Caridad Amaran <chinese in cuba series—hundred family surnames>

Lau Pok-chi was born in Hong Kong in 1950. He went to Canada and the U.S. to further his career as a photographer in 1969. He graduated from the Brooks Institute of Photography in the U.S. in 1975 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, majoring in Industrial and Scientific Photography. He received his MFA in Social Documentary Photography from the California Institute of the Arts in 1977 and is currently a professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Kansas. Since 1967, Lau has been taking the Chinese diaspora, survival, spiritual world and values as core subjects of his photography, and has been travelling around the world for his projects. Lau has thrice visited Cuba in the last three years to record the stories of the dwindling Chinese community in Havana, which, at its peak, had as many as 200,000. One of the life stories recorded in <chinese in cuba> series is that of He Qiulan (Caridad Amaran), a Cuban girl adopted by a Chinese man. She speaks fluent Taishanese, and can read Cantonese music scores. She has performed Cantonese Opera on stage with her adopted father, Fong Bil, in small Chinese communities throughout Cuba. Lau Pok-chi has even arranged Qiulan to visit her “hometown” Kaiping, where she is officially accepted as a “Chinese”. She paid tribute to her adopted ancestors by singing Cantonese Opera in front of the Fong family’s ancestral grave.