Witnessing July 1, More Than A Century Later
Witnessing July 1, More Than A Century Later
July 2, 2025
“We hope all Chinese from all walks of life suspend your work or business on July 1 for collective remembrance”
The low timbre of lion drums builds slowly in the stiff summer air.
“Do not go to parks/parades”
Gongs ring in the park’s courtyard where lion dancers rise for the annual celebratory dance-off.
“No singing/musical performance in residences/neighbourhoods”
Cymbals clash, cutting through the streets of a sleepy Chinatown.
“Do not hang the Canadian flag”
Dozens of sleeping lions twitch with life. They erupt into a colourful ocean of clan flags tangled with hundreds of red maple leaves.
A century ago, the Chinese diaspora warned their fellow kin
to protest in silence,
to boycott in mourning,
to reflect in burning humiliation and shame.
Of a white nation that didn’t want yellow.
Of an empire that saw them as used tools ready for disposal.
They rose as a collective.
They gave what they could.
They fought with what little they had.
$1 here, $2 there, a couple quarters from a child.
“Our commitments and work move mountains.”
24 years of exclusion. Lives in limbo. Lives lost. Families torn. Children unborn. Futures foreclosed.
“THE ACT IS NOW REPEALED”
A proclamation shouts through the black and white pages of The Chinese Times in 1947.
“The Chinese Immigration Act with forty-three cruel sections has been repealed…”
But a century later, descendants have forgotten.
Shame turned into spectacle.
Humiliation into celebration.
Condemnation into multiculturalism.
A day of silent collective mourning has transformed into a day of loud dancing. Remembrance erased by generational amnesia.
History, tokenised.
What’s left? Polished plaques crowned with colonial crests.
Integration. Assimilation.
“BUT THE FIGHT IS UNFINISHED”
“…yet not all Chinese in Canada receive equal treatment.
The local born and those with Canadian citizenship status will have the right to bring their wives and children yet many who live in Canada without citizenship status do not have such entitlement.”
The oppressions are still present, only in different forms.
“Model minority.”
“Kung flu.”
Sinophobia.
Gentrification.
Appropriation.
Orientalization.
Internalized racism.
Visibility is not justice.
“What we have achieved is a foundation to be built on. The historical moment we have arrived at calls for more work…”
But why are we so eager to forget? Whispers of history whimper briefly, drowned by roars of performance.
Contradictions baked into smiles. Solidarity, conditional. “Anti-oppression.” “Decolonization.” Just sounds.
The dissonance hurts. The amnesia even more painful.
What would ancestors say?
I can only witness and try to remember.
— July 1st, 2025 at the Chinese Canadian Museum’s commemoration of 七一僑恥紀念日 “Humiliation Day”
With research of 大漢公報 The Chinese Times by Dr. Yao Xiao
Post Script
I wrote this poem on July 1, 2025, while sitting in the boardroom of the Chinese Canadian Museum listening to Dr. Yao Xiao’s lecture, Margins within Margins, which examined The Chinese Times during the era of the Exclusion Act.
The windows were open. It was a hot day, and outside in the Sun Yat-Sen courtyard, lion dancers gathered for the annual Canada Day Lion Dance-Off hosted by the Chinatown benevolent societies.
As Dr. Xiao read solemn passages about the enactment of the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, its 24-year duration, and eventual repeal, a low rumble began outside. As he recited mourning notices like “No dancing,” “Do not celebrate,” “Do not fly the Canadian flag”, the lion dance teams sprang to life. Gongs and drums echoed into the boardroom, almost answering back.
This happened twice during the 90-minute lecture.
Later that night, cheerful, flag-filled, jubilant photos of the lion dance filled social media. It was multiculturalism and patriotism in full form. But inside the museum, we had been reading from a newspaper calling for shame, mourning, and memory.
This poem is my attempt to hold that contradiction of sitting in the space between drums and silence, celebration and sorrow, forgetting and remembering. It’s not a critique of those who dance, but a reflection on what it means to remember.