TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO:

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My grandparents moved out of the house to live with my aunt in Vancouver because they just couldn't live by themselves anymore.

My dad wanted to throw everything out, so I had to like, go there at night and rescue whatever I could. So, I took a bunch of things from the house and some clothes and stuff like that, that my dad hadn't thrown out yet. This was kind of like a rescue mission to get some memories.

 

So what I have is two silk jackets, they're winter jackets, so what my grandma would wear when it was colder. I think she bought them in Hong Kong. Yeah, but my family's from Malaysia. My grandma has given me a lot of things over the years, mostly like jewelry once I turned like probably about 16, she started giving me like jade and gold at every birthday, which is pretty usual. And she would give me little pieces of clothes, but it was mostly fabrics and stuff like that. A lot of batik from Malaysia and some silks and stuff like that.

 

My grandma's name is Po Chu. She was born on a tea plantation and came to Canada in the 70’s with my grandfather. So, she was a nurse and moved to Kuala Lumpur for work, where she met my grandpa because he was a lab tech at a hospital.

 

She was just really gentle, always trying to take care of everyone else. She came from when she was very young. She grew up through the Sino-Japanese war and when the Japanese had like, invaded Malaysia, and she had to hide with her siblings in the jungle for large periods of time to take care of them. And I think she lost her parents really young during the war. So, I think it was just she grew up constantly having to take care of people and then choosing nursing as a profession and doing that even more and having to balance raising children and then raising grandchildren while still trying to work. So, I think just like her whole life was just trying to take care of people.

 

It's just fun to see how many different countries the clothes have been in.

 

So, these two jackets are from Hong Kong, but like my grandma grew up in Malaysia. And so it was on a trip to Hong Kong that she bought them and she brought them back and then they would have been in Malaysia and they would have come down to Canada with her and her suitcases and now I get to wear them in like a whole new generation.

 

I do burlesque and drag and I try to incorporate a lot of really nice like silks and stuff like that into going out outfits. So, like those jackets when it's colder, I might wear them out with like, leather pants or something like that. It's really nice because it usually gets a really good reception from people being like 'Where did you get this from?' and I gotta say they’re from my grandma. 

 

Being a trans person and being someone who I wouldn't wear a lot of the traditional like, cheongsam or something like that, like I never really liked wearing a lot of the more feminine things that a lot of my family might have liked to see me in. But my grandma's style was honestly mostly just like the silk jackets and pants like she didn't really wear dresses. I really liked her style because it wasn't super high feminine. So I can wear her clothes, and I can cross the like masculine feminine boundaries by wearing them still.

 

My grandma is and was the only person in my family who really approved of a lot of my life choices [laughs] especially aesthetically.

 

I'm not out to my family as being trans because of the way they reacted to things like cutting my hair and getting tattoos, and just like in general, the work path that I've decided to go into because I didn't go to law school even though that was what I was supposed to do. And my grandma was the only one who's always told people to leave me alone. And that like she thought I looked nice and stuff like that. Whereas like my dad, my grandpa, would just tell me why I want to look like a boy.

 

It's really cool to be able to bring our family, our heritage into our everyday clothing choices and in ways that a lot of people might not think of.