168
a youth-led magazine, 2023, published by Chinatown Storytelling Centre & re:Naissance Opera
Marking 100 years since the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, 168 imagines Vancouver’s Chinatown 100 years from now.
Led by artist/editor Blake Abbie, our team worked with local high school students, artists, photographers, and Chinatown community members to create art and stories about the future of Chinatown in a large-format magazine. 168 is a lucky number in Chinese culture and sounds like “one road to prosperity” when pronounced out loud. I supported the project as the lead producer, workshop facilitator, and copy editor.
Read more about 168: ‘“Dear Friend of the Future’: Youth led magazine reflects on Chinatown’s history through letters” by Elena Massing
Gu Xiong: The Remains of a Journey
edited by Gu Xiong and April Liu, Centre A and Canton-sardine, 2021
In unearthing archival images, some of which have not been seen for over 100 years, Gu Xiong’s milestone exhibition brings significant chapters of Canada’s Chinese diasporic history to light, including the destroyed “bone house” of Harling Point, the leper colony of D’Arcy Island, and the burnt-down Chinatown in Cumberland. Contributions by Gu Xiong, April Liu, Chris Lee, Xiaoping Li, Xiaoyan Yang, Steven Dragonn, and Henry Heng Lu. Bilingual English and Chinese.
Divine Threads: The Visual and Material Culture of Cantonese Opera
by April Liu, Museum of Anthropology at UBC and Figure 1, 2019
Divine Threads shines a light on the visual and material culture of Cantonese opera as a treasure trove of sacred and auspicious images, stories, songs, and rituals. In tracing these connections, author April Liu analyzes the politics of memory surrounding historic opera troupes and the traces they left behind on their transpacific journeys.
This book is a marriage of art history and anthropology, based on archival research and in-depth interviews with opera performers, costume makers, and elder knowledge keepers in Asia and North America.
April Liu, PhD 