Open Collections

Sweet and Sour

Wang, Shasha Janet

The rural Chinese restaurant has played an integral role in the lives of many immigrants for over a hundred years in Canada. The spoken stories of these families are often celebrated as a monolithic narrative of how hard work and perseverance will lead to success. However, personal anecdotes of these families often allude to immense hardships and sacrifices. This dichotomy between objective measures of success against the silent lived experience erases the unspoken desires, hopes, and dreams of these family members throughout history that could never be vocalized nor manifested as a product of time, cultural norms, and the need to assimilate. Routinely, a migrant body must adapt themselves to new spaces they move into. How can architecture embody and empathize with what is being lost and desired as one moves across the globe? This project reimagines an alternate history of one Chinese restaurant- the Golden Turtle Restaurant, a mere sliver of the many possible lost cultures, traditions, and imaginations that have graced these restaurant histories through time. Here, a multigenerational assemblage is built from the hardships, longings, and dreams of its inhabitants.

Turtleford (Saskatchewan)

Text

University of British Columbia. ARCH 549

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0413581

Applied Science, Faculty of; Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/