Photograph: Jonathan Desmond

Limits of the language

In the 199s, when I was a boy in Vancouver, my grandpa would take me along to Chinatown to meet with his old friends. Quite a few of them were veterans of the Chinese Civil War. They would book community spaces to display their orchids and bonsai trees. They traded antique coins. Some would let me leaf through their albums of postage stamps.

My grandpa and I would often walk along Main Street, which runs through the neighbourhood and connects it to the Downtown Eastside. Thinking back, it seems like on every street corner could be heard the shrill voices of Cantonese opera, performed live in a nearby park or played from a cassette player.

Today, Chinatown is where you slurp oysters on the half-shell, fold your slice of pizza New York-style, eat high-end ramen, drink fancy cocktails, buy vegan deli meats and cheeses, and dance with sweaty millennials.

It was nearly six o’clock, twilight, when my companions Stefan and Anthony—who are both of Italian heritage and new to the city—and I left Oyster Express, a restaurant in a renovated nook of an otherwise rundown Edwardian building at the edge of Chinatown. Only half the shopfronts on the street were still open.

Ahead of us loomed the Sun Wah Centre—a sort of Chinatown community centre with art spaces and dimly lit retail stores—with gilded Chinese sign