Shutting down Beedie’s open house for 105 Keefer/570 Columbia on October 1, 2025 at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum and Archives building.

By the time I arrived at the People’s Open House, everyone was already packing up. I had been rushing from a media call for 105 Keefer/570 Columbia, after a three-hour online meeting with the Cowichan Valley Regional District Council, waiting for my turn to speak as the nominator for the heritage recognition of the Old Hillcrest Chinese Cemetery.

Flustered, I hurried over to the Chinese Cultural Centre, disappointed to have missed the alternative People’s Open House, knowing how much work had gone into it on such short notice. This was the culmination of ten years of resistance against Beedie’s gentrifier condo tower. It was a moment of reflection for the community, when many seniors have passed or are beginning to forget.

I was greeted with warm hellos and vibrant protest posters:

“唐人街岌岌可危！CHINATOWN IS IN DANGER! 毀灭 DOWN WITH 570 COLUMBIA”

“民心不可欺 尊嚴不可奪 THE PEOPLE’S HEARTS CANNOT BE DECEIVED! DIGNITY MUST BE PROTECTED!”

“不要加劇貴族 DO NOT FEED THE GENTRIFIERS”

“停止擢毀華埠！！ HANDS OFF CHINATOWN”

The two youngest members of the community, excited to witness their first Chinatown resistance event, asked curiously: “But where was the rally and protest?”

Me: “You want to protest?”

Them: “Yeah!”

Me, on a whim: “Let’s do it then. Let’s go disrupt Beedie’s open house. Their presentation should be happening right now.”

I called out to the pods of organizers and allies still lingering in front of the Chinese Cultural Centre: “Who wants to protest Beedie? Whoever’s interested, let’s go!”

A dozen or so people emerged, posters in hand, eager to confront Beedie’s team. About half were Chinese, many Hakka, and the rest were non-Chinese, many from Vancouver’s Tenants Union.

I asked: “What’s the chant for this round?”

A seasoned organizer who had been in the resistance for ten years shared the chant. The same one that’s been used for a decade, but the young ones were hearing it fresh today. It was a handoff from one generation to the next.

Herb Varley, Nisga’a and Nuu-chah-nulth activist and long-time DTES resident, looked at the bunch of us critically and said: “You need an auntie or uncle to lead the way to open the door first, so they won’t turn you away.”

I looked around, wondering who could fit that role. Me and one other were already the oldest in the group, hardly what Herb had in mind.

He realized, too, that he was older than even the oldest among us by at least a decade. After a brief moment of awkwardness, he finally said: “Okay, I’ll do it then.”

The youngest exclaimed: “Yah! You’re famous!”

Herb snapped back: “No, I’m INfamous.”

With a plan in place, a chant in hand, and an elder to lead us, we marched forward with our bright posters screaming into the darkness toward the enemy at the open house at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum and Archives across from the site in question.

Just as we neared our destination, Herb suddenly piped up: “I need to go pee.”

We stared at each other, eyes blinking wide.

“Like, right now.”

There were no bathrooms nearby. Chinatown is a sanitation desert.

“I’ll go right here.”

We looked at each other, uncertain what to do.

March on! We shall march on! Onward we went, past the white sandwich board with “Open House” in big letters. We’d have to open the door ourselves.

City of Vancouver staff greeted us at the entrance, futilely offering flimsy yellow comment forms.

We began chanting instead. Passing a tempting mountain of uneaten Chinatown pastries, the smell of apple tarts filling the air, we stayed focused, holding our signs high and our voices loud:

“Beedie Beedie you can’t hide.

We can see your greedy eyes!”

This decade-old chant, now passed to a new generation, filled the room, circling around the small gathering of seated people with onlookers at the back.

We positioned ourselves in front of Beedie’s glossy architectural display boards, sterile and cold compared to our bright, urgent, vivid handmade signs. On the wall behind all the posters was a massive image of Chinese railway workers — the past, present, and future of Chinatown collapsed into a single moment.

James Cheng, the lead architect, found himself in the middle of the protest and squirmed away. “I’m gonna move outta here,” he joked nervously, “I’m not with them.” But as an agent of Beedie, he couldn’t escape.

I yelled: “James Cheng, you can’t hide!”

The chorus of protestors joined: “We can see your greedy eyes!”

