The New Canadian

Beijing, as the capital city of China, embraced more than 5000 years history. Nowadays development in Beijing combines its traditional aesthetics and modern senses together to enlarge the functionality of the capital city. There are 21,700,000 people living in this city, and 37.9% of them are from outside Beijing, based on Sohu News. Recent decades, many people come to Beijing for better work and study opportunities, and in China, people called it “北漂” (Bei Piao), which means “drift to the north”. With contribution from these drifters, Beijing now is a forest of cement, and people are locked into these boxes. Jia Han was someone who used to live in these boxes.

Jia moved to Beijing when she was graduated from high school at her age of 18, and she was getting into the Communication University of China to study her bachelor degree. When she graduated, she was luckily recruited by the China Central Television, which is a dream job for many people. However, nobody knows that how stressful Jia’s work it, especially in a situation of full of competitors. Jia said that working in Beijing would really make me die someday from overwork. Especially in the field of communication and media, your boss wants you to be ready at any times because the news would never wait for you. After few years of the heavy load of work in the CCTV, Jia decided to change to the field of public relation. She was happy with her new job because the new job is relatively flexible and less stressful, but her family and the society thought that she should really think about her marriage, which is described as a “life event” in Chinese culture. Once again, she thought she could really get rid of constraints from these “boxes”, but she was disappointed. Starting at that time, her willingness to go to see the world outside embarks.

“I was not wrong”, Jia said, “it is the society who gets ill”. Indeed, it is very common in Chinese social value that females should get married when they reach the suitable ages. If a female would not do so, invisible pressure would come from her family, friends, and society. Jia thought her life should not be constrained by social values that she does not agree. She does not want to see herself living like a 60-years-old when she is 20. She wants her soul to be set free to go somewhere she has never travelled, and after her careful consideration, she decided to continue her study of Master degree at the University of Ottawa.

She felt frustrated when she experienced an economic difficulty since her job in Beijing would bring here very considerable income compares to her friends around. However, Once she thinks about to take good care of her free soul, she would never look back. She currently applied her identity of the permanent resident since she enjoyed her life here in Canada. She said she would be always on her way to somewhere has not been explored. So where is her next stop? Nobody knows?

Same as “the tide of studying abroad”, there is also a term called “the tide of migration” to describe large-scale migration behaviours in Chinese society. China has experienced three times of migration trends since the establishment of the People Republic of China in 1949. According to Lianhe Zaobao, a major Singaporean newspaper publication, the increasing immigration to other countries in China, starting from 2010 to current time, is considered as “the third tide of immigration”.

Before Chinese government implemented the policy of reform and opening up to the outside world in 1978, there is almost no migration in China expect stowaways because of the special political and international situation at that time. Even there are stowaways, the most common destinations of them are either Hong Kong or Macau. The first tide of migration took place at the end of the 1970s when people who have connections with people abroad reunited with them, and the second tide of migration occurred in the 1980s when skill works move to western countries for making better livings. Differ from the previous two, people from the third tide of migration are usually wealthy elite or skilled elite from the middle class, and today’s protagonists Motong Lu and Wenyan Li fall into this categories.

Motong and her mother Wenyan have been living in Toronto for 4 years since they landed Canada in 2013 as new immigrants. Before they started the new life in Canada, Wenyan had a steady job with considerable income in a high position of one of the major banks in Shenyang, China, and Motong was in her secondary education at one of the leading high schools in Shenyang. Sometimes it really makes people ask that what makes middle-class family abandon their prosper life to start a brand-new one in a foreign country. The mother, Wenyan said that the primary reason for immigration is that she wants a better education environment for her daughter, and then for a better living environment. She has specifically chosen Canada because she believes Canada has done a very good job in the phase of softcore, like living environment, food safety, and humanistic quality.

Not only Motong’s family, the majority of Chinese middle-class families would consider education for the next generation as the main factor to take the courage to leave their decent jobs and wealthy lives. Over decades, the one-child policy in China structured Chinese families in a smaller size than before, and parents put way more concentration on this only child of their families. The exam-oriented education system made Chinese student under huge pressure, and that is also a factor to cause the tide of studying abroad. Sometimes immigration is also a risk, said Wenyan, “many of my friends here who used to be professors, doctors, senior engineers work in the minimum wage because of language barrier”.  However, their values make them believe if their children could live better, they would be satisfied.

