I talked about clean air, the convenience of Canada’s healthcare system, social security, a good education system (for the little ones, should they arrive in the coming years), a steady, peaceful life. I talked about fitting in, about multiculturalism, about feeling comfortable in your own skin. These are all the things a Canadian life offers us.

My husband, a Dutch citizen with a Master’s degree, managed to find a job pretty quickly. The company was willing to sponsor, but as it turned out, the worker’s visa would take longer to process than the permanent residency application already underway — something we started after we were married last August. So after getting his residency in March, we started making plans to move to Vancouver.

It’s expensive to live here. Earlier this year, a survey found that Vancouver was the most expensive city in North America, even more expensive than New York and L.A. Though, there are now signs that the housing market is starting to slow.

Marc called his parents in the Netherlands over the weekend and his mother asked: “So do you like it better there or in Hong Kong?” Marc said it was too early to tell.

We compare Canada to Hong Kong all the time. We compare the salaries (competitive) we compare the cost of eating out (a win for HK), we compare the transportation network (a win for HK), we compare the food (still debating), we compare the scenery (tropics vs. snow-capped mountains?). We cringe at the taxes we will have to pay here in Canada, compared to the very low taxes in Hong Kong. We tell ourselves that social security comes at a cost, and remember the wise Vulcan proverb that tells us the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

The fact is, as a skilled immigrant, my husband can make and save a lot more money if we were living in Asia.

A recent Globe and Mail article quotes a Chinese immigrant to Canada who has chosen to return to Shanghai after graduating from a Toronto university. “In Canada, you have a good standard of living, but you can’t make big money,” the 29-year-old Chinese woman told the paper.

So many skilled and educated immigrants are seeking financial opportunities elsewhere. It’s changing the makeup of Canada’s immigrant population. And we are constantly asking ourselves: is clean air, a good education system and social security more important than the chance to “make big money” elsewhere?

The immigrant population is now further influenced by a shift in Canada’s immigration policy — from favouring skilled immigrant workers to preference for those who have money to invest.

The flood of wealthy Chinese immigrants to Canada can be seen across the country, not just in large cities like Toronto and Vancouver (where wealthy Chinese buyers are blamed for driving up real estate), but in places you might not expect, like Prince Edward Island (home of the Anne of Green Gables story). China has been the chief source of immigration to P.E.I. for the past five years, with nearly 2,400 newcomers arriving between 2006 and 2009 alone, according to the province’s Population Secretariat. During that time, some Chinese immigrants had their visa application expedited through a provincial nominee program by proving they were willing and capable of investing at least $200,000 in a P.E.I business, according to a story by the National Post in 2011. The program has since undergone some changes, including a cap on the number of nominees per year.

The day my husband received his permanent residency, he put on a Hudson's Bay mitt and took some photos in our favourite park.

Foreign investment is important, but so is foreign talent. I’ll ask my husband again in a few months time about our decision to move to Canada. And I’ll be sure to blog his response.

To my surprise, all the shops in Trafalgar were closed.

Suddenly, a fire truck came rumbling and wailing down the block. We followed the sirens and saw a plume of white smoke billowing upwards to the blue sky.

It looked as if a car had been lit on fire, but as we got closer, cameras in hand, walking in the middle of the streets with dozens of other curious pedestrians, we saw it was a large dumpster that was engulfed in flames. The police had stopped traffic from entering the city’s center, but people were free to move and we got right up close to the fire and to the firefighters tending to it.

A block further, more smoke was billowing up into the air. Another dumpster was lit. Beyond that, we could see crowds of people gathering and more smoke rising. Big fires were starting on almost every major intersection. Protestors held flags, blew whistles and even clashed with riot police at the Placa de Catalunya.

The mayhem comes a day before Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s administration is expected to announce about €30 billion ($40 billion) in spending cuts and tax hikes. This is meant to ease increasing fears about Spain’s budget deficit and European leaders insist drastic cuts must be made this year. But some Spaniards believe the reductions in government spending will only boost the unemployment rate, which is already at 23 percent — the highest among all nations in the Euro-zone.

Spain has slid back into recession but as I reported for Bloomberg Businessweek last month, Chinese immigrants are faring well in this economic crisis. Only 2.9 percent of Chinese registered for social security received unemployment benefits in 2010, and though they account for less than 3 percent of Spain’s 5.7 million immigrants, Chinese make up nearly 23 percent of the country’s foreign-born entrepreneurs.

Today, I met Chinese immigrants from both groups — those who are entrepreneurs and those who are unemployed.

Earlier this morning I was in Fondo, a suburb north of the city which has evolved to become a sort of Chinatown. This neighborhood is saturated with immigrants from Qingtian who have opened up restaurants, bars, hair salons, and other small retail shops to serve the large Chinese population. In Fondo this morning, stores on the main road were closed, but on the side streets, I found shops that had pulled their shutters pulled down half-way, just enough for customers to slip in and buy some groceries or to get their hair cut, or to have a quick bite to eat.

I had lunch in one of those half-shuttered restaurants today.

“It’s the union. This has nothing to do with us,” said Shufen Chen, who runs a noodle shop with her husband serving Qingtian delicacies. “Most of the people supporting this strike are the ones who don’t have work. For us, if we have the chance to open for business, we will.”

