Boyi is a current Psychology major and International Relations minor at UBC born and raised around Vancouver. She hopes to be able to continue to help foster and build community among Asian-Canadians by connecting with people through story-telling and gathering. Her interests involve boating, making vlogs, and her cat Taro.
As a second-generation Punjabi-Canadian, Gurleen joined the INSTRCC team to better understand the common structural barriers faced by Asian-Canadians. Inspired by her diverse and multigenerational upbringing in Surrey, Gurleen has a passion for community-based storytelling and has been involved in oral history work with the Punjabi community in BC. She appreciates learning about the social determinants of health in racialized communities, and enjoys drinking coffee, attending yoga classes, and reading a good book!
Xin is a second year master’s student visiting at UBC. At her home university in Germany, she studies North American Studies, with a disciplinary focus on sociology and culture. After living in Berlin and Amsterdam for the past 6 years, she unexpectedly re-connects with her Chinese side and her time in Guangzhou here in Vancouver. She hopes to learn more about community building and migration, all the while eating her way around Metro Vancouver.
Jenny oversees the INSTRCC student research team, along with Joanna Yang, Denise Fong and Professor Henry Yu. Jenny started her journey in this work and community as a UBC student herself, earning a B.Sc in Global Resource Systems studying sustainable food systems, which led her to exploring her own heritage and identity as a food-loving Chinese Canadian. Jenny enjoys collaborating with student teams, campus and community partners to share, listen to, and celebrate stories of how food connects us all – culturally, environmentally, and relationally. She is inspired by the students and community members she gets to work with at INSTRCC who are bringing seeds of ideas to life that honour the past and inspire hope for the future, in new and creative ways.
Although I was born and raised in Vancouver as a first-generation Chinese Canadian, I moved back to my parent’s hometown in tropical Hainan, China, and lived there for several years before returning to Canada. I am a UBC Geography and Migration & Globalization Studies alumna, and before I had the privilege of serving the College’s international community, I worked for the UBC Equity and Inclusion Office, Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program, and the Faculty of Arts Vancouver Summer Program. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my friends and family, visual storytelling through film, cooking, and a good workout.
Denise Fong (方靜怡) is a 1.5 generation Chinese Canadian with roots in Hong Kong, Toisan China, New Zealand and San Francisco. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia, with a special interest in public history, digital media and Chinese Canadian history. Since 2009, Denise has coordinated a number of historical research and public history projects, including SFU’s From C to C: Chinese Canadian Stories of Migration and UBC’s Chinese Canadian Stories: Uncommon Histories from a Common Past. She recently co-curated two Chinese Canadian exhibitions locally — Burnaby Village Museum’s Across the Pacific exhibition and the Museum of Vancouver’s A Seat at the Table exhibition. As INSTRCC’s Research Director, Denise provides guidance on historical context and oversees the research team.
As a history professor, Dr. Yu’s research and teaching has been built around collaborations with local community organizations, civic institutions such as museums, and multiple levels of government. He is passionate about helping Canadians unlearn the cultural and historical legacies of colonialism and to be inspired by the often hidden and untold stories of those who struggled against racism and made Canadian society more inclusive and just. He was the Co-Chair of the City of Vancouver’s Dialogues between First Nations, Urban Aboriginal, and Immigrant Communities, and has served on advisory committees for formal apologies acknowledging historical discrimination and for the implementation of substantive legacy projects at all three levels of government. Prof. Yu received his BA in Honours History from UBC and an MA and PhD in History from Princeton University. He was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 and the Province of BC’s Multicultural Award in 2015 in recognition of his research and community leadership.
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This past summer, I had the opportunity and pleasure to work alongside Andrew Sandfort-Marchese, Shirley Ting, and Emma Quan to develop a field trip program for Grades 9-10 students in partnership with the Chinese Canadian Museum (CCM) and Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden (the Garden). With the help of museum coordinators, local teachers, and INSTRCC leadership, we were able to create Chinatown, Existing.
The project involved designing the field trip portion as well as pre and post visit lesson plans and activities. The field trip itself was to consist of a visit to CCM and the Garden in addition to a walking tour of Chinatown. And of course, being in the midst of a pandemic, we incorporated a virtual field trip option. For the lesson plans, it was important for us to provide resources that are free and/or publicly available for accessibility. One of the challenges we faced was in scoping the learning outcomes and connections to the BC curriculum, but thankfully we had a group of experienced educators on board who were able to remind us that we didn’t have to check every box on the curriculum.
To get started, the four of us spent a day in Chinatown together. As a docent for CCM, Andrew was more familiar with the area, and was able to show the rest of us around the museum and guide us around the surrounding streets. I even had the chance to taste – for the first time – the sweet and tangy comfort of a Hong Kong style baked rice at The Boss Bakery where we enjoyed our lunch with a milk tea.
After our own “field trip” to Chinatown, I came away with a deeper understanding of what was so special about the space. We wanted to build a field trip program that captured the many facets of Chinatown that are often left out of history textbooks; we wanted students to come away with a new perspective on Chinatown, one that honors its history without relegating the space and its community to the past.