Being a single parent family, Montong and Wenyan had experienced many obstacles when they first came to Canada. Language is the No. 1 problem in their mind, and that made their family has no major income in the very beginning years. While Montong studied at Seneca College, her mother also started to learn English in an ESL (English as Second Language) program that founded by the government. Now, with 4 years hard work, Motong graduated from Aviation Operation program at Seneca College and continued her study in another bachelor degree at York University while Wenyan has been a first-year student of Community Service program at George Brown College. Their life is on the way to getting better for sure in Canada.

The strong emotional bond between them and hometown is always the food. Nostalgia to Motong has always been her grandmother’s Chinese dishes although she still thinks Canada is a place that you can eat cuisine in every culture. A bite of grandma’s handmade dumpling could raise happiness immediately. China embraces a very collective culture, and the food is always the simplest but most effective way to unite family together. They don’t have a very strong feeling of homesickness because they will go back to Shenyang regularly at least once a year, and they would invite family members to their new home as well.

Once both of Wenyan and Motong graduated, Motong wants to start her own business in Toronto while Wenyan would be more likely contributing herself to community services or non-profit organizations to help new immigrants and refugees. This very new Canadian family is using their own way to step to a better future. When I asked Motong “where is home” during the interview, she said, “China is motherland, but Canada is my future hometown”. I can tell they all settled a position in this multiculturalism of Canada.

 

Decades ago, studying abroad would be considered as an unreachable thing for the majority of Chinese families. With the rapid increase of Chinese economy, the tide of studying abroad has really changed many young people’s lives who were born in the 1990s. According to the statistic from the official website of Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China,  there are approximately 544,500 students studied abroad during the last year, 2016, which demonstrated an increase of 36.26% when compares to the number of 2012. Studying abroad really became a heating issue in Chinese society; and meanwhile, many dreams to study abroad are bred to come true. Ryan (Yuanchen) Zhu, is one of the breeders who made his dream come true to Canada.

The connection between Ryan and this country started on October 31, 2012, and he still remembered that the blue sky, fresh air and nice people when he just landed Vancouver. Before he started his journey, he was an undergraduate student at Tianjin University of Science and Technology in China. Talking about what makes him come to Canada, he said that one of his friends who transferred to a university in the United of States really embarked his dream to study abroad.  Meanwhile, he heard about the cooperation program between his university in China and the University of Ottawa, what he called a “3+2” program. Students apply that program will complete their bachelor degrees in China and finish their master degree in Canada. For the opportunity of education, Ryan stepped on his way to Canada, a way that he never looks back.

From an international student who does experiments and writes reports as his daily routine to the owner of the largest Chinese media corporation, Ryan sees himself as “someone who would like to really do something”. Differ than an image of typical good students, Ryan said he skipped lots of classes in his university life. Because of the work at the student union, he spent a large amount of time to communicate and coordinate back and force with local business, and his enlightenment of being in business was done during that time. Starting from very small business, he had sold newspapers, socks, tickets, and even cell phones to other university students. His ambition of starting a business grew from that time.

Because of the ardour of loving Ottawa, Ryan started to plan his business to stay here in the year of 2014, the time he met his business partners. At the same time, the fast-growing Chinese social media Wechat really captured their attention. At first, they were just like other users to express their opinions by writing articles on WeChat public platform. Then they see business opportunities through what they were doing just for interest and the company OTTAWAZINE grew rapidly since then. By providing timely news and local information to the Chinese population in Canada, and international news to domestic Chinese people, OTTAWAZINE has gained over 40,000 subscribers on their social media platform and over 25,000 website visitors in three years.

Ryan would never picture his nowadays Canadian life when he listened to his friend’s American story. He applied his identity to the permanent resident last year and started to depict his Canadian future already. Ottawa really becomes the reason for him to stay. He said that the business environment is very advantageous for his company since there are very fewer competitors here. He decides to spend two more years to build a strong foundation in Ottawa, and his ambition is to make his company coast-to-coast, and even worldwide.

Small seeds with dreams to study abroad were sowed, and prosper harvest is waiting for Ryan in his future. There are many people in the same situation as Ryan’s since they decided to continue their Canadian lives after they finished their education in Canada. Even me myself is standing at the crossroad when Ryan decided to stay at that time. In that sense, the dream to study abroad gradually changes to the Canadian dream of having a better life, and that is many Canadian immigrants keep wanting in their hearts.