Chen and her husband said they believed the Rajoy administration was doing the right thing. The unions, she said, were standing in the way of economic recovery.

After lunch, I was hoping to get back to the city, but all the subways and buses had been shut down during the day and only opened back up for rush hour. There was nothing to do in Fondo but to sit in the square with the other locals.

I found myself inhaling lots of cigarette smoke as I sat next to five Chinese men. They were all from Fujian and they were all out of work.

“We can’t strike if we don’t have work,” they said. “So we come here to suntan.” The men had come to Spain seven years ago and worked in construction. Back then, there were plenty of jobs to go around.

On my last trip to Spain, I met Chinese bosses who told me there wasn’t one Chinese person they knew who wasn’t unemployed. It’s true that it is not easy to find unemployed Chinese people in Spain. But here these men were, jobless in Fondo. It is interesting to note that all these men were from Fujian province. Most of the Chinese in Spain come from Qingtian and have a much longer history of emigration than any other Chinese group. Newer emigrants from Fujian and from the north of China often come to Europe without the social network and the economic support that Qingtian emigrants have established. Therefore in many Chinese communities across Europe, there is a class division that can easily be identified, depending on what region of China an emigrant comes from.

As we sat in the sun with those Fujianese men in Fondo, my husband recalled a brief conversation he had with an employee at a store on the Passeig de Gràcia.

“Where will you be on the day of the strike?” my husband had asked the day before.

“I’ll be at the beach,” the employee said.

Every Chinese person I’ve met here tells me the same thing: The Spanish know how to enjoy life. It’s a good trait, for sure. But as I looked around at the destruction today — at the burned out garbage dumpsters, at the shattered glass window of a bank, at the litter and spray paint courtesy of the protestors — I couldn’t help but think that today’s protests were just an excuse for hooligans to cause mindless destruction and for workers to take a day off at the beach. All this, at a time when the Spanish just need to buckle down and work hard to avoid more economic disaster.

It seems the entire world, including my Mom, is getting on the Apple bandwagon. It’s hard not to. What with its sleek, clean marketing, fun and intuitive design, and a founder who has reached the ultimate, legendary status in death… it’s easy to lose ourselves in the cult that is Apple.

I’m tracking her iPad as we speak via the UPS website. It arrived in Anchorage, Alaska this morning from Shenzhen, China.

That’s right. Many of Apple’s products are Made in China by Foxconn Technology Group. But you already knew that. The company, which manufactures iPhones, iPods and iPads in China, runs factories in Shenzhen — last year they were plagued with bad press when at least a dozen of their factory workers committed suicide.

“Did my iPhone kill 17 people?” writes Joel Johnson, editor at large for Gizmodo.com. (the number of suicides was actually 18 by the end of 2010)

This infographic below might help you answer that question.

It was sent to me by one of its designers, Tony Shin, a Seattle native and University of Washington graduate who double majored in Economics and Management. You can email him at Tony.Shin40@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @ohtinytony

Created by: OnlineMBAPrograms.org

Sign this petition: TheSumofUs.org

The petition urges Apple to step up and lead the way in factory labor improvements, to “make the iPhone5 and your other products ethically” and to insure “the quality of working conditions matters as much as the quality of [Apple's] products.”

More on China and factories:
A Visit to a Wenzhou Shoe Factory
China Struggles to Rebuild Mental Health Programs

People began migrating some 150,000 to 200,000 years ago first throughout Africa, then into Asia and beyond, eventually populating every continent on the earth. Migrants came in many forms — brides, merchants, soldiers, adventurers, missionaries — traveling between human settlements and civilizations, intermingling, inter-marrying and integrating, redefining cultures, adopting new traditions, and even blending languages to create new ones.

Yet in the globalized world we find ourselves in today, diversity or multiculturalism is not a universal concept. Touting one’s distinct national and cultural identity can fuel intense pride and sometimes, xenophobia, but is it wrong to make efforts to preserve one’s cultural identity, local language and traditions? Is that racist? Hard to say.

A friend, having emigrated to the Netherlands when he was nine years old from Bosnia, told me this week that he doesn’t consider himself “Dutch” and that the Dutch will never consider him to be “Dutch.” Why? “I am not 6 feet tall and I don’t have blonde hair and blue eyes,” he said.

As I continue to research Chinese emigration to Europe, I’ve been debating and discussing the issue of integration and ethnocentrism with many friends and colleagues. My friend, Stephanie, is a Canadian of British and Polish descent. She’s currently working as a journalist in London and she recently shared a personal story that helped me consider what immigration and globalization looks like from the eyes of her then 88-year-old grandfather.

I want to share Steph’s story with you all. Perhaps it will get you thinking about these issues, too:

I remember my aunt took my grandpa to Poland a few years back for a last visit with relatives and the places he grew up. I think he was 88 at the time, and he’s always been a very conservative, xenophobic, old-school guy. I think he still envisions Poland as being frozen in time, exactly the way it was when he was a child there in the 1920′s. They ended up spending a night in Krakow, and went to eat at a local restaurant. The waitress was Asian, prompting my grandpa to initially roll his eyes and make some comment. But, my aunt said my grandpa was absolutely floored when she came over to take their order and spoke PERFECT Polish. They ended up talking for a few minutes and it turned out she was from Vietnam, had come over 5 years before, and was attending classes at the local university. She felt that Poland was a good place for her to settle, and had no intention of going back to Vietnam.

