Making of the Pacific Mall: Chinese Identity and Architecture in Toronto

An ethnic icon in the Toronto Chinese communities, the Pacific Mall is a shopping mall, and probably the best-known “Chinese shopping mall” in Canada, possibly in North America. When the Chinese in Toronto say “Go to ‘Tong Yin’ mall [referring to the Chinese shopping mall in Cantonese],” they very likely have the Pacific Mall in mind. When Chinese-American tourists visit Toronto, they demand a visit to two places: Niagara Falls and the Pacific Mall. Every day, someone passing by the mall can see tourist buses loaded with visitors. They are busy dropping off and picking up their clients. The popularity of the mall has expanded beyond the Chinese communities, and non-Chinese visitors can be seen anywhere and at anytime in the mall, which has also attracted attention from different media. The Pacific Mall was introduced in a short film by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 2002. It also appeared in several mainstream magazines in Toronto. It made its appearance in the New York Times in March 2002. The intriguing question is under what circumstances the mall became an ethnic icon that signifies the “Chinese mall.” Why is the mall important to the Chinese community? The purpose of this chapter is to use the Pacific Mall to illustrate a theoretical framework that conceptualizes an intertwining relationship between ethnic identity and architecture. This particular relationship was established in a Chinese immigrant community in Toronto; the development of the mall reflects a phenomenon of globalization, which is a neoliberal capitalist system that facilitates the flow of people, images, ideas, and commodities across national boundaries. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.