Leung, Oi
Over 130 interviews with Chinese Canadian women were conducted for the book Jin Guo: Voices of Chinese Canadian Women. Produced in 1992 by the Women’s Book Committee of the Chinese Canadian National Council, Jin Guo was intended to fill the gap in historical accounts of Chinese Canadian women’s history. Researchers traveled across Canada to interview Chinese Canadian women of various ages and backgrounds. The book’s authors, Amy Go, Winnie Ng, Dora Nipp, Julia Tao, Terry Woo and May Yee, organized the book around themes and patterns that emerged across multiple interviews – feelings of isolation and culture shock upon arrival in Canada, memories of parent-child relationships, the importance of education, the working lives of women, discrimination, cultural identity, marriage and dating, family life, perspectives on aging and retirement, and examples community activism. The interviews conducted for this project are stored at the Multicultural History Society of Ontario’s archives. This collections database includes a large cross-section of interviews conducted for Jin Guo – in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.
In this interview, Oi Leung discusses her childhood, her career as an actress, and her immigration to Canada.
Oi Leung was born in rural China to a poor family. She explains that, at the age of 12, she was invited by relatives to live with them in Hong Kong. In exchange for a place to stay, her relatives treated her as their maid.
She worked during the day attending to domestic duties and went to school at night. Oi stayed with her uncle’s family for a total of three years until she left at the age of 15. She worked as a garbage collector and managed to earn enough to afford a small place of her own. A relative of hers owned a film studio, where she enjoyed spending time watching people make films.
She later found work at a factory and began skipping school to go to movies and dances. At age 19 she became an actress through her connections in the movie industry. She married a film producer and started a family. Having endured a difficult childhood, she took the role of motherhood seriously with the intent of raising her son in a proper environment.
Oi had an active career in movies and television series before immigrating to Vancouver, British Columbia, where her adult son lived. She believes Canada to be a good place for education and has taken an aesthetics course. She admires the more refined aspects of Canadian culture and feels that the Chinese community can benefit from adopting some of their customs. However, she maintains the importance of maintaining one’s heritage.
At the time of the interview, her future goals included opening up a beauty salon in Canada, learning English, and returning to Hong Kong occasionally to continue her career as an actress.
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