Yan <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. <chinese in cuba> series is a manifestation of an urge for a Chinese lineage. Although there is a weak trace of Chinese blood after generations of intermarriage with the locals, some still yearn for Chinese culture left behind by their ancestors. The photos bear the marks of change through time, and manifest the “Chinese identity” of the diaspora— the emigrants and their descendants— and their memories of the past.