People forget that the Chinese who came to B.C. before the Communist era were coolies or their descendants. They were from the Southern Chinese province of Guanddong. Most spoke Taishanese, a dialect of Cantonese. Many of their descendants, due to the discrimination they encountered from white Canadians, forced themselves to assimilate Western culture. So the descendants of the coolies have no idea where their ancestral homeland is. Cantonese speakers are a minority in China, even though most Chinese-Canadian speak it.

Many Mainlanders, like Gu Xiong, don't have a connection to this past. Most of the new immigrant Mainlanders are Mandarin-speaking and indoctrinated to Communism. Mainlanders are the majority and so are confused by Westerners stereotyping them like the Chinese immigrants of the past. Canadians assume that people come to our country for a better life. But that doesn't mean that everyone comes here poor. Canadians don't realize that we're handicapped by high income taxes.