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This weekend, Vancouver resident Karen Quinn Fung and other people will be outside a Granville Street nightclub.

Chinese Man, a French hip-hop and electronic band based in Marseille, France, is playing Saturday (March 31).

Fung and her friends are not going to line up for the show.

They will be there to hold a protest by Venue to highlight the issue that the all-white-member-band’s choice of its name is “problematic”.

“What they’re really doing, not just in the name, but also in their marketing materials and their merchandizing is they’re promoting lazy Orientalist tropes,” Fung told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview Tuesday (March 27).

According to Fung, it’s unclear why the band named itself as Chinese Man, but it’s evident that the concept was to use the “idea of an exoticized other”.

“What we’re saying is that using it this way is actually hurtful to real people who are trying to advocate for better living conditions, better working conditions, and to be treated as equals in our home,” she said. “So whether or not the band continues or doesn’t continue to use this name…we don’t have much of a say on this. But we do have a say on what happens in our backyard. And this is trafficking in stereotypes and tropes, and we don’t want to see that continue or go unchallenged.”

Fung said that the Vancouver protest is in solidarity and was inspired by a similar protest to be held in San Francisco, where Chinese Man is playing Wednesday (March 28).

Chinese Man is also performing in other North American cities with sizable Chinese populations like Toronto, Montreal, and Seattle.

“I might try to make a funny sign,” Fung said. “I think that humour, you know, the example of punching up as opposed to punching down, I’d like to set that example for the band to maybe understand why they’re punching down. But I actually am not very good at this. So whether I’ll have a sign, I don’t know yet.”

Fung believes raising the issue around Chinese Man is relevant.

“The City of Vancouver is both embarking on a creative music industry, but they’re also going to be formally apologizing to Chinese Canadians for their role in creating racist laws at the city level, starting April 2018. And this concert is literally the day before the month of planned activities relating to this apology,” Fung explained.

According to Fung, the protest is a chance to engage music fans about how the city can do better in booking bands.

“We can learn from this. We would like everybody to get a chance to learn from this. But we will also be having fun with it, because it’s more important to us that people understand why this hurtful than for us to be necessarily be angry about it,” Fung said.

Chinese Man formed as a band in 2004.