He brought up that waitress from time to time for the whole rest of the trip. He just couldn’t process how someone like that would make a home in Poland – she could never be Polish in his eyes, and neither could her children. Despite his old-school ways, this view is widespread in Poland still today. For most people, it simply does not process that someone who is not white and Christian can be Polish. Is that racist? I don’t know. Certainly there are elements of racism to it … but perhaps someone who has lived in a small town in Poland all their life has a specific conception of a Pole – and diversity is just not part of that conception. I would point out that if I left Canada and moved to a medium sized city in China, and lived there for the rest of my life, neither myself nor my children would ever be considered Chinese – although I could become an American, Australian or Brit over time, if I so chose.

He just couldn’t process how someone like that would make a home in Poland – she could never be Polish in his eyes, and neither could her children. … For most people, it simply does not process that someone who is not white and Christian can be Polish. Is that racist? I don’t know.

It’s just such a different way of thinking from what we have in Canada, but I do believe that it’s at least partly in the interest of preserving local cultures and traditions, and not wanting whole neighbourhoods to change beyond recognition. This desire manifests in some absolutely ugly and unacceptable ways, but I find it hard to condemn it as 100% racist. This is what’s great about your topic – nothing can be easily explained (i.e. migrants motivations, migrants experiences, the attitude of receiving societies, etc.) So, despite how “at home” that waitress might have felt in Krakow, she’s likely to face an uphill battle in terms of trying to fit in.

Do you have a story about immigration to share? E-mail me at suzannebma@gmail.com Hope to hear from you soon!

A Chinese worker carts boxes in Barcelona's wholesale clothing district in Trafalgar.

I’ve received a few questions from readers, wanting to know more about the impact Chinese entrepreneurs are having in Spain.

In my story for Businessweek, I write about Chinese entrepreneurs in Madrid and Barcelona who are expanding and investing further in their businesses just as Spain seems headed back into recession. It certainly doesn’t seem like a time to be taking big risks. Around 350,000 companies filed for bankruptcy in the second half of 2011 — that’s a third of all companies to have shut down since Spain’s economy began to teeter at the end of 2008 with the collapse of the housing construction bubble.

But the Chinese in Spain — most of whom come from Qingtian County in Zhejiang Province — seem undeterred.

Readers wanted to know more specifically about how the economic activity of the Chinese was contributing to the Spanish economy. Here are some of their questions:

1) How have the Chinese entrepreneurs, as a group, contributed to the Spanish economy? i.e. Do Chinese businesses hire non-Chinese workers as well? Do Chinese shop at non-Chinese stores/buy supplies from non-Chinese suppliers?

These are great questions, none of which can be answered with statistics. There just isn’t any data on where the Chinese shop or who they hire. But I can tell you what I know of Chinese business practices based on my interviews with Chinese nationals across Europe.

While the Chinese in Spain prefer to hire their own (especially if they are from the same hometown i.e. Qingtian), they do indeed hire non-Chinese workers and shop at non-Chinese stores and suppliers. Kathalina, a wholesale and retail clothing entrepreneur in Barcelona, hires two Pakistani workers to help out at one of her stores. (I have to ask how much they are being paid. I suspect even less than Chinese workers) At many Chinese-run bars, there are often Spanish cooks who teach the new Chinese owners and workers how to make a decent coffee and a side of patatas bravas. And at my cousin’s newly acquired bar in Turin, he’s made it a point to keep on the pretty, blonde Romanian bartender. She’s popular with the male clientele and though he needs to pay her more than double what he would pay a Chinese worker, she’s an asset to his business. So yes. They do help the wider European economy by hiring non-Chinese, if it is advantageous for their business.

Do they shop and gather supplies from non-Chinese buyers? Yes. My cousin in Turin has to order croissants, coffee beans, wine, ice cubes and many, many other products for the bar. Most of the supplies comes from non-Chinese companies.

But what about the wholesale industry? Do the Chinese also shop and gather supplies from non-Chinese buyers? The answer: They don’t have to. Across southern Europe, the clothing supply chain is now dominated by Chinese entrepreneurs. Let me give you an example. Kathalina and her husband own a total of five garment (wholesale and retail) shops in Barcelona. Every week, she flies to Prato, Italy, to procure her stock. Prato is a textile hub in Tuscany, 50 miles west of Pisa. Recently, Prato has become inundated with Chinese immigrants mostly seeking work in the textile factories. Today, there are more than 4,000 Chinese-owned textile makers. A decade ago, there were only 400. Prato has become famous for products that are “Pronto Moda” or “fast fashion” — a main distribution centre that can produce Italian fashion goods quickly (and cheaply) by Chinese hands. In the past, the Chinese were middlemen in a long supply chain. Now, some Chinese textile makers have started work with design. From the drawing board, garments are produced by Chinese-run workshops, distributed by Chinese-run warehouses and picked up by Chinese wholesalers like Kathalina. Her clients are multi-cultural: Spanish, Moroccan, Chinese, Ecuadorian. But Kathalina herself is diversifying. She opened her first retail shop in the Barcelona city centre last year.

