Saltwater City: Story of Vancouver's Chinese Community

Saltwater City: An Illustrated History of the Chinese in Vancouver is a 1989 book by Paul Yee, published by the University of Washington Press. It discusses the development of the Chinese Canadian community in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The book has six chapters, organized chronologically. The book includes sidebar texts, documents, photographs, footnotes, a newspaper scan, and first-hand accounts. Mitchell Wong, a reviewer for the Amerasia Journal, stated the book is intended to be a "relatively short, illustrated" book that highlights key points of history, in a manner similar to that of Longtime Californ', instead of having analytical depth in the manner of A White Man's Province by Patricia Roy. Anthony B. Chan of California State University, Hayward wrote that "This was never intended to be a scholarly book." Judy Yung of the University of California, Santa Cruz wrote that Saltwater City is "not as scholarly" as Roy's book, From China to Canada, or Chinatowns: Towns Within Cities in Canada by Chuenyan Lai.

Paul Yee, an archivist, is a third-generation Chinese-American. He also published children's books, and those works won awards, including the Governor General's Literary Award.

"Saltwater City" is a historical nickname for the city. The Chinese Cultural Centre in Vancouver had organized an exhibit named "Saltwater City," and the book was based on the exhibit, held in 1986, the city's centennial anniversary, and written to accompany it. The documents and photographs featured in the book originate from the exhibition. The original edition of the book was published in 1988 and later went out of print. Around 2007 there was a new edition of the book that went into print some time prior to 2007.

Sources include government documents, oral histories, data from the Canadian census, letters, photographs, English newspapers, Chinese newspapers, and archives of organizations.

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