In Cantonese, yum cha (飲茶) means “drink tea," a tradition that originated in Guangdong and brings people together over Chinese tea and dim sum.
From this world were born a little shrimp tucked gently inside the translucent, bouncy folds of a dumpling wrapper and a straw-topped cat filled with tapioca pearls.
Yumcha Party is inspired by dim sum, tea, and Chinese culture. Through art, food, and storytelling, we hope to connect people to one another and to themselves.
We hope you enjoy what we’ve made.
With love,
Yumcha Party
Tiffany Yu is a Chinese American designer and artist born and raised in San Francisco. Her family roots are in Guangdong, China. She grew up surrounded by Cantonese culture, with dim sum as a staple of everyday life. She ate shrimp dumplings from mom-and-pop shops after school, long before she started thinking about how those cultural contexts shaped the way she saw the world.
As she grew older, she became curious about what a contemporary visual language for Guangdong culture might look like. She watched Japanese animation reach a global audience, while even within dim sum culture, the internationally familiar image of Hong Kong often seemed to stand in for a broader Guangdong tradition.
Films and dramas from Hong Kong and Taiwan, her travels in Taiwan, mainland China, and Japan, and her experiences within Chinese diasporic communities in the United States all helped shape her understanding of Asian diasporic art. Together, these influences drew her attention to the parts of her cultural background that were woven into everyday life but remained less visible in contemporary art and storytelling.
Through Yumcha Party, she explores conversations around the Chinese diaspora and the wider Asian community through visual art, design, and storytelling.