2) Do the Chinese pay their taxes?

Aha. Touchy subject. Taxes. Most of the Chinese-run businesses in Europe — restaurants, bars, retail and even wholesale — are a cash business. So naturally, whether you are Chinese or not, this is a kind of business that more easily allows one to reduce the taxes he or she might owe. One of the major complaints I hear from Europeans is how the Chinese are cheating the system by underreporting their sales or using undocumented immigrants to avoid paying taxes.

The accusations have some truth to them, but the Chinese are not the only ones guilty of this. Tax evasion is not a Chinese-only issue. In Spain, it is a widespread practice that has grown to be a hot topic only in light of the economic crisis. Of course, immigrants are the first ones to the blamed. The Spanish black economy is equivalent to 19.2% of the official gross domestic product. The number of jobs in Spain’s underground economy had risen from about 1.5 million in the early 1980s to more than 4 million in the three years to 2008, according to a study co-authored by Ignacio Mauleón, economics professor at Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University. “When there’s no crisis, no one worries about it,” Mauleón told the Financial Times. “But now it’s an issue that everyone thinks about, because of the country’s budget deficit.”

Italy is famous for its SMEs; 95 percent of the country’s businesses employ fewer than 10 workers in order to avoid arduous provisions of national union contracts. Another way to avoid stifling labour laws is for Italian companies to opt out of the formal economy altogether. Anywhere from 15 percent to 27 percent of economic activity is underground, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
and the International Monetary Fund.

3) From a reader who seemed rather irked by my story: I honestly think you should make a bit more of a thorough research on the situation of Chinese workers in Spain to make your article more accurate. I suggest you begin with the sale of dangerous toys, outdated food, cheap imitation of chocolate, drinks, fake cigarettes in [their] cornerstores. Nothing else to say, have a nice day.

I think this reader has brought up an interesting, but entirely separate issue of the quality of products being sold Chinese shopkeepers in Spain. While product quality is a contentious issue, this does not contradict the fact that the Chinese are resilient entrepreneurs who have managed to keep a very low unemployment rate while the Spanish economy struggles.

But, the reader provokes an interesting question: Why has the “Made in China” or “Sold by Chinese” become synonymous to cheap, cheap cheap? I must admit, I am guilty of this stereotyping as well. While I was shopping in Venice, I went into a store selling leather hand bags. The products looked nice. The prices were very reasonable. Then I saw the owner: he was Chinese. I said to my husband, “The owner is Chinese, let’s get outta here!” Upon seeing the Chinese owner, I immediately had fears about the quality of his products and became suspicious, thinking his leather hand bags could be pleather hand bags. If I hadn’t seen him, I probably wouldn’t have had these thoughts.

Still, the stereotype is there most probably because many of us have encountered so many low quality products that are made in China. I have spent time touring Chinese-run wholesale distribution centers in Fuenlabrada, just outside of Madrid and I can tell you there are a range of products varying in price, some of them made in Spain and some of them made in China. So let’s be fair and not say that everything sold by the Chinese is cheap, toxic and illegal.

The reader might be referring to 2011 raid in which the Spanish government confiscated 561,000 fake cigarettes imported from China. Last week, Businessweek published a story about cigarette smugglers reporting that illegal imports now account for 7 percent to 8 percent of overall cigarette sales, compared with nearly zero a year ago, according to the country’s tobacconists’ association.

A Chinese man smokes in a clothing distribution center in Prato.

Let’s give the situation some context. Here are the factors contributing to counterfeits and contrabands:

1. Spain has more than 10 million smokers.
2. A recent tax has increased the price of a pack by 50 euro cents.
3. Spaniards have less money to spend on smokes during this time of recession.
4. Since early 2011, smoking is now banned in public places.

All these factors make a ripe environment for the sale of contraband cigarettes. Street peddlers can easily approach smokers gathered outside a local restaurant/bar. Contraband imports from China have actually levelled off this year, while those from Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe are on the rise, according to the Bloomberg report.

“The deep economic crisis in certain markets such as Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, and Spain has fueled the problem,” according Austin Rowan, head of the tobacco and counterfeit goods unit at the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) in Brussels.

4) Why do the Chinese work so hard? Don’t they want to take it easy sometimes?

You know, this is something I ask all of the people I interview. What’s so fun about being a workaholic? The general consensus among the Chinese is that the Europeans are lazy. But why must the Chinese work so hard? Most of the time, the work is not glamorous. The Qingtianese do a lot of manual labour. Even though Kathalina is her own boss, she is constantly on her feet grabbing stock for customers, her fingers pink from clutching too many hangars at once. Her weekly trips to Prato are exhausting, driving around the town’s industrial area in a small Fiat rental until about 1 or 2 in the morning (most of the factories and distributing centres operate on a nocturnal schedule) to gather as much stock as she can.

