Faculty of ArtThis last year has been a whirlwind of virtual meetings, travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders. So naturally, Professor Henry Yu’s (virtual) travel class united students across majors, faculties and national borders to learn about the Food and the Heritage of Chinese Migrations in ACAM390A – online.
This summer, they went on virtual fieldtrips, and learned about community engagement work with the participation of guest speakers, including Carmel Tanaka (Cross-Cultural Tours). In preparation for their projects, they also crowdsourced a number of virtual tours and forms of online cultural storytelling that would inform the creation of their projects during this time of social distancing.
On June 24th, 2021, students presented their projects to UBC campus and community partners, guest speakers, alumni, staff, faculty, family and friends. Attendees were able to ask questions, provide feedback, and interact with the students and their projects. It was wonderful to see everyone come together on this online space to support and celebrate the ACAM390A students and the hard work, thoughtfulness and creativity they put into these projects during the last few weeks.
Thank you all for your patience and support with this virtual course over a time of uncertainty.
Watch the Community Showcase on Youtube:
Read more and stay tuned with the student projects (in order of appearance):
Flavours of Our Roots
Athena Chen, Celine Co, Nathan Liminsang, Timmy Wu
Flavours of Our Roots (FLOUR) is a student-run initiative, platforming the stories of locally-owned Asian restaurants through interviews and a restaurant map. By sharing the stories behind dishes and doors, Athena, Celine, Nathan, and Timmy aim to create new opportunities for restaurants to connect with their customers and communities.
Follow them on Instagram @flouroots.
Fish Tales
An Xu, Earl Joshua Jamora, Moira Henry, Victoria So
“Fish Tales” is a video series proposal for the Gulf of Georgia Cannery (GoGC) aimed at expanding Chinese Canadian representation, offering contemporary content to the local community, and recognizing the value of personal stories in history-telling. Based on Chinese Canadian stories on the consumption of accessible seafood, this project imagines engagement and interaction around the community-based sharing of food tales — transgressing boundaries of class, spatial and cultural location. Informed by the Gulf of Georgia Cannery’s exhibits, the proposal offers a way to reframe how historical narratives can be interpreted to better represent the lived experiences of individuals.
Look out for “What’s your Fish Tale?” to come up on Gulf of Georgia Cannery’s public platforms, like the GoGC website and on Instagram @gogcannery.
(con)Fusion Podcast
Sten Hoffman, Trish Mahant, Winnie Ha, Yuna Sato
(con)Fusion is a podcast series in which three pairs of Vancouverites have a conversation about the rise of high-end fusion restaurants in Chinatown. We hope that the podcast offers insight into the perspective of people within the community, and brings awareness to some of the gentrification-related challenges facing the preservation of Chinatown’s intangible cultural heritage.
Follow them on Instagram @confusionpod.
Listen and follow on Spotify.
Subscribe to their Youtube Channel.
Garden Stories
Emma Quan, Jennifer Szutu, Shirley Ting, Huabin Zhou
For our project, we created an interactive webpage that features an overview of backyard gardening techniques and plants practiced by Chinese communities located in Vancouver and Calgary. Through our work, we examined the relational aspect of plants as a form of cultural expression that can highlight the experiences of Chinese migrants in western Canada through their connections to the land through backyard gardens. Ultimately, we hope to explore how the narratives surrounding Chinese backyard gardens contribute to resilience, healing, and solidarity within Chinese Canadian community networks.
Visit their website.
Watch their Video Tour on Youtube.
Resilient Cultures, Resilient Communities
Bharat Sahota, Donny Chiu, Esther Ong Kai Shan, Ky Kim
Inspired by ACAM 390A’s guest lecture on the Punjabi Market, our team’s project – consisting of Bharat, Ky, Donny and Esther – focuses on the present-day rezoning and redevelopment threats that the Market faces and the reinvigoration efforts of the Punjabi Market Regeneration Collective. We explore the stories of some of the people in the market, its intangible cultural heritage, and the personal histories it represents in an 8-minute short film, with the aim of spreading awareness about the Punjabi Market community and protecting the culturally significant site from harmful forms of gentrification.
Watch their 30-second trailer and their fully-narrated video (with English CC, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese subtitles) on Youtube.
Click here for additional Chinese Translations.
Written by Victoria So