Paper Daughters Project is an exploration of architecture as a lens for examining cultural infrastructure, social space, and memory through the layered histories of Chinese immigration to Canada. Beginning with discriminatory policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1885, to the Head Tax imposed on all Chinese and subsequent Chinese immigration ban from 1923 to 1947, the project explores how policy, racism, and survival shaped the cultural expressions and lived environments of everyday Chinese Canadian life.
We have the same mouth
But we do not speak the same
We have the same eyes
But we do not see the same
WE ARE NOT THE SAME
What is memory? And who is allowed to remember?
The story of one man’s journey to make enough money for his family to join him in Canada. And they do, the son joining 46 years later, the wife, 58. It’s a shame that he would pass away only three years after their reunion.
When Canada opens its doors to China again, another young man will traverse the Pacific to earn money to provide a better life for his wife. He meets distant relatives on a farm outside of Vancouver, where he peddles vegetables until he has saved up enough to send for his wife. Once together, they purchase a convenience store.
These are his stories. But what about hers?
The women who waited. The women who tended.
Who crossed oceans with children in their arms, whisked into the unknown because it had to be better than the known.
Who risked everything to become a footnote, a parenthesis, an aside.
Paper daughters is for her. But it is also for her daughters,
and her daughters,
and her daughters.
Paper daughters is for her.
We have the same mouth
But we do not speak the same
We have the same eyes
But we do not see the same
WE ARE NOT THE SAME
What is memory? And who is allowed to remember?
The story of one man’s journey to make enough money for his family to join him in Canada. And they do, the son joining 46 years later, the wife, 58. It’s a shame that he would pass away only three years after their reunion.
When Canada opens its doors to China again, another young man will traverse the Pacific to earn money to provide a better life for his wife. He meets distant relatives on a farm outside of Vancouver, where he peddles vegetables until he has saved up enough to send for his wife. Once together, they purchase a convenience store.
These are his stories. But what about hers?
The women who waited. The women who tended.
Who crossed oceans with children in their arms, whisked into the unknown because it had to be better than the known.
Who risked everything to become a footnote, a parenthesis, an aside.
Paper daughters is for her. But it is also for her daughters,
and her daughters,
and her daughters.
Paper daughters is for her.