Canto Cutie - Volume 3

You describe that your images are
reproduced and brought into the
conversation with your own
relationship with the Chinese
Diaspora. Can you speak more
about that relationship?
你 形 容 你 的 圖 片 是 重 製 的 , 而 且 讓
你 反 思 自 己 跟 華 裔 離 散 經 歷 的 關
係 , 可 以 解 釋 一 下 這 種 關 係 嗎 ?
My mother and father are
immigrants to Canada from Hong
Kong. Prior to their lives in Hong
Kong, both my mother’s and father’s
families originated from the
Guangdong province in China.
When I consider my relationship to
the Chinese diaspora, I contemplate
the conditions of my family’s
dispersal from China, I contemplate
my relationship to the homeland,
and I contemplate my relationship to
the hostland.
one rooted in white supremacy and
capitalism, and when I side with the
Indigenous struggle for
decolonization, I am in fact aligning
myself with anti-racism and
reciprocity. In short, my relationship
to the Chinese diaspora is
complicated. I do not have an
idealization of a return to my
homeland; however I am not satisfied
by the Canadian state.
I primarily consider China, and more
specifically the province of
Guangdong to be my homeland. My
family’s Cantonese culture originates
from Guangdong, and we have strong
ancestral ties there. Like the workers
from Guangdong who migrated to
Gum San (Gold Mountain) in search
of prosperity, my family experiencing
extreme poverty in the wake of the
Cultural Revolution migrated from
China to Hong Kong, and then to
Canada. My family’s movements
motivated by prosperity have
informed how I relate to my
hostland. Canada is a settler-colonial
state; as a settler, I live on stolen land
and am complicit in colonization.
While I acknowledge my complicity,
I also know that the Canadian state is
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