Grit + Resilience: Jasmin Yeung of VYbE

TELUS BUSINESS PRESENTS GRIT + RESILIENCE,
A 3-PART SERIES ON YOUNG CHINESE CANADIAN ENTREPRENEURS DURING COVID-19.

Written by Jasmin Yeung
Photographs courtesy of the author

Throughout my life, there was always a constant: dance. Dance truly is my chosen form of expression. It has been there for me at my highest points, my lowest points, and every point in between. I have danced all my life and when I moved from Hong Kong to Markham, I found VYbE Dance and began my journey there as a student under Teego. With a lot of hard work, perseverance, and dedication, I eventually became an instructor, then director, and as of 2016, I became the Owner and Creative Director of VYbE Dance Company (that’s a very long, 19-year story, short). 

From Nostalgia to Motivation

I moved to Canada when I was 12 years old. I was fluent in English thanks to my international school education back home. The transition was rough, as you could imagine any huge life changes would be, to a budding teenager. Slowly but surely, parts of my cultural identity slowly became more Canadian.

As I got older, I started to miss those little things that I had taken away from my own culture identity. My entire family currently lives in Hong Kong, and I find myself nostalgic for many things. I miss living in a loud Chinese household, I miss living in the city, I miss speaking Cantonese, all in all, I miss my family. And it is this yearning to make up for all these years away from family that is why my gears have shifted even in my entrepreneurial journey.

“Being part of VYbE especially, I learned so many important life skills such as leadership, communication skills, teamwork, perseverance, and empathy. As a community leader now, and with this platform, it has become my personal mission to provide opportunities to our students to be able to foster the same values that I’ve gained.”

— Jasmin Yeung

I am building a supportive community of dancers where they can feel safe to be themselves no matter their cultural background. I’ve worked with, and created opportunities with many local groups/companies such as Fairchild Radio, Toronto Police Services, Toronto Crime Stoppers, CCYAA in support of the Jeremy Lin Foundation, and so much more. A lot of these events are created to highlight and showcase Chinese and Asian culture throughout the GTA.

A Difficult Situation

I am so proud of being a female Chinese-Canadian entrepreneur, now more than ever. But, this pandemic has indeed made things extremely hard for someone who never went to business school.

The outbreak of COVID-19 really initiated some unprecedented times for everyone, especially small business owners. We had to temporarily close our studio doors and we were unable to teach our classes, and all of our summer performances were cancelled. In the beginning of the pandemic, we decided to help our community stay active and created many free online dance resources for everyone on all of our social platforms. We also created some fun Youtube videos, including one where I teach a dance in Cantonese. It’s hilarious, and you’ll see what I mean when I say I’ve lost some of my cultural identity but am trying hard to find it back, for myself, and for the younger generation of Chinese-Canadians who may be going through the same thing I did. I even donated my time and talent to the CICS Immigrant Youth Centre for a 6-week online dance program, as well as a local dancewear boutique’s fundraising workshop. In times of isolation, it was my calling to step up and find ways to reunite our community with what I do best. But, it was not enough and I had to set my pride aside. We decided to call upon our extended community and friends to come together and help us out.

We’ve set up a GoFundMe and are welcoming donations to help us keep our studio space and continue building a wonderful community. If you are in the position to help us, please do! You can find the Fundraiser on www.GoFundMe.com/savevybe. Our ultimate goal will cover our lockdown expenses and reopening costs. But we didn’t want to make it like any other ordinary fundraiser, we wanted to use this as a celebration of our reopening and the 24 wonderful years we’ve had servicing our community so far. We’ve hit some donation milestones, which, when they are reached, students, faculty and friends of VYbE will partake in “challenges” such as eating Korean Spicy Noodles. When we meet our ultimate goal, we have special guests from The Kinjaz (an internationally-recognized group of dancers based in LA) showing their support and doing a challenge with us.

My hope is that VYbE will continue to grow and become a strong foundation in the GTA where the younger generation can find a sense of belonging, and build something so strong that our dancers and dance studio will become internationally known as a force to be reckoned with.

About the writer, Jasmin Yeung

Jasmin is currently the Owner and Creative Director of VYbE Dance Company, seeking to build community for the younger generation in Toronto. With Fete Chinoise, she is excited to tell more amazing Chinese-Canadian entrepreneurial stories in the upcoming seasons.