[1] The first was a dock area in Downtown Nanaimo in proximity to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) terminal that existed in the 1860s.
[2] This was on Victoria Crescent,[3] and the Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company (VCC) had constructed several structures that became the Chinatown housing.
In 1877 300 people, 296 of whom were coal miners employed by the VCC, lived in the Nanaimo Chinatown and that of Wellington, which at the time was a separate community.
Pamela Mar, an area historian, stated that Robert Dunsmuir's 1883 strikebreaking with Chinese scabs that had caused resentment among white miners and an influx of Chinese workers for the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway were two contributing factors behind the move.
[2] Mah Bing Kee and Ching Chung Yung had purchased the site in 1908 and this resulted in the move.
[3] It opened on an 8 acres (3.2 ha) site in the outlying areas of Nanaimo,[2] and was initially purchased by the Lun Yick Company (the name in Chinese means "Together We Prosper").
[4] Rising China Holding Company (Chinese: 華興實業公司; pinyin: Huáxīng Shíyè Gōngsī, Cantonese: Wa-Hing Shat-ip Kung-Sz), an all-Chinese,[2] nonprofit agency, was formed.