客家 HAKKA HOUSE: Community Cultural Space in Vancouver's Chinatown

客家 HAKKA HOUSE is a community space based in Vancouver Chinatown. Join us in critical cultural learning, dialogue, organizing, and play.

In Chinese languages, Hakka literally means “guest families”, shaped by prolonged processes of multigenerational displacement and migration. Historically, Hakka has been an imposed identity, a marker of outsider status and cultural inferiority. As Hakka people, we hope 客家 HAKKA HOUSE becomes a humble guest house for the making of community life.

Visit us at 103A-180 Keefer St inside the Vancouver Chinatown Plaza Mall.

Remembering Nelson’s Chinatown: A Window into the Past and the Future

In collaboration with Foundation for Chinese Dignity, Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery, and Kootenay Co-op Radio. Funded by UBC Partnership Recognition and Exploration Fund.

This project creates a large bilingual (Chinese-English) window poster to honour the Sing Chong laundry in Nelson, BC, the last remnant of the largest Chinatown in the BC Interior. Drawing on archival and oral histories, the poster foregrounds the migration, labour, and community histories of Chinese Canadians, highlighting racialized, gendered, and minoritized experiences often erased from local memory. Designed with linguistic and cultural sensitivity, it serves as a public pedagogical intervention, fostering intergenerational learning, cultural awareness, and community-university collaboration. More than a visual artifact, the project reclaims space for memory, dignity, and cultural continuity.

Relevant publication:

• HISTORY BUFF: The Chinese laundries of Nelson (Nelson Star)

Whispers, Wonders, Worldmakings:  A Participatory Action Research with Multilingual Migrant Queer Youth of Colour

Funded by UBC Department of Educational Studies

West Asia + North Africa + East Asia: A Global Youth Dialogue to Unlearn Orientalism

Co-presented with Centre for Culture, Identity and Education at UBC. Funded by UBC Inspired.

An intercultural youth dialogue and free public event on how Orientalism manifests in the contemporary context of media, pop culture, arts, education, and everyday life, with critical perspectives and lived experiences shared by speakers from West Asia, North Africa, and East Asia

POC Activism Talks: Learning from Organizers of Colour and Their Experiences

Cultivating Cultural Resilience: Racialized Food Systems Rooted in History, Care, and Sustainability

In partnership with University of Guelph at the 2025 Cultivating Resilience summit

Racialized food systems embody long histories of resilience and adaptation, brought by diasporic communities from their homelands to Canada. These systems have been foundational to Canadian and global food economies, yet often operate in parallel and are undervalued or dismissed as “frivolous” in Western-centric food systems. 

From 19th-century Chinese market gardens to South Asian farming in the Fraser Valley and the banning and marginalization of Palestinian food traditions, these histories show both the endurance and erasure of cultural food systems. 

In partnership with the Univeristy of Guelph, we curated a panel at the 2025 Cultivating Resilience summit that brought together racialized practitioners, educators, and scholars from Chinese, South Asian, and Palestinian traditions to explore the alignments and tensions between cultural and environmental sustainability with relation to food. Panelists shared lived knowledge, historical lessons, and contemporary practices while imagining futures where racialized food systems are not sidelined, but recognized as essential to Canada’s climate-smart agri-food landscape.

Speakers included Gurleen Mann of Mann Farms, Nazmi Kamal of Capilano University, Dr. Yao Xiao of UBC and Critical Alternatives, and Melody Yun Ya Ma of Critical Alternatives.

Buttons from Palestine: Assembly Toolkit by Shahd Faraj

We collaborated with Shahd Faraj, a graudate of the Faculty of Art, Music and Design at Birzeit University in Palestine, to create a series of buttons using her visual toolkit, Assembly Toolkit, which features Sijil, a custom typeface she designed for her graduation project.

Visitors are invited to choose from six different button designs, each featuring meaningful Palestinian expressions and symbols. We contributed to the conceptualization and production of the buttons, encouraging people to select and make their own as a way of wearing and carrying messages from Palestine with them.

Media Training for Organizers

In partnership with DemocracyXChange

A hands-on workshop equiping local organizers with the tools to communicate with clarity and confidence, whether speaking to media, engaging communities, or shaping public narratives. Participants will build skills to connect with diverse audiences, elevate their initiatives, and strengthen civic engagement where it matters most. Hosted in partnership with DemocracyXChange for their DXC+ Vancouver regional event series.

Critical Cultural Film Screenings and Dialogue

In partnership with the National Film Board of Canada

茶水集: Tea Talks

Making a Multimedia Multilingual Multigenerational Dictionary of Chinese Youth Movements