Downtown, Chinatown and Gastown

After an excellent night’s sleep and a fine breakfast we headed for the bus. Our plan for the day was to go downtown and tour two important city areas known as Chinatown and Gastown. Both areas are steeped in history.

Our highlight in Chinatown was the beautiful Dr Sun Yat-sen Garden. I was reminded of my old teacher, Henry Chan, who introduced me to Chinese philosophers Kang Youwei (1858–1927), and Liang Qichao (1873-1929) both important figures in the late Qing era that ended in the 1911 revolution, and the rise of Dr Sun Yat-sen as the first president of the Republic. He is an honoured man in Taiwan and in diaspora communities still.

To reach Gastown we ventured down Columbia Street. The deeper we went into this sad street, the more unfortunate drug addicts we saw, lying in doorways, hunched in laneways, and shooting up. We have since learned that there are at least four other streets like this. Bloody drug dealers. So much wasted human potential. Meanwhile, because it is legal here, there are trendy Cannabis shops everywhere and the smell of the weed is thick in some streets and folk openly smoke in the streets.

Turning toward Gastown it was like another world. Designer clothes, tourist shops, high end shoe stores, classy barbers and beauty shops. And bars and restaurants galore. Trendy capitalism’s underbelly just one street back, a world away.

But the famous Gastown steam clock did not disappoint and as if to sing away the contradictions we were suffering from, it sang the quarter hour most beautifully. We walked on to the waterfront and had lunch. By that time we were ready for rest. And headed home on the number 5 bus on West Pender Street. Dinner out at an Indian overlooking English Bay finished off a fascinating day.

Before you go, guess who comes from Vancouver? A strange and compelling group of people including:
William Pratt aka Boris Karloff
Sandra Oh
David Suzuki
Ryan Reynolds
Seth Rogen
William Gibson
Eckhart Toll
Margot Kidder and many more …Read more