Kathalina has two young children and she rarely gets to spend time with them. They are being raised by her mother-in-law, who is also an emigrant in Spain. What motivates her to work? Well, she’s passionate about fashion. She spends a lot of time on line looking at the new trends and likes to collaborate with the Pronto Moda workshops in Prato that do their own designing. She also gets a lot of satisfaction when she is able to make a big sale. A natural-born business woman. Personally, I think a lot of her drive comes from familial pressure. Kathalina is just 27 years old, but her family is depending on her and her husband to succeed. Both her parents and her mother-in-law now live in Spain and Kathalina and her husband are the breadwinners. With two young children, there are a total of seven mouths to feed. There’s just no time to slow down, especially in this recession.

Though Kathalina has been to Prato dozens of times, she has never been inside the old city. In fact, she didn’t even know there was an old city to explore. She knows the industrial part of town really well and brought me to eat in Prato’s Chinatown just outside the old city walls. I guess that’s all she needs to know since is in Prato each week for less than 24 hours. I stayed an extra day to explore the other side of Prato and had a chance to dine at the oldest trattoria in town. When my husband and I stumbled in from the cold, we

Though the Chinese and the Italians live side-by-side in Prato, they live in two, separate worlds.

found a beautiful candle-lit restaurant, furnished by old wooden furniture, high ceilings and quaint red and white checkered table cloths. The local Italians stared at us all night long. I can guess very few Chinese have eaten at this local trattoria. It was sad to think that 40,000 Chinese live in the city of Prato, yet the lives of the Chinese emigrants and the Italian locals continue to be so very segregated.

5) How much money stays in Spain, how much returns to China to boost Qingtian?

Remittances are a very important part of the overseas Chinese culture in Europe, especially to emigrants from Qingtian. For a long time Qingtian was a poor and isolated county in eastern Zhejiang. Today, it is one of the richest areas in eastern Zhejiang, complete with western-styled coffee shops and restaurants (though the food is not authentic at all!) and apartment prices rivalling some Shanghai neighbourhoods. This is all thanks to the remittances that are sent back home from Europe each and every year. So, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of hometown pride. And because Qingtian is a small place, everyone sorta knows everyone. The minute you mention you’re from Qingtian (or married to a Qingtianese) you’re welcomed like family.

I have the specific stats about Qingtian’s remittances, but have yet to carefully go through them. Let’s use those numbers in a future blog post about remittances!

I came home at Christmas and decided to delve into Spain’s national statistics where I was able to extract data on Chinese nationals: their demographics and their economics. I calculated the unemployment rate among Chinese nationals across Spain. I discovered that the Chinese made up a large proportion of the country’s foreign-born entrepreneurs — 23 percent!

This week my story on these enterprising men and women will be published in Businessweek Magazine. You can also read it online or below.

For Spain, an Economic Lifeline from China
With another recession looming, immigrants are shoring up growth

By Suzanne Ma

With an unemployment rate of 22.8 percent, the euro zone’s highest, Spain appears to be spiraling back into recession. Yet the Cobo Calleja industrial park 15 miles south of central Madrid shows few signs of economic distress. A manager’s Mercedes must be moved to make way for an incoming truck. Forklifts and workers pushing metal carts swerve to avoid each other as they rush to deliver orders. Merchants cram white sneakers and brown leather boots into cardboard boxes. “I can’t think of one Chinese person who is unemployed,” Jin Jing says as she surveys the commotion outside her warehouse crammed with women’s clothing. “There are jobs to be found in this crisis if you are willing to work. The Chinese are clearly willing to work.”

The activity in Cobo Calleja reveals a surprising source of strength for the troubled Spanish economy: immigrants from China. Virtually all of the shopkeepers and wholesalers in the park are Chinese. Only 2.9 percent of Chinese registered for social security received unemployment benefits in 2010, vs. 16.5 percent of Spanish nationals and 24.5 percent of all foreigners, government data show. And though they account for less than 3 percent of Spain’s 5.7 million immigrants, Chinese make up nearly 23 percent of the country’s foreign-born entrepreneurs, labor ministry data show.

For a decade, Spain’s explosive growth lured foreign workers into the country. But when the housing market collapsed in 2008, more than a million immigrants found themselves out of work. The government offered €10,000 ($13,300) to foreigners who agreed to go home and not return to Spain for at least three years.

Few Chinese accepted the offer, and government statistics show there are now 165,000 Chinese in Spain (though many academics believe the real number may be more than double that). Nearly 18,000 new Chinese immigrants arrived in Spain in the three years ended December 2010, and most seem to have found work with little problem. From 2007 until the end of 2011, legal Chinese workers increased 41 percent, while employed Moroccans and Ecuadoreans—the largest non-European immigrant groups—fell 23 percent and 52 percent, respectively, according to the labor ministry.

A primary strength of the Chinese community in Spain is its cohesion. Though no official figures exist, many Chinese in the country say a strong majority of their ranks come from one place: Qingtian County, about 300 miles south of Shanghai. That mountainous corner of Zhejiang province has little arable land, so for the last 200 years many of its people have emigrated. Qingtian folklore even holds that 18th century migrants walked across Siberia to Europe. Throughout the 20th century, Qingtian immigrants trickled into Spain, and their numbers began to rise in the late 1990s.

Freebase co-owner Yong Jin. Clothing designed in Spain, made in China and sold in over 2,000 stores including the El Corte Inglés department-store chain.

