussions were with the Taiwanese, we talked about politics, culture, national identity, and all the fun and not-so-fun stuff that connects us as humans.

What has become obvious in Vancouver is how meaning in friendship becomes diminished when we are robbed of participation in our communities, and when our conversations become tinged with anger and envy.

I have pretty much made the decision to flee Vancouver, this time permanently. Many people I know here wonder why I kept trying to come back. I hope they can see that my love for this city has kept me committed to this place, an attachment so intense that it has somewhat blinded me to its perils. The whole point of living abroad has been to return to Vancouver as a better person and a better citizen. We would all do better to live in other countries for a while and come back with some fresh ideas about what it means to be a Canadian, to be a Vancouverite, in a world that is closing in on us.

The problem is, Vancouver’s gates slam shut when you leave. Even if you’re willing to start over, as I am, the gatekeepers only let you back in with a visitor’s pass.

The barriers to meaningful participation in my city have made me feel more like a foreigner here than I do when I’m actually on a residence permit in another country. When it becomes easier to put a roof over your head in far away places, when your life can be lived with more independence and dignity in another country, one has to question what citizenship or civic responsibility truly mean anymore.

If there is one thing that pushes me out of Vancouver again, it won’t be the cost of living, but the odd way this city turns anyone who strives to live here, rich or poor, into part of its problem.

Why shouldn't Bernie contest the nomination? A Canadian's view

Being a Canadian, I shouldn’t be so emotionally invested in the American primaries. But the message of one particular candidate resonates with people around the world who long for America to be a leader in a New New Deal that would benefit so many who are outside its borders. I could write an essay about how Bernie Sanders is a hero to me and many others who’ve been victimized by the removal of so many of capitalism's safety nets. Bernie is just one more in a line of heroes, the most prominent yet, after Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn and Greece’s Yanis Varoufakis. New leaders who are truly fighting the Big Money Establishment that's sucking money out of the public's bank accounts, one sub-class at a time.

But here’s the thing that puzzles me about the Democratic primary. Sure, Bernie Sanders stands for ideas and principles not embraced by Hillary Clinton. They are candidates with stark differences. But what is it about his ideas that the Democratic establishment finds so offensive? Every one of his policy positions has been voiced by the left in one way or another. The rich are too rich. Corrupt Wall Street bankers should go to jail. There’s too much influence of money in politics. I've heard this from Democrats before the Sanders Surprise. Sure, maybe you say Bernie hasn’t fleshed out his ideas, his plans for breaking up the banks are impractical, he’s a dreamer. Hillary is more of a realist, she has better credentials, more leadership experience.

But how can anyone on the left not defend him just a little bit? As an objective observer who can’t vote in US elections, I would have thought that opposition to Bernie would be passive – “He’s an idealist. But yeah, it would be great if the real world were like that.”

Yet the anger, the vitriol! Okay, some of that comes from Bernie’s supporters too. But when I hear the calls for Bernie to drop out of the race, calls I hear from educated, intelligent Americans, I can’t help but think … isn't that un-American? Wasn’t the country founded on democratic principles, completely in opposition to the monarchist practice of coronations?

So here’s my own take, my own rebuttal to all the arguments Hillary’s supporters are using to pressure Bernie out of the race. I’m not saying there's unreasonableness within his support base, too. The point is – everyone should be entitled to cast their vote.

Bernie Sanders has lost. He should drop out of the race.

Yes, it looks unlikely that he can win enough delegates to clinch the nomination. But what’s the harm in letting everyone cast their vote and have it counted? Isn’t this just what we do in a democracy – let everyone vote?

But what he’s proposing is UN-democratic! He wants the Superdelegates to change their votes!

I’ve read his quotes on this. It seems to me that all he’s requesting is that the Superdelegates mirror their votes to match the popular public vote. If he doesn't win the popular vote, he has no argument with the Superdelegates.

But they’ve already declared for Hillary!

Wait a minute. Isn’t the concept of appointed Superdelegates undemocratic in the first place? Even worse, they declared their voting intentions far ahead of the convention. Doesn’t that give the impression of a rigged system? Even if Superdelegates are completely legitimate, Bernie has the right to ask them to vote for him. And they have the right to tell him to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. And they will. It's a moot issue.

Bernie is ripping the party apart. All he is doing is fostering discord and personal distrust toward Hillary, who is surely going to be our candidate.

Well, that's politics, to a certain extent. Hillary said some pretty nasty things about Obama in 2008. In fact, she accused him of many of the same sins that Bernie’s supporters now accuse her of (taking money from oil companies, being influenced by donors). If Hillary could get away with slagging Obama without tearing the party apart (and they still won, didn't they?) they will survive this bout of political repartee. 

The two of them are having a vigorous debate, yes, and some wacky things are being said by supporters on both sides. But how is he tearing the party apart by appealing to new voters and bringing them into the Democratic Party?

Because his supporters won’t vote for Hillary in the general election! They say “Bernie or Bust.”

Any supporter of his who doesn’t vote for Hillary in the general election wouldn’t vote for her regardless of Bernie! Seriously, do you think he’s convinced any supporter of Hillary to vote for Trump, or to just not vote? The “Bernie of Bust” crowd is a minority. There is a net gain for Hillary in this.

Yeah, but what about celebrity supporters like Susan Sarandon?

You are ignoring the more influential Sanders supporters like Bill Maher, who is urging his viewers weekly to vote for Hillary if their preferred candidate doesn’t win. Susan Sarandon voted for Ralph Nader and other independents in the past. She was never a Hillary supporter. Bernie did nothing to “turn” her. Again, the Bernie supporters who won't vote for Hillary in the 2016 general election never would have voted for her in the first place.

But Bernie isn’t a real Democrat! He’s an Independent who has brought his hoard into the Democratic party to cause nothing but trouble and mayhem.

In the 2000 election, Ralph Nader was taken to task for siphoning liberal votes and allowing George W. Bush to defeat Al Gore. Nader’s followers were implored to vote Democrat, and they are speculatively blamed for helping Bush wedge his way into the White House. Bernie is bringing the Nader crowd into the Democratic party and he will ask them to vote Democrat even if he loses. He has already said he will support Hillary if (when) she wins. So what ... he’s not a real Democrat. Would you have been happier if he had run as an Independent and split the vote? Isn't he doing exactly what was implored of Ralph Nader in 2000, to work with the Democrats?

Speaking of 2000, I think about Florida. I think about how rightly incensed Democrats were because not all the votes were counted. A Republican-appointed court made certain that the vote-counting ceased because the votes had to be counted by hand (like in most functioning democracies). There are similarities here. Hillary’s supporters want to stop the rest of the votes from being cast, pointing to the DNC-appointed Superdelegates as the supreme arbiters of Hillary’s fate.

If you think that actual voting and letting the process play out to the final count is undemocratic, well, welcome to Florida. You have something in common with the Republicans. You are certain she is going to win the nomination. And if she gets it, there is no way Trump can beat her. This is the closest thing to a coronation that the Democrats have ever seen. And yet you still feel aggrieved.

The worst possible scenario Bernie Sanders presents is that he’s a cranky old man tilting at windmills. If you don’t like him, laugh at him. But let his supporters vote.