Chinatown, Existing offers a wider scope of Chinese Canadian histories that demonstrate the many relationships people of Chinese descent have had and continue to have with Canada, from early migration to the present. While racial discrimination against Chinese Canadians plays a large role in Canadian history, their individual voices and stories of resilience are often left out of the historical narrative. With Vancouver’s Chinatown as the focal point, the endurance of Chinatown, through stories of food, community, and activism, will demonstrate Chinese Canadian resilience in the face of discrimination. Grounded in the four themes at the CCM’s A Seat at the Table exhibition – Food, Culture, Services, and Activism – the lesson plans are designed to help students and teachers connect histories of discrimination against Chinese Canadians with broader histories and legacies of discrimination against other marginalized groups in Canada. The pre-visit activities set the stage for a field trip centering stories of action and resilience that unsettle the depiction of Chinese Canadians as quiet victims of racism.
Working on this project was deeply meaningful to me. The way I approached this project was sort of as a gift to my younger self – what I wish I could have learned about in high school. Moreover, being entrusted with developing this program, and being given a healthy balance of freedom and support from Henry, Denise, and Jenny, helped me to build confidence in my ideas and my abilities. And along the way I learned a lot of cool stuff about Chinatown, and ate some yummy food!
I’m proud to have worked on this project and grateful to have been given the opportunity. It brought me genuine joy to hear that Chinatown, Existing had its first successful run a couple of months ago and I look forward to seeing how it evolves in the future.
→ Visit the Chinatown, Existing website
Written by Moira Henry
Last year’s ACAM 390A: Food and the Heritage of Chinese Migrations seminar was conducted virtually, however, that did not prevent community-engaged learning from being a key aspect of the course. As such, students had the opportunity to work with local organizations and pitch their course projects to a wider audience at the ACAM 390A Virtual Community Showcase. One of these student projects, Fish Tales, proposed a community-oriented mode of story-sharing to the Gulf of Georgia Cannery in Richmond’s Steveston area.
Fish Tales was created by An Xu, Joshua Jamora, Moira Henry and I (Victoria So) to expand avenues of representation at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery by centering a story-gathering campaign around the topic of seafood consumption.
To make the story-sharing process more accessible, the topic connects the Cannery’s content to the personal histories of individuals, and encourages the sharing of stories and experiences of diverse people. By conducting interviews, community members can tell their own stories; and by using video footage to share these stories, audiences are able to listen, connect and/or engage with the stories of fellow community members – all with the aim of increasing community representation through the eyes of its members and building community connections.
While the Fish Tales project idea originated from the ACAM 390A seminar, the story-gathering campaign was further developed in the late summer and fall of 2021. Continuing our work with the Gulf of Georgia Cannery and UBC INSTRCC, we conducted 6 interviews with 14 Asian Canadian individuals in the first phase of the campaign, and represented some of the many stories shared on the @gogcannery Instagram page with the hashtag #whatsyourfishtale.
These stories include navigating the “bones, shells and exoskel’s” of seafood, the social experiences and memories of eating seafood, and the cultural heritage and family connections reflected through eating habits. They reveal the times, places, communities and cultures that we come from and encompass a myriad of diverse experiences.
View the Fish Tales posts on Instagram at @gogcannery or #whatsyourfishtale
At first, we were concerned with gathering as many stories as we could in the time that we had, but only in conducting those 6 interviews did we realize how rich and colourful these conversations could be. As much as we wanted to hear from as many people as we could, it became clear that we wanted and needed to give each participant the time they deserved for us to listen as they shared the wealth of their experiences.
Interview after interview, we noticed how these stories added onto one another even when speaking for themselves. In choosing to categorize these stories into overarching themes rather than separate them according to storyteller, we wanted to represent the campaign as a community discussion – a mosaic of stories. Although these stories came from separate interviews, the differing yet overlapping experiences shared by interviewees reaffirm how story-gathering and story-sharing can create community connections and how each person has something unique and valuable to share and contribute.
View this post on Instagram
These ‘Fish Tales’ show families and friends connecting over shared memories, similar habits or preferences, and things they didn’t previously know about one another. Audiences engaging with the campaign have also shared their own unique experiences – with strangers connecting over a simple yet boundless topic of seafood consumption.
Ultimately, the Fish Tales project shows that personal stories matter – whether that is to bring people together, validate unique cultural backgrounds and identities, or represent the diversity of experiences in our community. It shows the value in asking others to share, in allowing ourselves to listen, and in taking the time to connect with others.
We’re pleased to share that the Fish Tales project is now featured on the Gulf of Georgia Cannery’s Collections page. Additionally, the team is currently working on piloting workshops to expand on the story-gathering campaign so more people can share and gather stories. This project does not end here, and we look forward to sharing project updates as Fish Tales at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery evolves.
Stay tuned for updates on Fish Tales by following @gogcannery or #whatsyourfishtale on Instagram, or visit the Gulf of Georgia Cannery’s website.
Subscribe to the INSTRCC newsletter for monthly updates on INSTRCC projects such as Fish Tales.
Written by Victoria So
Faculty of Art