Mountain View

My mother spoke of her estranged grandfather George, who lived and died in Canada. Searching for answers became a decades-long obsession of uncovering a history of displacement and family separation I never knew existed.

My mother once told me of her estranged grandfather George who lived and died in Canada. When I asked more about him and why she wasn't Canadian, she was unable to fully articulate the reasoning behind the estrangement and the disconnect in diaspora. To her and many older Chinese, "that's just how it was back then".

For me, that reasoning wasn't enough--I had to know why. This became a decades-long obsession for me, where I soon discovered that my great-grandfather George was part of one of the last generations of Chinese bachelor men in Canada. Displacement and family estrangement was a part of my family's past, a reality that I was not aware of until I was confronted with a Canadian paper trail through genealogical inquiry.

During visits to Vancouver, a place that I believe is deeply spiritual with its majestic landscapes and the lost stories that are embedded, I started making photographs that made me think of my family. In order for me to deeply understand the interior life of George and the men like him, I began collecting photographs from institutional archives and personal family albums. Through this long arduous process of searching, I found both grief and joy intertwined. George was no longer a stranger to me.