Such networks helped Jin Jing and her siblings, who have been in Spain for more than two decades. They own Freebase, a clothing line designed in Spain, made in China, and sold in over 2,000 stores across Spain, including the El Corte Inglés department-store chain. In 2002, the siblings invested €60,000 in a tiny store in Madrid. Three years later they plowed €3 million into a sprawling warehouse in Cobo Calleja. In January the company bought a 113,000-square-foot textile printing factory previously owned by a Spanish company. “For the Chinese who have managed their savings, this crisis has brought a business opportunity,” says Jin’s brother Yong.

The growing Chinese presence has forced Spaniards to recognize the Chinese as customers and competitors. While many in Spain admire the can-do spirit of the newcomers, they often feel the Chinese “do not integrate and are only interested in working,” says Dan Rodríguez, an anthropologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. As a result, “anti-Chinese sentiment is quite widespread,” he says.

Katia Wu in one of her Barcelona wholesale clothing stores.

The bottom line: Chinese immigrants, who have an unemployment rate of just 2.9 percent, are helping the troubled Spanish economy.

Ma is a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor.

I even made comparisons to my husband’s upbringing in Europe, how even in a place as seemingly open and accepting as the Netherlands, there was still all sorts of petty name calling going on over there. The worst of which has been the names of popular Chinese fast food dishes. But still. Name calling is name calling.

But this morning, I opened my mailbox and saw an e-mail thread circulating around my Asian American Journalists’ Association listserv about a headline on ESPN’s website yesterday — CHINK IN THE ARMOR, it read.

This appalling headline went up Friday night in a story reporting the Knicks' loss to the Hornets.

Is this not America? Are we not in the year 2012?

Since Jeremy Lin made his chance debut as starter for the New York Knicks on Feb. 4, he has made the headlines. He is a Harvard economics grad, he’s religious, he’s humble, he was great talent just waiting to be discovered, he can REALLY play ball!…oh…and he’s Asian! It’s a big deal because there aren’t many Asians in the league, but somehow, all these characteristics and adjectives weren’t enough for some idiot journalists. No, for some reason, some journalists have felt the need to make some really crass comments about Lin that have absolutely no grounding.

Now it’s ESPN’s turn. The headline has since been removed from ESPN’s site. But someone was able to screen capture it last night when it went up. In the midst of all this Linsanity, I think it’s time we talk about some Lin-equity or Lin-tolerance.

Chink is a racial slur. It’s as offensive as nigger and kike, and as been used in the past in hate crimes against the Chinese.

I once felt lucky and fortunate to have grown up with little to no racial discrimination. Now I am starting to feel naive and sheltered. Because it’s still happening here, right in America, and it’s coming from big media groups and seasoned journalists — people who are my colleagues in the news world, people who I expect to be setting good examples and writing for the betterment of society.

Ohh yea, naive and sheltered I am.

Update: Just before noon EST on Saturday morning, ESPN issued a statement, saying it was “determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again.” The statement added, “We regret and apologize for this mistake.”

Hell, ya. There would be rioting on the streets if they used the “N” word to describe an NBA player. Can’t believe the network thought using Chink would be ok.

I managed to snap a photo with a couple of RCMP officers at the Shanghai Expo in Sept, 2010.

The UCC tries to tackle difficult and controversial subjects about Chinese Canadians/Americans. It’s run by a bunch of “opinionated characters who care about issues that don’t often see the day of light”, according to the site.

Some cool facts about The Ugly Chinese Canadian:
1) During the month of May (2011), the blog hit a quarter of a million page views/month

2) A number of Canadian political parties read the blog to get a feel of the “Chinese pulse” in the community

Here’s my post below. You can also read it on The Ugly Chinese Canadian website.

What does it mean to belong somewhere? Does citizenship and a passport help define who you are? Is your identity established by how others see you? Or do you decide that for yourself?

I began seeking the answers to my questions when I first moved to China in 2007.

When I was 24 years old, I quit my job and moved to Beijing, enrolling in an intensive Chinese-language course at Tsinghua University.

People cracked a lot of jokes about returning to the “motherland” to learn my “mother tongue.” But as a Canadian, I always considered my mother tongue to be English. And what about the motherland? I was born in Toronto, my mother was born in Hong Kong and my father in Taiwan. So where is the motherland, really? I wasn’t so sure.

When I got to Beijing, most of my classmates were South Koreans – all of whom could read and write Chinese better than I could (did that make them more Chinese than me?) – while the rest were an assortment of Americans, Australians, Africans and interestingly, Kazhaks.

But in the hallways and in my dorm, I often passed by a group of Chinese-looking students speaking a guttural European language that sounded something like German. Overcome with curiosity, I approached them one day and quickly discovered they all spoke fluent English.

“Where are you all from?” I asked.

“The Netherlands.”

“Oh wow,” I said. “I didn’t know there were so many Chinese people in Holland!”

“And I didn’t know there were Chinese people in Canada.”

In retrospect, we sound pretty ignorant. Of course there are Chinese people in Holland (and in Canada!). There are Chinese people everywhere! At the time, my concept of an “overseas Chinese” included Chinese Canadians, Chinese Americans and maybe Chinese Australians and Chinese from the UK. In other words, English-speaking Chinese people. But here they were, Dutch-speaking Chinese people. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Little did I know that three years later, I’d end up marrying one of the Dutch-born Chinese friends I made that day.

