backstage. He was quite a helpful person. The only thing is, nobody respected him.â
Gwan had been dealt a difficult hand in life. He lived in poverty, relying on social assistance and the goodwill of Chinatown community members to help him find places to live and meals to eat. He turned to drinking that sometimes resulted in abusive, polarizing behaviour that alienated him from the people who knew him. âPeople thought he was a nobody,â Paulâs wife, Rosa, says.
Working against the odds, Gwan proved himself as a talented singer and performer in the opera community. He eventually earned onstage parts, but he was never able to play the principal male roles typically filled by conventionally attractive male actors.
âIf you are a principal male role, heâs usually the hero of the show. Traditionally, itâs someone whoâs good-looking, the prince,â Rosa says. âSo he [Kwan] was not in that kind of role.â
Rosa and Paul became involved with Vancouverâs Cantoneseopera community at the same time in 1993, and they met Gwan in the same year. If Gwan did appear onstage, he played a villain or political leader. He loved it, Rosa said. He shone.
Gwan was, to Rosa and Paul, a very special, essential player in the traditional Chinese artistic community. âWe learned a lot from him,â Rosa says of Gwanâs encyclopedic knowledge of the Cantonese opera art form. The couple is working hard to keep Cantonese opera alive and pass it on to future generations through the Vancouver Cantonese Opera society they founded in 2000, the last year of Gwanâs life.
âItâs like literature, a poem, when you sing,â Rosa says of Cantonese opera. âThe performance techniqueâthe miming, the gesturesâis unique. Itâs an art form.â
The Vancouver Cantonese Opera society, Rosa says proudly, has a mission to popularize the art form in English-speaking mainstream society. Itâs hard work, she admits. But she and her husband are no strangers to working against the grain in the interest of those on the margins.
âFor me, itâs an art. I want to preserve it, I want to promote it,â Paul says. âWeâre not involved in any Chinatown groups anymore. Weâre totally different; itâs not for people to hang out after work anymore. We do real production, we do real training.â For his part, eighty-four-year-old Yiucheung Ling continues to share his knowledge of costuming and props work with Rosa, Paul, and the Vancouver Cantonese Opera Society. âAs long as Iâm healthy, Iâll keep going,â he says, smiling.
âHeâs a gem,â Rosa says of Ling. âHeâs the only one left in Vancouver who knows the traditional ways of Cantonese opera costume preparation.â
Itâs rare, special knowledge that Ling and Gwan used to share. Itwas raining on Boxing Day, 2000, when seventy-one-year-old Wah Kwan Gwan died alone in a government-subsidized rooming house on East Hastings Street. His passing was quiet and without fanfare, much like the years he spent in Vancouverâs Chinatown. Gwan was on income assistance when he died, and with no next-of-kin, the provincial government stepped in to sort and do away with his possessions, which included numerous valuable texts on Cantonese opera.
âSuddenly, I got a call that Wah Suk [an affectionate Chinese term of endearment for Gwan] passed away,â Paul recalls. âBut by the time I knew, everything was gone.â
Intent on preserving the memory of a man they respected and admired, Paul and Rosa cobbled together what they knew about Gwanâs life to write an obituary that ran in Vancouverâs Sing Tao Daily newspaper in January 2001.
The story of Gwanâs life and connection with Vancouverâs Chinatown community should give us pause to reflect on historical relationships between Vancouverâs Chinese and Aboriginal citizens, says