My article in the Sing Tao Daily was released today. In this post I’ll share my article, tools to help all of us non-Chinese readers, and a personal memory about the Sing Tao.
The article
This is the first time I’ve been interviewed for a Chinese newspaper, and it’s with gratitude and a touch of sadness that I can’t read it in Chinese.
However. Time’s a-wasting and in place of missing languages I have tools.
不能遺忘：華裔先僑歷史 追根溯源：每個家族的故事
Which means:
Unforgettable: Tracing the roots of the history of Chinese-American pioneers: the stories of each family
Pro tip: Leap over the so-called language barrier with tools
What? You don’t read Chinese?
Haha. Me neither.
One of the most staggering suite of tools available today for free is the set of realtime translation applications. I use and love Google Chrome with the Translate app extension enabled. This will translate entire pages in nanoseconds. I’ve lost count of how many languages are available. Don’t let a little thing like not knowing a language stop you. I challenge you to read the article in your language of choice (yes, you can have it translated to any other language – doesn’t have to be English) because you will be amazed at how easy it is.
What is the Sing Tao Daily?
The Sing Tao Daily is a worldwide news organization with 22 offices worldwide, publishing in over 100 cities, with 16 editions. Established in 1938, the chain is headquartered in Hong Kong. In Canada, the offices are in Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto. The Sing Tao has a circulation of 180K in Canada alone, and about 1 in 2 Chinese read it. (I’d love to know the worldwide circulation, but Sing Tao doesn’t publish that number.)
My grandparents Harold and Leila Chu read the Daily, uh, daily. The sight of the Daily is as familiar to me as the Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Courier, and the memory of the whole pile of daily papers brings up such strong associations of home, family, and the breakfast table, I feel quite reverential. When us grandkids were old enough, we’d join in this morning ritual – coffee, toast, and reading the papers. Our grandparents would point out the articles in Chinese, tell us what they were about, and add, You should learn Chinese. I know, grandma. You’re right.
Thank yous
Thank you to Ancestry.ca for inviting me to contribute an article on my tai ye, or my paternal great-grandfather 葉春田 (Yip Sang). I did learn and am learning so much throughout this experience. Thank you to Yip Sang, without whom I would literally not be here. Thanks to Abby Wang and the Sing Tao Daily. Thanks to my entire family, the Overseas Chinese, my new friends from Wuyi University, and the genealogy community worldwide. This article draws on not only my research but also stands on the research of biographers and historians before me, among them Aileen Young, Dr. Timothy Stanley, and Dr. Henry Yu, and people I could go on naming until I run out of pixels.
