Vancouver's Chinatown lions vandalized once again

The stone lions guarding the gate to Vancouver’s Chinatown were vandalized Friday night, their eyes covered with brightly coloured paint.

Lillian Lowe, executive director of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, says both the garden and the Chinese Cultural Centre were also cleaning up Saturday morning after being vandalized.

“The vandalism has been going on for quite some time. I would say that it got a lot worse during the pandemic,” Lowe said.

“This sort of thing has been happening all over downtown, but I do feel that certain circumstances and incidences have been targeted. When you're repeatedly vandalized, it's hard not to think that it's targeted, and there's some anti-Asian sentiment here.”

The lions, garden and cultural centre have been defaced multiple times since March of 2020. In a number of the cases, the messages scrawled in spray paint have been explicitly racist.

Lowe says she thinks the combination of a rise in anti-Asian racism, and a significant drop in foot traffic are to blame, saying it’s a constant concern for those who live and work in the neighbourhood.

“Many of the legacy businesses, they're on their last legs right now. It's quite a cost to upkeep your property with the graffiti, and there's no point because the minute you paint over it, it happens again, literally within 24 hours,” she said. “There's a lot of stress.”

But she also worries that people are avoiding the neighbourhood because there’s been so much emphasis on the problems it’s facing.

“The graffiti, the broken windows, the whole message that it's unsafe – that really hasn't helped us either,” she said.

“I think that there's a whole side of the story that's not being shared and not being told.”

She points to a plan to open Canada’s first Chinese-Canadian museum in 2023, and the recent opening of the Chinatown Storytelling Centre as two things that should be celebrated, but have been overshadowed.

“There's so much vibrancy. There's a bunch of people that are revitalizing the community. We're all working together, there are good things to come,” she said.

“This whole new culture of Chinatown, preserving its history, celebrating the intangible and tangible culture of the neighborhood. I think people need to appreciate that.”

Lowe said in addition to increased police foot patrols, she thinks increased foot traffic by people shopping, sightseeing, and dining in the area would go a long way to restoring a sense of safety and community. However, she thinks people need to be reassured that the neighbourhood will be safe and that “they're not walking into a war zone.”

Vancouver city council is set to consider a motion that would bring free parking to Chinatown on Sundays, a move being touted as one way to entice more people to visit.