About
This is a project about gratitude.
The idea emerged back when my first daughter arrived.
I began to wonder where my family story began.
Sons & Daughters is a storytelling project about Chinese-Canadian cafés, food and family.
2017-2022
I crossed the country with my father in search of stories, travelling for weeks by train and rented car over 3 trips. We ate our way across Canada, stopping at 30 Chinese-Canadian cafés along the way to chat with the owners.
These travels across Canada with my father were a gift -- me living in the UK, my Dad in China. Eating endless noodles along the way, he shared childhood memories of early life in the restaurants, and his father whom I had never met. The journey back to my grandfather’s small-town café is at the heart of our story, still sitting on Oxbow’s main street almost 70 years later.
I found it extremely difficult to neatly tie up all the threads of the project: the joy of travels with my dad across the vast & incredible landscape, curiosity as I entered each new place, amazement (and sometimes heartbreak) at the endless long days and necessities of survival, seeing some cafés thrive while others were on the decline. And a deepening sense of gratitude for the opportunities passed onto me... a long string of 3 generations of my family worked in Chinese restaurants.
Ultimately, Sons & Daughters also seeks to build connections through the stories that we share, with food a space that often brings us together.
Everyone has eaten Chinese food, yet the legacy of the Chinese café in Canada is largely unknown. These small, mom-and-pop restaurants serve up a mix of classic Chinese and Canadian diner food along with dishes altered for local tastes using whatever ingredients are available on hand. Though often dated and sometimes disappearing, they continue to be important social spaces and the places immigrants go to start new lives.
From Alec, the owner of the South Pacific:
“The struggle, the heartache, and the grueling long hours are all prerequisites for running a small Chinese take-out restaurant.
On the flip side are generational family cohesiveness and many hours of laughter.
Without tears, there is no joy. And without hard work, there is no reward. These are the things that I observed from my mom over the years.”
A journey across Chinese-Canadian cafés, the immigrant stories that make up Canada, and the things we pass onto our sons & daughters…
With thanks.
Funded by
Credits
Creator/Director, Photographer — Suyin Looui
Interactive Direction & Design — Unlearn Studio
Creative Development — Francesco Michelini, Fabio Carretti