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“Eddie was a member of the Chinese Athletic Association, the Hong Kong Golf Club, the China Club, the Hong Kong Club, the Cricket Club, the Dynasty Club, the American Club, the Jockey Club, the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club and too many private dining clubs to recount. Like most upper-crust Hong Kongers, Eddie also possessed what was perhaps the ultimate membership card — Canadian permanent resident cards for his entire family.”

— Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich Asians

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The author of the best-selling debut novel, Crazy Rich Asians, which is coming out as a movie in August, knows Metro Vancouver well.

Kevin Kwan, whose trio of books satirize Asia’s most privileged people, not only knows Metro because the city is a major magnet for ethnic Chinese capital and people. He also understands the city because his parents were among the first trans-national migrants to buy one of its luxury properties.

Kwan, 44, has been visiting Vancouver since the 1980s, when extended family members and eventually his Singapore parents bought a “beautiful condo” on Robson Street, which they would visit once or twice a year. Kwan knows many graduates of the University of B.C., which his book says is also known as “The University of a Billion Chinese.”