At Either End of the Day

This series brings together two women who shaped me from opposite sides of the world — my Grandma in England and my Popo in Hong Kong. Their lives could not be more different, yet both anchor my mixed heritage and the quiet ways culture, memory, and family persist across distance.

When I visit my Grandma, her home feels gentle and orderly, filled with soft light and familiar rituals. She makes tea the moment I arrive, and the house carries the calm of someone who has lived in the same rhythms for decades. Her world is shaped by ease, routine, and the small comforts of British domestic life — embroidered pictures, framed ornaments, and chairs arranged for conversation.

Popo’s flat in Hong Kong is the opposite kind of familiar: humid, crowded, lived-in, layered with history. The walls peel, the air-con rattles, and the room holds everything she needs within arm’s reach. Her space is shaped by resourcefulness, care, and a lifetime of making do. Yet amid the clutter are symbols of her pride — red banners for luck, worn toys from grandchildren, and, beneath the glass of her table, photographs of family. One of them shows my dad and my uncle standing together — two branches of my family meeting silently inside Popo’s home, even though she and my Grandma have never lived in the same world.

These images sit between the two women, the two cultures, and the two homes that formed me. They reveal how heritage is carried not through grand stories but through the textures of everyday life: the way a mug is held, the arrangement of a room, the persistence of memory across continents. Together, the photographs trace a lineage that is both split and connected — a reminder that identity is built from the quiet spaces where these lives overlap, even when separated by an ocean.