Qingcai 青菜

Qingcai is an interrogative self reflection piece on ones immigrant experience. How did the confusion become the later natural fusion? What did immigrant unlearn to learn? When "linguistic long term care home" service gradually erodes into ones identity, how do we examine this integration? Growing up in Mainland China, I had a solid understanding of what a Chinese person behaves. This perception has been turned upside down after moving to Canada. The Chinese diaspora culture is mainly dominant by Cantonese. Having had no previous exposure with any Cantonese culture, getting around as a "Chinese" was confusing. Qingcai, in Mandarin, is the same vegetable as Bokchoy in Cantonese. Qingcai, literally translates to "green veggie", while bokchoy means white veggie. How could a vegetable be named in different colors? This is one of the few examples of linguistic confusions.

Performed on March 9th, 2018, Toronto, Canada

Self introduction 自我介绍

"Self Introduction" is a numeric self-portrait. Immigrants develop their new identities through opening new accounts with financial institutions, telecommunication companies, grocery stores, all kinds of accounts are created based on your Anglicised name, spelled out as Roman letters, one by one, in English language orders. This process repeatedly happened to establish new links with the society, also reinforce the new identity that is completely foreign to the immigrant. This is a coded information immigrants have to use to validate their existence with various social bodies, to verify "you" is "you". Is this new name what people call you in your home country? Is this how your mom calls you? Do you even respond to someone who calls that name with a heavy English accent? Immigrants accept that confusion and live with it. From there we will probably see more Julie, Samantha, Steven or John. Who's name are we calling? This piece aims to revisit the surface of every immigrant's complex identity. 

Performed on Jan 26th, 2018, Toronto, Canada