Christy and Denise have been exploring the use of digital media since 2015 as an approach to community storytelling. In 2016, Christy Fong and Denise Fong co-directed the documentary short Under Fire: Inside a Chinese Roasted Meats Shop in Vancouver, which was nominated for BCSA: Vancouver Asian Film Festival’s Best Canadian Short Award 2016.
Christy Fong 方雅雯 is an IT professional with an academic background in community histories and digital humanities. Bridging her technical skills with her research interests, she explores local histories via art, technology, and community events. Her multimedia thesis focused on the 1968-1979 Barbecue Meats Protests in Vancouver’s Chinatown, and won the 2016 Undergraduate Research Award from the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC. In 2017, she co-organized a listening party for the Pender Guy Radio Show, the first English-language radio program created by Chinese Canadians. With the academic journal Canadian Literature, she created a virtual field trip of Vancouver’s Chinatown based on SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café (2017). Christy currently sits on the Board of Directors for Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC, where she continues to connect public education with community histories in new and creative forms.
Denise Fong 方靜怡 is a PhD candidate in UBC’s Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program, with a research focus on critical heritage, museum curation, and new media production. She co-curated two award winning Chinese Canadian history exhibitions in Vancouver: Across the Pacific exhibition at Burnaby Village Museum (2019-2021), and A Seat at the Table — Chinese Immigration and British Columbia at the Museum of Vancouver and Chinese Canadian Museum of BC (2020-2022). Both exhibitions bring together diverse historical and contemporary stories of Chinese Canadians in BC through the theme of food. Her most recent curatorial work — Chinatown Reimagined (2021), is an online exhibition produced by the UBC INSTRCC student research and teaching program, which showcases the community efforts of Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacy Stewardship group and Chinatown Transformation Team.
Media Coverage:
- “What I learned by learning my family’s recipes in the most trying of times” (CBC)
- Under Fire: Inside a Chinese Roasted Meats Shop in Vancouver (VAFF)
- 1968-1979 Barbecue Meats Protest in Vancouver’s Chinatown (UBC)
- Pender Guy Radio Listening Party (Access Gallery)
- Disappearing Moon Café Virtual Field Trip (Canadian Literature)
- This exhibit explores the deep roots Chinese-Canadians planted in Burnaby (Burnaby Now)
- Museum of Vancouver and UBC launch display about Chinese Canadian museum project (Georgia Straight)
- Pocket gallery in Chinatown aspires to be like a kitchen table for sharing stories (Vancouver Sun)