People cracked a lot of jokes about returning to the “motherland” to learn my “mother tongue.” But as a Canadian, I always considered my mother tongue to be English. And what about the motherland? I was born in Toronto, my mother was born in Hong Kong and my father in Taiwan. So where is the motherland, really? I wasn’t so sure.

The group was actually more diverse than I originally thought. In addition to the Dutch Chinese, there were American Chinese, a Chinese student born in France, an Australian Chinese and a Swedish-born Chinese in the group. Though we came from different countries, all of us seemed to click instantly, finding solace in our dual identities and even a shared history:

We bonded over the dreaded Saturday morning Chinese lessons we were all forced to attend; we shared in the frustration we felt when we realized we we could not speak Chinese fluently; and we revelled in the serendipitous decision we made to take a gap year in school/work to come to China to learn this so-called “mother tongue” of ours.

My Putonghua improved dramatically through the months. But while living in Beijing, I never felt more Canadian. That’s what a foreign environment does to you. When you’re thrown into a strange, new world, you start to really define who you are by first establishing what you are not.

In Beijing, I looked different from the average Chinese woman, from the way I dressed, down to things I could not change, like my height, weight and facial features. The food in Beijing was very different from the kinds of foods my Cantonese mother made at home in Canada. And there seemed to be a cultural (and language) gap between the foreign students and the local students at Tsinghua. We tried to mix up a few social events, but in the end, I forged deeper and more lasting friendships with the overseas Chinese.

During our time in China, all of us were confronted with the question of identity. It was an internal struggle that often manifested itself in every day encounters. Beijing cab drivers liked to play guessing games with us. Hearing us speak accented Chinese, they couldn’t help but ask:

“Where are you from?”

“Where do you think we’re from?” we’d reply.

“Korea,” they often said. “You must be from Korea.”

It was difficult for many local Chinese to understand why Chinese-looking people couldn’t fluently speak their own “mother tongue.” Sometimes, it became tiresome having to explain it over and over again.

“I’ve been outside of China for 20 years now, but to Spaniards I am still a foreigner,” he said. “I can change my passport, but my veins pump Chinese blood. My face will always be Chinese.”

My experiences in China got me thinking about where someone’s sense of identity comes from and how malleable that concept might be. A lot of us would like to believe that identity comes from within. It’s a romantic notion to think one has control over his or her own sense of self, that one can confidently say, I’m Chinese or I’m Dutch or I’m Canadian because “I feel it in my heart” or “I know it in my soul.” But I came to realize that identity is actually created and reinforced by external circumstances. One’s identity can change depending on who is asking. For example, friends who identified themselves as “Dutch” in China, often told Dutch people in Holland they were Chinese.

The concept of the “social identity” was originally formulated by psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 70s and 80s. Identity, they said, was derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group. Social identity is therefore dependent on one’s status, legitimacy and permeability in a group environment. There are also different kinds of identity. There’s national identity, ethnic identity and cultural identity, to name a few.

Sometimes, people had difficulties articulating to me how they identified themselves. One friend, who was born in China and immigrated to the Netherlands when he was four years old, used Olympic sports to describe his sense of national identity.

“If I’m watching ping pong, I’ll cheer for the Chinese team,” he explained. “If I’m watching football, I’ll cheer for the Dutch team.”

“But then you’re just cheering for the winners,” I said. And don’t we all like to cheer for the winning team?

Recently, I was in Spain conducting research for a book I’m writing on Chinese emigration to Europe. I spoke with a 30-year-old Chinese entrepreneur in Madrid. Yong Jin emigrated to Spain when he was 10 years old. Today, he speaks fluent Spanish and is married to a Spanish woman.

I asked him how he felt about China and Spain. Which country did he identify with more? Did he perceive himself to be Chinese? How did Spaniards perceive him and did it affect the way he looked at himself?

If it came down to choosing whether he preferred one country over the other, Jin said he couldn’t make such a decision.

“Basically you are asking me to choose between my mother or my father,” he said. “On one side we have China, my mother who gave birth to me. On the other side, we have Spain, my father who raised me and who passed on a lot of culture and education to me. I cannot choose one or the other. I love both my parents equally.”

But ultimately, he said, his sense of identity had already been determined for him:

“I’ve been outside of China for 20 years now, but to Spaniards I am still a foreigner,” he said. “I can change my passport, but my veins pump Chinese blood. My face will always be Chinese.”

Chinese immigrants in Europe are entering into societies that are less accustomed to newcomers and therefore, at times, less welcoming. In Spain, immigration is a relatively new phenomenon. And there is already a pre-conceived notion of what a typical Spaniard should look like. Jin doesn’t fit that description.

I came to realize that identity is actually created and reinforced by external circumstances. One’s identity can change depending on who is asking. For example, friends who identified themselves as “Dutch” in China, often told Dutch people in Holland they were Chinese.

