Paul Yee
Mau Dan Gardens Co-op, 350 E. Pender
"I hope these stories will carve a place in the North American imagination for the many generations of Chinese who have settled here as Canadians and Americans, and help them stake their claim to be known as pioneers, too."
From Tales from Gold Mountain
From 1959 to 1968, Paul Yee lived as a child with his aunt Lillian Wong at 350½ East Pender, close to old Chinatown, where he attended Chinese school. The house was torn down but, in 1981, Paul Yee’s Aunt Lillian returned to her old address at Mau Dan Gardens Co-op at 350 East Pender. Paul Yee has provided Chinese-Canadian ghost stories, tales of romance, farces, and sagas of quiet heroism against the backdrops of canneries, gold fields, farms, and the building of the railroads. Most of his books for young readers are based on the Chinese people who came to North America in the late 1800s or early 1900s, as is his first novel for adults, A Superior Man. Born in Spalding, Saskatchewan in 1956, Paul Richard Yee moved to Vancouver in 1958 and eventually became a director of the Chinese Cultural Centre. He was also active in a Chinese Canadian radio program called Pender Guy. Yee’s social history, Saltwater City: An Illustrated History, earned the City of Vancouver Book Award. It blends historical facts and photographs to recreate the daily lives and hardships of early Chinese immigrants to the Pacific Coast. Paul received the Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature in 1996, and the Vicky Metcalf Award for Children’s Literature via the Writers Trust in 2012. Chinese Fairy Tale Feasts: A Literary Cookbook, with texts by Yee and recipes by Judy Chan, won the 2015 Gourmand Award for best Canadian cookbook.