He stared back at us from the audience, clutching his coffee cup uneasily.

I tried to lead the protest chant in Mandarin: 「團結！」followed by「力量大！」Not enough of the youth knew it, but those of us who did carried it forward, and another led a round in Cantonese. After all, it is Chinatown.

We kept chanting. Then Herb casually strolled in to centre stage.

What unfolded next was a masterclass in protest: occupying the space, making the “enemy” uncomfortable in their own living room. Herb’s presence dominated. When he spoke, everyone quieted. His eyes pierced through Beedie’s accomplices.

Herb began by drawing analogies to show how Chinatown wasn’t considered “worth anything” until real estate developers like Beedie saw potential for market condos. “Cedar trees aren’t worth anything until you turn them into planks. Water isn’t worth anything until you do fracking. Fish aren’t worth anything until you fish them to extinction. Soil isn’t worth anything until you do agriculture…”

“I think it’s enough now,” interjected a white woman from Beedie’s team, insisting they needed to get back on track for the open house: “We’ll have to shut down the meeting and that’ll be unfortunate.”

Herb remarked: “Shut it down then. We don’t care. Put that in your minutes.” He held his hands in the air, mock-begging them. “Put that in your minutes that the community doesn’t want this.”

James Cheng, now sitting down in the audience, said: “Let them continue.” Instructing the Beedie team to let us speak until the schedule ended at 8 p.m.

The enemy was ready for a standoff.

Herb continued: “You just want to make it look like you talked to us, which is very devious.”

He remarked that Beedie had put the community through such a long process of oppression that it had become morbid, waiting for seniors to die.

“The fact that they’re giving Beedie another chance to upgrade his development application really shows us who City Hall is working for. It’s not for the people. It’s for the developers.”

We responded: “Shame!”

Herb said: “They have NO shame!”

Then Herb looked at us: “Please stop saying that. They. Have. No. Shame.”

“In order to have shame, you must have a modicum of modesty.” He pinched his fingers in the air as if to press the point.

He continued, punctuating his speech with long, uncomfortable pauses.

“The silence of most of the people here speaks louder than words.”

I thought to myself: Could we hold the floor for another twenty minutes?

Breaking the standstill, the same Beedie team member tried to retake the room for their planned consultation. We held firm.

A Chinese auntie sitting in the audience asked: “So who is hosting this open house anyway? Who paid for this?”

“The applicant,” came the response.

“And who are these people standing in the back of the room? The City? Beedie?”

“Project team,” was the reply.

We were, indeed, in the enemy’s living room.

Herb walked to the developer’s poster boards, pointing to ask Cheng: “This one. Tell me, how does this building benefit the community?”

Cheng nervously approached. 

“Which one? You were walking around. I couldn’t see which one,” he mumbled.

We snapped: “Don’t pretend. That one!”

Cheng asked: “You won’t interrupt me, right? Can I explain?”

Herb immediately shot back: “COULD you explain?”

I grinned behind my mask. It was the perfect response.

Cheng began a long-winded explanation about zoning, implying the property wasn’t zoned for social housing.

I jumped in: “Wrong! You can build social housing there. You just chose not to!”

I finally said what I’ve been holding in: “James Cheng, you should be ashamed for selling out your community. The Chinatown community gave you your start building your first project, the Chinese Cultural Centre, and now you are selling out the community that gave you your start? You should be ashamed! You have no dignity!”

Another added: “There are young Chinese people who have to suffer now because of your choices.”

Cheng couldn’t take it anymore and walked off, red-faced. Beedie’s team tried to console him as he left.

As Cheng walked out the room, someone bellowed: “Gentrifiers OUT! Chinatown NOW!”

The rest of us joined in: “Gentrifiers OUT! Chinatown NOW!”

One by one, to our chant, led by James Cheng, Beedie’s team walked out, a gentrifier walk of shame, admitting the gentrification they are imposing on Chinatown.

We followed them, chanting, until James Cheng and the rest of the team disappeared outside into the darkness of the night.

I glanced back at the pastry table, hoping for a consolation box of apple tarts. Of course, it was the first thing they packed away. They say it’s “for the community,” but it never is.

– A reflection of the October 1, 2025 7:15pm-8pm protest at the front of the Chinese Cultural Centre to the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum and Archives. Written October 3, 2025