Other European nations, like the Netherlands, have a longer history of immigration and are generally viewed as more open and accepting towards foreign residents. But my husband, who was born and raised in Holland, told me he has never felt whole-heartedly “Dutch.” He grew up acutely aware that he was different from everyone else. While I have generally enjoy my visits to the Netherlands over the years, I am surprised when children shout the names of Chinese fast food dishes when I am passing by on my bicycle.

A typical Chinese restaurant menu in Holland will not feature chow mein or beef and broccoli as an American or Canadian might expect. Instead, you’ll find Indonesian-inspired Chinese food. Some of the most popular dishes are: loempias (spring rolls), nasi (fried rice), bami (fried noodles) and babi pangang (a deep-fried pork cutlet drenched in red sauce). On several occasions, while visiting Rotterdam, I’ve been called a loempia. Okay, so there could be worse insults. But it’s puzzling that this sort of name-calling is still going on in Holland.

For me, I have always considered myself “Canadian” whether I’m at home in Toronto or abroad. My black hair, olive skin and angled eyes are characteristics that define me, but never in Canada have I been made to feel different or uncomfortable about who I am.

After spending the last few years living abroad, my husband and I have decided to settle down. We’re hoping to start our new lives in Vancouver soon. In a few years time, I wonder if he will also come to identify himself as a Canadian. I hope this country and its people show him the same kind of acceptance, legitimacy and permeability I have experienced my entire life.

Suzanne Ma is a Canadian journalist currently writing a book about Chinese emigration to Europe. You can read more of her stories on her website: http://www.suzannema.com

Today's ad in the Apple Daily. Online users raised $100,000 HKD to campaign against Chinese mainland visitors to HK.

The locust is now synonymous for some very unwelcome mainland Chinese visitors to Hong Kong. Web users coined the term to describe the 28 million Chinese visitors now looked upon as marauders, bringing chaos to Hong Kong’s order and rule of law and consuming precious resources in the city.

Hong Kong residents are particularly vexed about the tens of thousands of pregnant mainland women who cross the border every year to give birth, obtaining Hong Kong benefits for their children and putting a strain on congested public hospitals. There is also much resentment towards the nouveau riche who come to the territory and splurge on luxury goods and apartments, driving up already exorbitant rents in the property market.

In less than a week, an online group raised $100,000 HK dollars to place the ad in The Apple Daily newspaper.

The advert, I fear, now signals that the gloves are off in an already vicious and long simmering dispute, dividing Hong Kong residents and those who come from the Chinese mainland.

But maybe the gloves were already off. Last week,a Beijing academic went on an internet talk show and went on a 15 minute rant, calling Hong Kong people “bastards,” “thieves” and “dogs” for insulting mainland Chinese visitors.

Illustrations featuring locusts, aka invading Chinese mainlanders, have gone viral on the internet.

But this recent blow up can be traced back to an incident in January when more than 1,000 people protested outside a Dolce & Gabbana shop. The fashion store banned locals from taking pictures outside, telling them only mainland Chinese visitors could do so.

Later, a video of a group of Hong Kong people angrily confronting a mainland Chinese family for eating on the city’s underground train network where food is banned went viral.

I totally get why the Hong Kong people are pissed. It’s a bit of an invasion. Out of the 42 million visitors Hong Kong gets each year, 28 million come from China. Though Hong Kong is now officially part of China, the two places couldn’t be more different. I have always marvelled at how clean and orderly Hong Kong is (even by Canadian standards) compared to cities in mainland China. Just crossing the border from HK to the city of Shenzhen gives travellers a stark comparison to see just how different the territory is from the mainland. The clean toilets disappear and we are met with dirty squatters. The orderly line ups in Hong Kong give way to frantic clambering and pushing. Everything changes. Even the air quality.

At Harbour City in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui, where many mainland visitors shop, it is easy to spot who comes from China and who is a local. Some of the worst stereotypes come true. The mainland shoppers move in loud, boisterous packs, line up outside Chanel and LV, squat on the sidewalks instead of finding a nearby bench, and they spit, a lot.

We lived in Hung Hom, where there was a train station directly connecting Hong Kong to Shenzhen. We watched as the apartments in our neighborhood were bought up by the Chinese. Our land lady was one of them and she was impossible to deal with. She dropped by unannounced. Even stayed a night at our place after handing us the keys and signing a one-year contract with us. In the end, she refused to return our deposit and we left Hong Kong a few thousand dollars short. The real estate agent apologized profusely to us. “These mainland Chinese,” she said. “I just can’t deal with them. They don’t listen.”

And that’s why the noodle incident caused such a big uproar. I think the Hong Kong locals shouldn’t have gotten so worked up about it, but when the family was confronted about eating on the subway, the Chinese mother of the family was defiant and unapologetic. “So we’re eating? What’s it to you?”

I get that a lot in China. “Um, there’s a line up here,” I would meekly say. “What’s it to you?” is the answer I usually get. “You line up if you want. I’ll do what I want.”

So obviously, I think the mainlanders need to be more respectful of Hong Kong’s rules. I don’t know how we can do this, how we can go about mass educating and enacting some kind of mass change of behaviour. It’s also important to remember not to hold all Chinese mainlanders accountable for the unruly behaviour of some and the hate speech of one loony professor. And finally, I can say for certain, that taking out a full page advert depicting locusts isn’t going to help.