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Permanent | Vancouver

Period Rooms: Historic School Room and Living Room

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Step into another era with our two period rooms.

Discover how Yip Sang’s family built a “community within a community” within these walls of the Wing Sang Building (est. 1889).

Explore one of the oldest, most historic school rooms in Vancouver, registered as the Vancouver Chinese Independent School in 1914. Don't forget to take your portrait as part of a historic class photo, and email the postcard to yourself as a keepsake.

Take a seat in a recreated 1930s living room. Play music on the phonograph or pick up the rotary phone to hear memories of life in the Wing Sang Building. As you explore, reflect on how you connect to the people and places of your past.

Curator: Sarah Ling

Exhibition Design: AldrichPears Associates

Project Management: Paul Kuranko

1915-16 portrait of Yip Sang and family

[Portrait of the Yip Sang family], Vancouver, British Columbia, [60th birthday] portrait of Yip Sang and his family including wives, children, daughters in law, and grandchildren, abt. 1915-16, [Wing Sang], Vancouver, privately held by Linda Yip, Saskatoon, SK in the Hoy and Grace Yip fonds. Used with permission.

Where is this exhibition?

Wing Sang Building, Vancouver's Chinatown

Wing Sang Building, Vancouver's Chinatown

51 E Pender St, Vancouver BC V6A 1S9

The Chinese Canadian Museum is now permanently at home inside the Wing Sang Building. Originally a two-storey structure built in 1889 by merchant Yip Sang, the Wing Sang Building was later expanded in 1901 and 1912, and remains the oldest building in Vancouver’s Chinatown. 

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