Community seeks support from graffiti artists after repairing defaced Vancouver Chinatown mural

“There was a sense of so many different parts of the community and city being part of the mural and protecting,” what it symbolizes. — Katherine Yi

Peter Lau, 77, has run Liang You Book Co. Ltd. in Vancouver's Chinatown for over four decades. Lau owns a two-storey building on East Georgia on which a mural by community artists commissioned by the city has been defaced with graffiti. He's collecting signatures for a petition against the vandalism and graffiti in Chinatown in general.

Peter Lau, 77, has run Liang You Book Co. Ltd. in Vancouver’s Chinatown for over four decades. Lau owns a two-storey building on East Georgia on which a mural by community artists commissioned by the city has been defaced with graffiti. He’s collecting signatures for a petition against the vandalism and graffiti in Chinatown in general. PHOTO BY JOHN MACKIE/SUBMITTED /jpg

The ‘Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea’ mural in Chinatown that was defaced by graffiti has been repaired, and in its wake, the community is seeking support against graffiti tagging on artwork and property belonging to the area’s businesses and organizations.

More than a hundred people from within and outside the Chinatown community joined a recent “repair event” to fix the mural, according to organizers.

It had originally taken four artists nearly 12 hours a day over two weeks to create the mural. In late March, it was destroyed when graffiti taggers covered parts of it and the signage of a nearby, small bookstore with large, black bubbles and scribbles.

Those who came out to paint over damaged sections of the mural included other Chinatown artists, tenants, residents, business owners and members of various associations. There were also some city councillors and others shocked by the defacing of the mural, which had been commissioned to promote cultural redress and mitigate graffiti.

The incident pushed the frail, 77-year-old owner of Liang You Book Co., a Chinese-language bookstore on East Georgia that has been operating for more than 40 years, to talk about the mental stress of repeated and unchecked vandalism on small, legacy business owners in Chinatown like himself and the need for accountability.

“There was a sense of so many different parts of the community and city being part of the mural and protecting,” what it symbolizes, said Katherine Yi, one of the artists and member of a Vancouver collective called the Bagua Artist Association.

Artists Sean Cao and Katharine Yi in front of their mural which was vandalized in Chinatown in late March.
Artists Sean Cao and Katharine Yi in front of their mural which was vandalized in Chinatown in late March. PHOTO BY NICK PROCAYLO /PNG

The repair effort also got a shout-out from longtime graffiti artist Jaime Hardy, known as Smokey D, who posted to the Vancouver Coalition of Graffiti Writers’ Facebook page: “Smarten the f— up, leave Chinatown murals alone — there’s enough blank walls, dissed pieces, rooftops and floater spots in Vancouver that you shouldn’t have to f— up other artists created masterworks that are meaningful to them.”

Chinatown community organizer June Chow said that discussion about graffiti in Chinatown has “largely been coming from a place of being hurt and there being outrage, which needs to run its course.”

Then, she said, there has to be solutions that come out of conversations within and across communities. She said it was important for visible members of the graffiti artist community, who have social capital among their peers, to speak up against the tagging of the Chinatown mural.

“I’m so happy that we built that connection instead of blaming everyone in the graffiti community,” agreed another mural artist and member of Bagua, Sean Cao.

“Those guys who hit that (Chinatown mural) spot, I don’t know them personally. I’ve met two of them on a separate occasion and I don’t support that, what they did,” said Trey Helten, general manager at the Overdose Prevention Society who oversees the graffiti writers’ Facebook page and has spoken about the use of graffiti in the Downtown Eastside for quickly and widely communicating important messages about substance use or health issues.

“There are different spots that they could have hit like the alley adjacent to the one with the seven immortals mural. There are nice graffiti pieces. They could have gotten the ladder and gone and done those bubble letter throwies above the graffiti pieces, the next alley over.”

Smokey D’s posts and comments to Postmedia focused on being against graffiti tagging on work by other artists, which he sees as disrespectful.

He stopped short of addressing graffiti tagging on the walls, windows and signage of businesses, associations and organizations in Chinatown, where vandalism has included racist graffiti.

But in response to questions from Postmedia, Helten said “there’s so many other places to paint. It’s not hard to avoid a small five blocks,” which comprise the core of Chinatown.

jlee-young@postmedia.com