Wound

A body of works on Chinatown, Toronto during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Having lived in Toronto as a first-generation immigrant from China for 5 years, I have seen Chinatown transformed, flourished, and gentrified. I have also lived in one of the old houses in the past where more than a few families crawled under the same roof. I still vividly remember the strenuous pain brought by the broken windows in winters. During the pandemic, the district changed its outlook, as if taking on a new character. The traffics inside the supermarkets signified a sense of fake prosperity, and the aloofness has been subtlety spreading in the crowd like an unstoppable crack on an elastic film. My beloved restaurants now look like armed soldiers, wearing thick cardboards and plastic dividers at the entrances. It is a time like no other, and I wanted to preserve it honestly for my old friend, Chinatown.