My Diary- Seven Days after the 2019 Hong Kong Protests
July 31- August 17, 2024

Satellite Project Space
121 Dundas St, London, ON
Wednesday-Friday 2-7pm, Saturday 12-5pm 

Opening Reception: August 2nd, 2024, 5-7pm

My background as being born and raised in China and then come to Canada when I was
seventeen years old, motivates me to research if immigrated Chinese Canadian family portraits
could serve as visual and historical records that document Chinese Canadian immigration’s
stories and reflect different social norm and political ideology between China and Canada from
2000s and onwards. This exhibition will feature a true story of my seven days after the intensive
protests in Hong Kong known as Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement on June 9th,
2019. During these seven days, I have received condolence, concern, misunderstanding, and
blame from my families, friends, co-workers, and strangers. People from different backgrounds
have different or even opposite perspectives towards the protests. My project will demonstrate a
collection of news reports from CBC news (Canada), People’s Daily (China), Apple Daily (Hong
Kong), New York Times (U.S.A) Radio France International (France) and Deutsche Welle
(German) reporting this protest from June 10th to June 16th. These news reports have shown
different or even opposite opinions. Moreover, this also evokes a state of perplexity regarding my
identity as a person. As a permanent resident of Canada and citizen of China, I have never been
given the right to vote or participate in any political movement in any country, however, the
political movements are constantly affected my life. There are always conflicts and accusations
towards individuals like me, like the Asian hate during the Covid, the HK protest, the China-
Taiwan Conflict, and the China-US conflict. This exhibition presents an observation of different perspectives of people around me. It explores how politics could stand in between of families
and friends. It reflects different social norms and political ideologies between China, Canada,
and Hong Kong during the HK protest in 2019.

You can find Yijing Li on Social Media.