A group of 30 Richmond residents took part in a video which was released on Canada Day to encourage more Chinese people to vote in upcoming elections.
More than 150 volunteers participated in the video, named “Let’s go to vote,” which was posted on WeChat - a Chinese social media platform.
It attracted 54,000 views within three days and is also available on YouTube with English subtitles.
Sean Chen, a Richmond resident and music coach for the video, said the song was structured in a “catchy way for everyone to learn,” including his three-year-old daughter.
And he has hopes that the meaning behind the song could also be widely shared with the public.
“I (don’t want the video to just) encourage people from the Chinese community to cast a ballot. I also want to motivate people from other cultural backgrounds to go to the polls as well,” said Chen.
The video was produced in partnership between two Chinese language media companies - UFirst Culture Media and Canada Eagle, which took three months to complete.
According to Rock Zhu, UFirst Culture Media director, he and his team members brewed the idea of spurring Chinese people to vote two years ago.
And they all agreed that the message would reach a bigger audience via a music video.
“We don’t stand for any political party, and we (don’t just) encourage people to vote in this upcoming federal election but also in any municipal or federal elections,” Zhu said.
Zhu added that, electoral ridings with large immigrant concentrations doesn’t always translate to higher voter turnout.
Richmond Centre, for example, has the highest population of Chinese immigrants in B.C. - but the turnout rates placed last in 2013 advanced voting in the province.
And he wants people of Chinese ethnicity to engage more with the election, instead of “kicking back and relaxing.”
Unlike other projects Zhu had worked on before, the video is a non-profit one.
“Personally, I was debating how much time I should spend, because the project won’t receive any profit. But once I started working on it, I found working with people who have the same goal, is lots of fun,” he added.
Getting more Chinese-Canadians out to the polls is the first task for Zhu and his team, who hope to produce more video clips aimed at helping Chinese voters understand each candidate's voting background in an unbiased way.
