My name is Justin Wu. My mother is a fine-art painter and my late father was a doctor. Both grew up in Hong Kong before emigrating to Canada to seek a better life. Typical of many first generation Chinese-Canadians, I felt obligated to attend university and enroll in sciences and business to satisfy my parents’ desire for me to follow in my father’s footsteps. However, much to their disappointment, I tore up my medical school application at the eleventh hour and chose to pursue my passion for the arts instead.

Academy Award-Winning Director, Ruby Yang, talks about her journey, the idea of time and pace in her work, and COVID-19. Yang is currently the Project Director of the Hong Kong Documentary Initiative (HKDI) and was the recipient of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council’s Artist of the Year for Film in 2018. Our Fête Chinoise editors first met Ruby in December 2019 at the film screening of The Last Stitch (2019) directed by Alfred Sung, which Yang served as the Executive Producer. Later, Yang shared that she saw the wonderful events featuring Chinese Canadian culture that Fête Chinoise had designed. It is truly our pleasure to share her thoughts.