A digital exhibition from Edmonton
Go Have Tea
Tea is more than a drink. In Edmonton, it carries stories of migration, hospitality, memory, labour, and everyday life.
Edmonton Heritage Festival · Chinese Pavilion · Hawrelak Park · August 1–3, 2026
Created for the Chinese Pavilion at the 2026 Edmonton Heritage Festival, Go Have Tea brings together three exhibition tables: Chinese tea, wellness and Edmonton goji stories, and bubble tea. Painting, calligraphy, fieldwork photographs, posters, and familiar objects invite visitors to see how tea changes as it moves—and how people make new forms of home around it.
Why “Go Have Tea”?
“Go have tea” is an everyday invitation, associated with Chan master Zhaozhou: slow down before judging, sit together before explaining. It is not a cure for conflict—just a modest practice of attention.
Three ways tea travels
One Leaf, Many Teas
See how one plant becomes many teas through local knowledge, tools, timing, and sensory judgment.
Wellness & Goji Stories
Follow goji through Edmonton’s river valley, family gardens, community memory, and Yong Fei Guan’s Edmonton Goji Map.
Build a Bubble Tea
Explore a drink that developed in Taiwan in the 1980s and became a global system of customization, franchising, and service work.
Art in the exhibition
Calligraphy by Wen Ying and paintings by Yang Hui do not simply decorate the tables—they help the exhibition think, from 吃茶去 as an everyday action to 和而不同, harmony without sameness, as its ethical direction.
Before you leave
Take one question with you:
Which plant, drink, object, or smell makes you think of home?