How do you remember a street that has disappeared off the map?
Liverpool is home to one of the earliest Chinese communities in Europe. The establishment of the Blue Funnel shipping line in 1866 brought seafarers from Canton, Shanghai, Ningpo, and Hong Kong to its shores.
What started as a transient community of seamen began to settle around the Cleveland Square and Pitt Street area, just a stone’s throw away from the docks, to take up employment onshore and set up laundries, boarding houses, grocery shops and restaurants. Material traces of these histories have now disappeared and rendered invisible in the present day.
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Narrated from the perspective of a semi-fictional character, the project follows a young woman searching for a man known in the family only as “Ah Sam”. As she traces the elusive presence of Ah Sam in the archives, it marks the beginning of a speculative journey that led the narrator to reimagine the histories of Pitt Street and its inhabitants.