Curator

Short biography

Junhong (Summer) Ma is a cultural anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at Xiamen University. Her research examines contemporary Chinese and East Asian tea culture, tea industries, cultural authority, service labour, branding, education, migration, and the movement of tea knowledge between Taiwan, mainland China, and Canada. She holds a PhD from the University of Alberta.

Curator’s statement

I created this exhibition because public conversations about Chinese tea often move in two unhelpful directions. Tea is either compressed into a timeless national tradition or reduced to a consumer choice. Both approaches miss the people and relationships that make tea possible.

The three tables begin instead with movement. A leaf moves through skilled hands and becomes many teas. A plant moves with migrants and takes root in Edmonton. A drink developed in Taiwan moves through shops, franchises, digital menus, and young people’s social worlds.

“Go Have Tea” became the central invitation because it is ordinary. It does not promise that a cup will solve disagreement. It asks whether we can create enough time and space for a different kind of encounter. The Daoist resonance lies in rhythm rather than doctrine: less coercion, less hurry to classify, more softness, listening, and room for relations to change.

For me, this is what public anthropology can do at a festival. It can begin with something familiar, make hidden labour and history visible, and leave visitors with a question rather than a completed cultural definition.

Junhong (Summer) Ma

Curator and cultural anthropologist