‍The premise behind “Tong Yan Gai, Jeui Ho!” (Chinatown, the Best), is that Toronto’s best Chinatown is not in the past, but in front of us, we are making it, through our collective vision, spirit and action.

This 2023 remount with Talking Walls includes additional collage work featuring posters from Friends of Chinatown (FOCT), a grassroots organization currently fighting for community-controlled affordable housing, racial justice, and economic justice in Toronto’s downtown Chinatown.

Chinatown history around the world is the story of repeated displacement and erasure – in Toronto, the original Chinatown burned down in the Great Toronto Fire of 1904, and the city took the opportunity to expropriate the land into what is now Union Station. Chinatown was displaced a second time in the 1950’s to become City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square. Community organizers and activists again and again have risen up, and the fight continues today with the housing crisis, and condo developers eager to wipe out Chinatown once again in the name of speculative profit.

2023 also marks the 100 year anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a devastating anti-immigration legislation that tore families apart in the name of “White Canada Forever”.

Long Time No See’s collective work seeks to connect the Chinatown community across generations, remind us all that our current struggle is not a new one, and we have much to learn from one another. Through communal art creation, we hold space for us all to gather and share our stories – of family, of hardship, of resilience and our hopes for the future.

This exhibition included programming and workshops for U of T students and Community members including: Film Screenings, 9-Man Volleyball Demo Game, Tours of Spadina Chinatown and the TPL Chinese Canadian Archive, Workshops in Wheatpasting, Taiko Drumming and Printmaking, Lion Dance and more!

Additional artistic contributions from Friends of Chinatown, Gillian Xu, Tyne Vainio, Liz Tsui, Victoria Liao, Day Milman, Saša Rajšić, Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan, and Panni Ajtony